Just on one of the previous posts - at the risk of being a douche, buy from your local record store, not JB.
Surely there’s one thing that JB can not monopolise (though I am a JB lover for games and gadgets).
I don’t have a local record store. The closest one to me is Grevillle records which is brilliant and I’ve spent heaps there but I haven’t bought a record there for 20 years. These days I buy online.
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Finally got around to setting up the old B&O amp and turntable. Unfortunately the amp has problems - it seems to only be able to play through the left or right channel at one time. So no stereo. There are two channels left and right, so I can set it up to play mono, but I’ll have to get it serviced. A bit disappointing. Especially when my other amp needs a service and other turntable is playing slow. Oh, well. Currently listening to my bootleg copy of Prince’s, Black Album. Mono doesn’t really do it justice.
A plus is that I can set up the tape deck as well and go through all my old cassettes - trying to find all the old demos and rehearsals in amoungst 500 or so other tapes. I didn’t label them well at all. Just on a side note, has anyone had any experience with transferring cassette to digital? Sorry to bring it up in the vinyl thread.
Can you burn a cassette to a CD? That might be a way through.
Got a voucher for Rocking Horse records for xmas (Brisbane). Hadn’t been in there for about a year and their vinyl selection seems to have grown substantially, in both new and old recordings. Lots of good stuff there, not cheap though. As I don’t have a very good turntable at present and the stylus is broken anyway, I had to spend the $40 on CDs, but just for reference, good shop (as I’m sure Brisbane-dwelling vinyl fans would already know).
I have a pile of vinyls in my garage, just need a new amp and probably new stylus for the Dual turntable and probably also new leads for the B&W speakers to set up again. But then I am a procrastinator, like that T shirt " Procrastinators of the world unite - tomorrow"
Finally got around to setting up the old B&O amp and turntable. Unfortunately the amp has problems - it seems to only be able to play through the left or right channel at one time. So no stereo. There are two channels left and right, so I can set it up to play mono, but I'll have to get it serviced. A bit disappointing. Especially when my other amp needs a service and other turntable is playing slow. Oh, well. Currently listening to my bootleg copy of Prince's, Black Album. Mono doesn't really do it justice.A plus is that I can set up the tape deck as well and go through all my old cassettes - trying to find all the old demos and rehearsals in amoungst 500 or so other tapes. I didn’t label them well at all. Just on a side note, has anyone had any experience with transferring cassette to digital? Sorry to bring it up in the vinyl thread.
Don’t suppose the turntable is one of the linear tracking ones.
Finally got around to setting up the old B&O amp and turntable. Unfortunately the amp has problems - it seems to only be able to play through the left or right channel at one time. So no stereo. There are two channels left and right, so I can set it up to play mono, but I'll have to get it serviced. A bit disappointing. Especially when my other amp needs a service and other turntable is playing slow. Oh, well. Currently listening to my bootleg copy of Prince's, Black Album. Mono doesn't really do it justice.A plus is that I can set up the tape deck as well and go through all my old cassettes - trying to find all the old demos and rehearsals in amoungst 500 or so other tapes. I didn’t label them well at all. Just on a side note, has anyone had any experience with transferring cassette to digital? Sorry to bring it up in the vinyl thread.
Don’t suppose the turntable is one of the linear tracking ones.
No, pre-linear tracking. My uncle had one though. Don’t know what happened to it.
Finally got around to setting up the old B&O amp and turntable. Unfortunately the amp has problems - it seems to only be able to play through the left or right channel at one time. So no stereo. There are two channels left and right, so I can set it up to play mono, but I'll have to get it serviced. A bit disappointing. Especially when my other amp needs a service and other turntable is playing slow. Oh, well. Currently listening to my bootleg copy of Prince's, Black Album. Mono doesn't really do it justice.A plus is that I can set up the tape deck as well and go through all my old cassettes - trying to find all the old demos and rehearsals in amoungst 500 or so other tapes. I didn’t label them well at all. Just on a side note, has anyone had any experience with transferring cassette to digital? Sorry to bring it up in the vinyl thread.
I’ve transferred cassette to digital by getting an RCB audio cable (red and white/L and R) with a headphone jack at the other end. Or even better with USB. I used the stereo amp’s audio outputs and fed it into my laptop. You can download basic freeware audio tools, like Wavepad, then record the audio stream. It takes a bit of practice and know how, but you can work the settings to set the signal level, then crop and clean up the recorded track, and save it to MP3. Or record the whole side of a cassette, then cut it up into individual tracks.
