The wheel on the table keeps on turnin'!

Sometime back in late 2011, I was given my first two LPs by my now former supervisor. He was a big Rush fan and he had a few copies of some Rush albums. He gave me Rush's Hemispheres and their first live album All the World's a Stage.

I had two LPs, but nothing to play them on. That issued was later addressed when my amazing girlfriend got me a portable record player for Christmas in 2011. It isn't very loud or doesn't have much bass but it plays records, and it still plays them. In fact, it has ran on the same set of batteries that it came with for over a year now. For private listening or a portable solution to carrying around a bulky setup, this thing is amazing. After hearing my albums as well as some of my girlfriend's albums, I was hooked. 

Sometime later, my girlfriend and I were in Houston, I had finished my gig and we stopped at a Half Price Books store. There were a countless number of records, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was here that I purchased 5 LPs: ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition, Kansas' Point of Know Return and Leftoverture, Toto IV, and Steely Dan's Aja. I immediately played these albums once I returned home. I was nothing but impressed hearing these albums on phonograph.

 Later on, sometime in Spring 2012 my co-worker and I stopped by a thrift store on our way back to our work shop. As I looked around in the store, something had caught my attention. Laying on the floor in a corner, there was a component turntable. It was only $30 dollars, and that's all I had on me. I spent all of my lunch money on a turntable. It was missing a needle though, so I had to order a new headshell for it. A replacement cartridge for the stylus on the tone arm then would've cost me around $200, way more than a new headshell. Before I ever ordered the new headshell, I ordered a newly pressed LP, ELP's Brain Salad Surgery. I was aware that it could sound bad with all the digital remastering of today's standard. I played the LP and I was impressed but at the same time disappointed. I was impressed because it had more clarity than I thought it would being a modern mastering. The disappointment came from the fact that the audio is compressed and maximized to the point where the original dynamics are barely audible anymore, this is also due to the modern mastering. 

I finally purchased the headshell for the turntable and I began listening to my LPs on my HiFi Stereo. Needless to say, I was even more blown away than before hearing all the frequencies I couldn't hear before. I stopped playing LPs for about 6 months until around this time. I am surprised to find that my thrift store turntable was broken after 6 months of no use. Not happy with the situation I go ahead and dispose of it and keep the headshell. I have ordered 16 albums and I will comment on this post once I have a listen to them. 

Tubah!

Since I was freshmen in high school (almost 10 years ago), I have played tuba. In the picture below I'm seen holding a sousaphone during my last months in high school (wearing my band uniform to boot). The horn below is a Jupiter FiberBrass Sousaphone.

After high school I joined a local community band, they gave me a nice tuba play which you can see me playing in the picture below. It has it's issues just like every large tuba does. Of course at the time I wasn't used to playing such a cumbersome instrument. Up until then, I had used Bb tubas for about 6 years. I met my greatest challenge, playing this tuba. It's keyed in C, it takes twice the lung power compared to any tuba I've played thus far, and to make matters worse it's intonation was about as accurate a marksman shooting blind. With all these issues though I managed to overcome this beast. The one thing about this horn that I enjoy is that you can play loudly it will not over-blow easily. I have played this horn for little over 3 years now, but I wanted my own tuba to own. The horn below is a Melton 2155R 5/4 C Tuba, only around 20 of these were ever made.

In December of 2012, I gathered enough money to purchase an Eb Tuba. I had wanted something extremely versatile, because if I was to own only one tuba that horn had to be versatile. I read around on the internet for different opinions and the majority of tuba players had said the Eb was the best all-around-er tuba. It's a Besson 981 knockoff costing only around $2500 provided by a British company known as Wessex Tubas. Jonathon Hodgetts is the owner and he provides excellent custom service. He play tests every horn that comes from the factory in China, and if he doesn't like it he won't sell it. So far the tuba has been great, it has an excellent upper and middle register but the lower register can be kind of stuffy at times. The stuffy lower register is heavily in part due to the fact it is a compensating horn. That is to say that when you press the 4th valve, it's tubing loops back into the valve section. When you depress more valves to the depressed 4th valve, it adds more length to the 4th valve tubing according to which additional valves are depressed. If this system were not present on this horn, the lower register would be very difficult to navigate through because of bad intonation. With this system one could simply play a G on 1+2 and to go an octave lower, you would just add the 4th valve. 

Overall if you're not sure what tuba to purchase, try them if you're not sure. If the situation allows it, always try before you buy! Do not buy a horn you will not like later on down the road.