The Signal gave away a vinyl single a couple of weeks ago and the brain-shattering exercise you had to go through to win the single was: Tell me the story of your turntable.
Reading the responses, some of which you'll see below, it became clear very quickly that many people have a deep emotional connection to their turntable and the vinyl that spins on it. I thought audio nerds were going to come up from the basement and tell me about how analogue is superior and I would hear technical arguments as to why the last 20 years of sound technology are a waste of time. But instead I was reading stories of families, childhoods and loving the physical rituals and the satisfaction of having a tangible role to make the music happen.
Learning the skill of playing a record properly on a turntable takes some practice. Learning how to replace a needle, not touching the vinyl, dusting the vinyl, balancing the arm - and my favourite - learning not to dance vigorously right next to the turntable. Playing music on a turntable is a very tactile experience. It makes listening to music less of a passive experience perhaps. Makes you the final step in the process of making music. Liner notes and album art also offered something different. More! More writing, bigger artwork. It all seemed more important. What else am I missing about the vinyl experience?
Read what fellow Signal listeners have posted and please join the conversation (just click on the comments box below). Viva la vinyl!
Laurie
Related:
With vinyl's resurgence, what goes around comes around
What We Can Learn From the Rebirth of Vinyl
My turntable is a pioneer PL-600 turntable from the early 80s. There are a few reasons I like it. Most importantly, it is a very good sounding table. It has a fully automatic mechanism. I press start and the mechanism moves the arm from the rest, then sets it down very gently on the record, which isessential for preserving the stylus, as well as the record. The quartz lock mechanism keeps the platter rotating at the exact right speed. I repair and restore turntables and other vintage audio gear, as my own little business, run out of home. When I am not fixing gear, I am studying engineering at Carleton University. Many things I learn there help me when I am fixing gear. I am often listening to "The Signal" on high end audio gear while repairing other high end audio gear. My house is full of audio gear, including turntables, receivers and speakers. Many turntables have been though here. Many have been mine but I fix many for others as well. My current table is still here because I have liked it more than any of the other tables I've had. If a better one were to come along, it would become my main table, and the pioneer would be sent on its way. But I am very happy with it and I don't think it is going anywhere anytime soon.
Duncan Fyffe
The reason I love my turntable so much is because it joyfully plays the record collection my father gave to me for my birthday a couple years ago. He purchased most of the vinyls in Vancouver back in the 60s and 70s... He trekked them around with him on every one of his house moves hoping thatone day he will have a child who will appreciate them ... and that is me! The vinyl's range from Pavarotti to Crosby Stills Nash and Young.I feel like I have a special opportunity to glimpse into my father's pastas I file through the boxes, never quite sure of what I'll listen to next. There is something sentimental about the feel and look of them. I am a traveling soul myself, not sure if I'll stay put in one place for awhile after I graduate University, but one thing I know for sure is that I'll have to find a safe place to hold these vinyls which my father haddone for me. Perhaps one day I myself will have some little one who will enjoy the pleasure of sifting through a box of generations past.
Cara Christiansen
Hi Laurie,
The current turntable was bought (in the 90s!) after I had burned out the motors in a few previous turntables. The stereo shop (yup, I think that's what we used to call 'em) guys asked me how often I used my turntable, and when I said that (pre-CD days) I probably ran it 12+ hours a day, they said 'you can't run a belt-drive like that!'. The last turntable I killed was the simplest turntable I could find, called a Connoisseur, imported from the UK, with a cool 10" turntable (since I collected 10" discs). One day, the turntable began rotating in the wrong direction. All we could figure is that it overheated to where the polarities reversed. So then I bought a second hand, really heavy, professional JVC direct drive turntable which I use to this day. I also had to downsize several years ago and sold about 5000 LPs, leaving only about 900. And I do still play them.
