home

The Vinyl Press

  • Features
  • Records
  • Cleaning – Care
  • Editorial / Letters
  • Compendia
  • Ephemera
  • About
You are here: Home / Ephemera / The War of Fog

The War of Fog

January 29, 2017 Leave a Comment

The War of Fog

-Adventures in Audiophile Moving.  

For forty days and nights, we’ve been packing boxes and squaring away our Hudson River home for sale to the new owners: roughly 12,000 records have gone through my hands recently; a few thousand left a while ago, and are now in the hands of a friend who returned to vinyl; as many were handed off to a wholesaler who dealt with the listings and shipping (none of the really rare stuff got sold, so you didn’t miss a thing). The wholesaler came back a couple weeks ago to take another 2,000 records out of here. That left me with about 6,000 records to pack. Once you are forced to consider the cost to value ratio of moving a large collection of records, you begin to get more selective about what you are willing to keep.

The gear was another matter. Like most “audiophiles,” I kept my original packing, even for gear I’ve owned since the early ‘70s. Some equipment was sent out for updates or just a factory “check-up.” Other stuff, like my old Quad ‘57s—sitting unused for years in packing– was shipped off for restoration. The Quads, which I have owned since 1973, were sent to Kent McCollum for a complete overhaul.    I plan to use them with a pair of old Quad II amps that had been languishing (and are also getting restored), along with some other period gear in a second, vintage system. My main system –consisting of horns and SET amps— will also be revisited once I’ve got a place to hang my hat.

I don’t ordinarily write about gear on The Vinyl Press, but I’m happy to keep readers updated on the progress of the vintage system as it gets assembled. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Although we had a full service mover, I packed all the records and gear; crates were made for my horns; large 19 inch floor to ceiling equipment racks, once used for a home theatre, were disassembled and hauled away; in wall wiring for the theatre system was tucked away behind professional looking wire panel covers. Carpeting was replaced where the video system equipment racks were bolted to the floor. My “compressor room,” which had been soundproofed, was spackled, painted and re-carpeted. A painting crew came through and touched up the walls, color matching their work throughout the house.

If war is hell and an army marches on its stomach, think of moving as a similar exercise in logistics. With all of that work finally done, I’m now in a sort of bleary, too many days at the front line without R&R feeling –where even the simplest tasks require thinking. And that’s when the fog crept in.

We haven’t bought a new place yet. All our stuff is in storage, the gear and records in temperature/humidity controlled vaults.

There is a certain freedom to this—homeless out of choice. Although New York remains our home for now, we planned a little road trip. I’ll be writing about that along the way. (Hint: much has to do with music and food).

In the meantime, a big shout out to all those who pitched in to help in large and small ways: the lovely ladies from the Piermont Rowing Club, Liz’s friends Elisabeth, Leslie and Desiree, as well as Deb, Jo, Jeff and Donna, Elsa, Dominic, Robert, Brian, James, Tim, Scott (of Piermont), Katie, Jennifer and Anne, Marjorie, Rob and Evan. Sometimes, people showed up all at once, like one of those French farces, where doors are opening and closing as people pass through, completely oblivious of each other. There were a few traffic jams in the driveway. Large Babylonian urns (replicas made out of Styrofoam once used as stage props) went out one door as crates for my horn speakers went through another. A mobile shredding truck reduced years of old, dated documents to confetti that got hauled away.

I learned a few lessons along the way. First: do not leave your toolbox in plain sight. If you do, the movers will pack it before you know it. Then you are well and truly ******. Once we get back our energy, we are going to hit the road. I’ll post some impressions, along with a few interviews along the way.

Θ

 

First stop: the Inn at Little Washington.

 

A long time respite for the Beltway crowd, far in spirit if not distance from the madness of our nation’s capitol, Patrick O’Connell has built a culinary shrine in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that has been thriving for almost 40 years.

It is elegant in the way traditional 3 star country restaurants are in France. The closest model may be the great restaurant of Jacques Lameloise in Chagny, Burgundy, or Georges Blanc’s restaurant and hotel outside of Lyon. Like those noteworthy institutions, the Inn offers a handful of luxurious rooms for overnight guests and the surrounding village centers on this culinary “destination.”

These are places for special occasions. Although we haven’t fully recharged, a serious meal and a good bed in such sybaritic surroundings goes a long way.

We now head to the Piedmont region via a leisurely jaunt along Skyline Drive.