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Finally got around to setting up the old B&O amp and turntable. Unfortunately the amp has problems - it seems to only be able to play through the left or right channel at one time. So no stereo. There are two channels left and right, so I can set it up to play mono, but I'll have to get it serviced. A bit disappointing. Especially when my other amp needs a service and other turntable is playing slow. Oh, well. Currently listening to my bootleg copy of Prince's, Black Album. Mono doesn't really do it justice.A plus is that I can set up the tape deck as well and go through all my old cassettes - trying to find all the old demos and rehearsals in amoungst 500 or so other tapes. I didn’t label them well at all. Just on a side note, has anyone had any experience with transferring cassette to digital? Sorry to bring it up in the vinyl thread.
I’ve transferred cassette to digital by getting an RCB audio cable (red and white/L and R) with a headphone jack at the other end. Or even better with USB. I used the stereo amp’s audio outputs and fed it into my laptop. You can download basic freeware audio tools, like Wavepad, then record the audio stream. It takes a bit of practice and know how, but you can work the settings to set the signal level, then crop and clean up the recorded track, and save it to MP3. Or record the whole side of a cassette, then cut it up into individual tracks.
Just need to say here, that whilst that works, if you are serious about getting decent quality digital tracks, you would be well served buying a device with decent quality D/A converters in it.
D/A converters inside your average computer are really quite ordinary, and even if above that, D/A con inside computers will still be noisey from the computer itself.
The good news is, a simple dual input, (hence stereo) USB / Analog interface with quality outboard converters from M Audio & the like are very affordable now.
And you could pick up 2nd hand, 1st gen ones with level controls, perhaps quality pre amps and even firewire connectivity for bugger all nowadays.
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Do you guys have books that give the approximate value of vinyl?
I always go to Discogs.com and see how much it has sold for, and also check those currently selling, how much they’re asking and the condition it’s in.
Edit: sorry, realised that was a question for someone owning a store.
You can also check the highest and lowest price stats on Discogs that an LP (CD, Cassette, Laser Disc or whatever format) has sold for, plus I think a median stat price.
I bought the last Tortoise LP on the way home on my phone from a store in Kentucky who ships a lot more cheaply ($6USD x 1LP as compared with the average of roughly $23USD. While the Greenback has been dipping a little since Trump entered the office, their shipping rates are ridiculous I think due to happenings with their postal service or so I’ve heard. I find German rates are usually very reasonable, have seen them shipping cheaper than interstate via Australia Post.
Discogs is great!
How hipster is writing about craft beers that complement vinyl? What was that article in- The Bearded Northcotian Quarterly?
On further thought, records are too mainstream for all that now. I got a cheap new Sinatra compilation LP for Christmas from Target Greensborough. Vinyl is almost as back as we are.
Yes it is. I avoid spending too much time on there, my bank balance takes too much of a hit otherwise.
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Actually I’m privileged to live in a place that has the world’s best vinyl scene and a thriving craft beer scene, yet doesn’t have any hipster element attached to either. Just beardless nerds, like me.
Big trap, I cant resist clicking that buy button when I see what I like. I’ve spent a fortune there
Has anyone bothered to mention that most (if not all) vinyl these days isn’t mastered for vinyl due to the fact no studio will pay someone to do it? So in essence, you just getting a vinyl copy of a CD.
Good read, I wasn’t aware of this thread on old blitz.
I have quite a bit of black plastic in storage, including some of the LPs already pictured.
But here is a story some might enjoy …
My older brother was sent off to boarding school in the 70s and returned a year later with about 100 LPs. It turns out there was this thing called the Australian Record Club that used to advertise on the back of comics. You signed up as a member and bought 1 LP, and got 4 free ones. The catch was you also had to sign a contract promising to buy 1 LP every month at full price for the next year or 2 (I forget which). If you were under 18 your parents had to sign the contract as well.
My brother and his mates had the job at the school of collecting all the mail for the school and distributing it to various classes or dormitories and then the letters/parcels were given to individual kids. My brother and his mates joined this record club under fictitious names, with false parental signatures, knowing they could intercept the mail when the LPs arrived. So they were getting 5 LPs for the price of 1, and then just destroying the letters that came every month chasing them up to fulfil their ongoing purchase requirements.
But then once you were a member of the Club, you could sign up other new members and as a bonus would get 2 free LPs for every new member you signed up. So all the fictitious members signed up lots of other fictitious members which got another 7 LPs for the price of 1 for each new member you created.
Eventually the Record Club got suspicious and contacted the school with the names of all these non-conforming members. The school said none of the names were actual students, and the school had no knowledge of all these LPs ever turning up at the school, and since all the names were under 18 the club should contact the parents. But all the parents’ names & addresses were false so the club had no success there either.
The outcome was the club just decided not to accept any more members with addresses at the school - so it eventually came to a halt - but the kids got to keep all the booty they already had.
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