My welcome post is 14 months delayed, I joined in January of last year! What a site, I am really enjoying the posts. In particular, I love reading about upgrades to the JA Michell Gyro SE turntable that Peter has been doing.
My interests are all over the map in music. Over the last five years, I've dived into jazz; Hard Bop primarily from the late 1950s and through the 1960s is a fav, particularly from Blue Note and especially piano. While saxophonist Tina Brooks is a personal favorite, I really like the piano work of Herbie Nichols, Dodo Marmarosa, Horace Parlan, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, and Red Garland. While the vibraphone work of Bobby Hutcherson is simply awesome.
My first love of music came with the Four Seasons in 1962. Was blown away as a kid by Rag Doll and Sherry, and Walk Like A Man that cemented my relationship with the group. The next summer, in 1963, my father who was a Navy guy, was transferred to Italy. That allowed me that summer to visit my grandparents just east of London, since my mom is English. Then my aunt that summer introduced me to the Beatles, which remain a staple on my turntable. That summer and the next, I grew to love The Yardbirds, The Animals, Manfred Mann, and The Kinks, along with The Rolling Stones. Now I love to find obscure groups from the 1960s, such as The Baroques or Appletree Theater, in the great record shops in Portland or in Seattle.
Fairport Convention and Richard Thompson are my interests too and I've seen RT many times in concert. And I am partial to Graham Parker, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Bruce Springfield, and John Mellencamp. Another artist I love is Kate Wolf, a folkie, and Fred Neil and P.F. Sloan. I could go on...
My listening line is:
For vinyl an Ortofon Cadenza Black MC phono cartridge mounted on Pete Riggle's The Woody tonearm, on a JA Michell Gyro SE turntable;
that kit goes into a Whest PS.40RDT SE phono preamp, into a Conrad Johnson PV15 linestage into a C-J MF2550SE amplifier,
those power the fabulous Spatial Audio's X2 open baffle speakers.
For CDs, I use a Esoteric K-05.
My main audio hobby is making mini-lp CDRs. I record on a Tascam DV-RA1000HD recorder in 96/24. Then I process into Red Book CDRs. Using a large flatbed scanner I copy the lp artwork. That gets put together in Photoshop, and printed on Epson R340 Photo Stylus printer. I work to duplicate the record label too, and with access to 1,000s of fonts, to replicate the text. See this link to an example: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa....47670/page-41.
I like to evaluate things too, for example, last year I became interested in ultrasonic cleaning of vinyl records. I finally got a setup and its good. Still some records need a spin on a good ol' VPI. But my fascination with the ultrasonic technology got me researching on the worldwide web. The notes I gathered eventually led to a paper that I wrote last September and was published by Bill Hart's The Vinyl Press. If that interests you, see this link: https://thevinylpress.com/a-history-...cord-cleaning/.
I hope to meet a few of you and already I have a buddy here, 33na3rd.