 

Bill Hart

from the road

January 20, 2017

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

In Brief:

Fixing Certain Features on the Site

Fixing Certain Features on the Site

Fixing Certain Features on the Site As this site has grown, I have tried to improve it, and add certain features. Alas, some of them don't perform as intended and need to be reprogrammed. Some of this is owed to custom programming when the site was set up to give it a particular "look" as well as interoperability issues between WordPress and the large commercial hosting service I had been using from inception.  My team of IT support folks are working on various tasks now, including: fixes to the Letters to the Editor function (I know some of you have written and those letters have not been published- my apologies); issues with the subscription/registration process that made the  comments feature difficult to use and also prevented some registered users from resetting their passwords through WordPress. Some of these issues were caused by the original hosting … [Read More...]

Taking a Wider View On Your Listening Choices

Taking a Wider View On Your Listening Choices

Taking a Wider View On Your Listening Choices If you take music seriously (and I’m not talking about pinky lifting pretension here)- you can take garage bands or punk as seriously as original Blue Notes, you know your taste. It is seldom dictated by the mainstream trends, marketing, or popular culture of the moment. Sometimes, popular music isn’t just fluff either and can prove enduring as well, see, e.g. “The Letter”.[1] Chances are, you had some epiphany at some point- probably as a teenager—and recognized that there were certain things you liked, in preference to the music that surrounded you. There was something you identified with- the lyrics, the melody or playing style that had meaning and resonated with you as you matured and developed a worldview. Obviously, those preferences change over time; your tastes change as your perspective on the world evolves and the music … [Read More...]

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music    Even if you hung out in every bar, dive and dance hall in a town for the last 40 years, you wouldn’t capture the musical influences, history and “feel” of a place as well as this book tells it. Part history, part interviews with music makers, SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN is far more than a cheat sheet for the vast array of talent that inhabits this “live music capital of the world.” It tells the story of the Austin music scene, in the words of the people who lived and made it, in a way no narrative history could. Producer and publisher Kim Gorsuch, with a guiding hand from Carley Wolf, multi-instrumentalist and front woman for the Ghost Wolves, assembled this hard cover “coffee table” book by relying on the artists themselves: their stories, influences, and images fill the pages, the famous and the obscure, from the … [Read More...]

Record Cleaning: Tima’s DIY (Ultrasonic) RCM – followup #1

Record Cleaning: Tima’s DIY (Ultrasonic) RCM – followup #1

Record Cleaning: Tima’s DIY (Ultrasonic) RCM – followup #1 I am very pleased with tima’s DIY RCM thus far.  See Tima's DIY RCM.  The USC tank and filter system continue to operate nominally. I’ve settled on a cycle that clean five or six records at a time. That includes: i) warming up the tank water to 34° C (93.2° F) which takes about 40 minutes, ii) running a stack of records through the cleaner for 15 minutes at roughly 60% power, then running for 6 minutes at roughly 80% power, iii) and lastly letting the records air dry. The Beijing Ultrasonics 10L unit is much quieter than the commercial automated units. I have the rig in the back room anyway – and it requires minimal attendance. The results are excellent both visually and sonically. A few times I found my stylus covered in whitish gunk when playing a cleaned record. That’s probably primeval mold release compound softened by … [Read More...]

SIDEBAR ON DIY ULTRASONIC LP CLEANING

SIDEBAR ON DIY ULTRASONIC LP CLEANING

SIDEBAR ON DIY ULTRASONIC LP CLEANING    I’m delighted that a “pro” reviewer, Tim Aucremann, (better known as “Tima” in audio circles) agreed to address the topic of DIY ultrasonic LP cleaning in a new featured article on TheVinylPress.com.   For those of you with long memories, I had published an introduction to DIY ultrasonic cleaning some time ago, with the promise of a more in-depth look. Although I had done a fair amount of research preparing to set up a DIY ultrasonic cleaning system here at TheVinylPress, the project was waylaid by our move to Austin. Tim’s piece not only hits all the buttons, but also does a great job of describing his learning curve, leaving room for yet more modification or substitution of components and ancillaries. That’s the nature of DIY- you can customize as need, budget or results dictate. This “Sidebar” is less of a commentary on … [Read More...]

Terms of Use ·  Copyright © 2018 The Vinyl Press.com ·  Privacy Policy
A service of Flying Reptile Media Group ·  Contact


Register | Login to Comment | Comments FAQ

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.