Viva la vinyl,
Ellie O'Day
My Turntable is a late 1970s Yamaha YP-D6 that I found in a Value-Village with the tonearm flopping loosely, no dust-cover, headshell or turntable mat and covered in nicotine stains. But it was from the age when audio equipment was heavy designed to look like slabs of aluminum and walnut. I repaired the tonearm and cleaned off the smoke stains and tried it with a headshell (that's where the needle lives) I had already. It sounded promising, maybe even good. Eventually via the internets (eBay and similar) I sourced a proper aluminum Yamaha headshell, Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge, Denon moving coil transformer, yamaha turntable mat and a suitably sized dustcover. Music sings from this deck, detail than I'd never heard from my old records emerged, instruments & musicians moved about in the soundstage where before they used to sit dead centre. It's a chain of cooperation, one component to the next, from the vinyl recording, through the impossibly delicate diamond tipped needle, then down the gently swinging tonearm and through the cables and step-up transformer and into the hi-fi stereo. I have control over that little symphony of events, the music doesn't appear simply from a mysterious black box. And the music seems to appreciate that, as it emerges gracefully, or forcefully, or happily as the situation warrants, but it always comes out "living".
Martin Simmons
I first discovered my love of vinyls when the mother of my Dad's goodfriend passed away, and since she didn't have much family I got her recordcollection and her turn table. Nothing fancy, a small sony and a collectionof records that included Nana Mouskouri, German Christmas hymns, Ukrainianpolkas, and Englebert Humperdink. Nana was the only one I really enjoyed,(I can still sing *Nickels and Dimes!).* My record collection hasgrown substantially since then and has traveled with me to University, andwill come with me to where ever my next journey takes me.
Thanks Signal,Keep being awesome!
Julia W
I must admit upfront that I am not a "first generation" vinyl-phile. I know for a fact that it does not take any special age bracket to appreciate the warm tones of a pressed record, but I do believe that each generation carries its own perspectives of the medium. I, for one, love vinyl not for its "retro appeal" or "natural tones" (both excellent points), rather, I love my turntable and records because of the care that must be paid in their enjoyment. It takes a certain type of purposeful determination to play a record, sliding the vinyl from its sleeve with reverent care, placing it gently upon the deck where it spins slowly, hypnotically, almost humming its promises before the needle is even dropped. Of course, I use the term "dropped" flippantly: I've often wondered whether surgeons employ such careful self control when making incisions as the vinyl-lover delicately lifting the arm, holding my breath as I lower once more, releasing a sigh of triumph when the spinning record fades into the gentle crackle of audible anticipation. The listener does so much more than just listen when it comes to vinyl. They bring it into being with their care.
Perhaps it's over-thought, but it's the only conclusion I could feasibly come to, learning from my parents. Both of my parents kept a small, yet reliable and diverse collection of records, carrying them from house to house, moving day to moving day through the years, consolidating when they married, and only occasionally expanding. As a child, on rare, cold winter evenings, my mother would bring out one of her old Simon & Garfunkel vinyls, and would play it. Perfectly kept, the music would come forth so clearly, restoring the past to my mother, revealing the future to me. From "The Sound Of Silence", I learned of life's paradoxes, from "Scarborough Fair" I sought solace in melancholy times (and learned of various spices and herbs). The form was foreign to my ten year old self. I didn't know what spell could weave such magic through those evenings, but in true childlike innocence, I viewed these black, grooved discs as the cause. Years later, when I was fourteen, my older brother saved up his money to buy a new turntable for the family, one inexpensive enough for me to use on my own without fear of harming mom and dad's mystical relic. Once again, I felt the same warm thrill of years past as I so gently went through the rite of this music for the first time by myself. From that day on, I was officially hooked, searching flea markets and antique stores and garage sales to feed my addiction, to reveal new spells waiting to be released.
Only now as I look back, technically adult yet still feeling so young, barely able to vote in elections, do I see that I was only half right. The magic that I placed in turntables so many years ago does exist, and the medium is still the most human and emotionally true form of recording I know. But it isn't records or careful dedication to the act of releasing their soft tones which carries the magic. It's the family which was there throughout it all. The records of my parents, the cozy evenings spent learning about my mother's life, the generosity of my brother - these are the things which imbued the thought of vinyl with such enchantment for me. Now my brother is studying to be an architect in Italy, and my parents are getting ready to send me off to university next year, leaving them with an empty nest. As for the records of my mother and father which first opened my mind to magic? Now they've joined and been handed down to me, and I hope to pass them to my children one day: watching their intent concentration as they so, so slowly lower the needle - as they feel the magic surrounding them.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Adam Benninger