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.