Most people write them off as an inferior form of media, remembering the days of warbled sound, too much hiss or your tape being eaten by your Walkman or boombox.
I love collecting vinyl records but I grew up with cassettes. Born in 1978, I came into the world just before the official release of the CD format in 1982. When I was young, I would take a portable cassette deck outside to the swing set, press play and then proceed to sing and swing. Cassettes were affordable and you could copy songs off the radio when money wouldn’t allow you to purchase new music. I remember recording Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown radio show which would allow me to playback all the current hits at once. I would listen so much I could often repeat Casey’s intros to the famous songs before they played.
I’ve been making mixtapes all of my life, but especially during high school and college. I’ve made mixtapes for myself, for friends and especially for girls, including my wife who still has many of the tapes I made her 20 years ago.
RIP Lou Ottens
Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape recently passed away. I was familiar with Lou from watching a documentary last year called, Cassette:A Documentary Mixtape.
Throughout the documentary, Lou seems perplexed as to why people still care about the cassette. After all, he helped invent the CD which helped destroy the cassette tape market for good. He had easily moved on and didn’t consider the cassette something to romanticize.
What I love about this sleeper direct drive turntable.
Last summer, we snuck away for a family vacation in Gatlinburg, TN. Whenever I’m out of town, I always look at local selling sites for any interesting finds. I found the above turntable on Craigslist and scheduled a time to safely meet with the sellers to buy.
The JVC JL-F50 is a fully automatic, direct drive turntable released in 1977. Personally, I love the overall black and silver look of the turntable and jokingly called it “Darth Vader’s turntable” while it was in my possession.
I own two Mobile Fidelity “MoFi” records, the above Weezer “blue album”, released in 2012 and a 1980 copy of Abbey Road by the Beatles. I inherited the Abbey Road LP from a family collection and bought the Weezer album at a local store here in Nashville a few years ago.
MoFi records are expensive when released and I always hesitate to buy them. When it comes to music buying, I’ve historically been more of a quantity over quality guy. I’m fine passing up one expensive original pressing record if it means I can buy a stack of other records instead. I’ve sold first pressings out of collections I’ve bought and kept my regular pressing to play without any regrets.
But the older I get, and the more curated my record collection becomes, I’m starting to think I might prefer a higher quality record pressing like what MoFi offers.
After a lot of research online for the best music streamer, I bought the Andover Songbird and have been very pleased with my purchase.
5 Reasons To Purchase The Andover Songbird Wifi Music Streamer:
Affordable price of just $179.
Easy to set up and beginning using straight out of the box.
Streaming sounds better using wifi rather than bluetooth.
The size of the unit is small and easy to store on an equipment shelf or rack.
The Songbird app is easy to use.
Let’s discuss each of these reasons in depth below…
Judging by the name of this site, you understand that I’m a big fan of physical media whether it be vinyl records, cassettes or even CDs. But I’m also a fan of streaming music services which allow me to discover new artists or reissues that I want to buy on vinyl.
I’ve been buying records for over 20 years now and the good news is I have a wonderful collection. The bad news is I have over 2,000 records that take up a lot of space in our 1972 ranch home and I’m running out of room to add any more to the collection.
In an attempt to slow down the record acquisitions (until I can further address my storage issue), I began researching music streamers that could be added to my vintage Marantz 2270 receiver. This way I can listen to albums before purchasing to make sure they are must haves for my record collection.
I spent several weeks doing a lot of research and was about to pull the trigger on the Bluesound Node 2i, but I was nervous to spend $550 on a music streamer. Everything I read about the Node 2i made it seem like the perfect fit for my needs, but I just couldn’t shake the idea of spending over $500 for a music streamer. In all honesty, with a collection of over 2,000 records, how much will I really use a streamer?
I kept researching for more affordable options and I finally stumbled on the Andover Songbird music streamer and decided to take the plunge.
Below are five reasons I fell in love with this streamer.
A few weeks ago, while scrolling through Craigslist, I stumbled on a listing for a Pioneer PL-518 turntable that was a few months old. I emailed the seller who got back to me and we worked out a price and a time to meet. Then things got weird…
First, I own a Pioneer PL-560 turntable that I bought about five years ago. It was my first vintage turntable and a pretty good find for the time, considering how much they’ve increased in price. It’s a direct drive model with automatic stop/start features and metered speed control. The dust cover on my unit still looks brand new. I haven’t had a single issue with the table in the last five years. Owning the PL-560 is what piqued my interest in buying the PL-518.
Back to my story…when I emailed the seller and finished negotiating the price, I asked him where he’d like to meet. He replied, “Don’t you want to listen to it?”. I was willing to risk that it played fine but I replied yes, agreeing to meet him at his home.
This is where things get interesting. He then emailed me his address and said, “After you listen we can head to the bank.” Huh? That puzzled me. Why would we need to go to the bank? So I asked him that question to which he replied, “No offense but I don’t know you or your money.”
At this point I decided I might not want to bother even going to his house. I didn’t really have time to go there and the bank just to pick up a turntable. I asked if we could simply meet at the bank and he said yes.
We met at the bank and the elderly gentleman said I could look at the turntable in his truck and then we would go inside the bank where I would give the teller my money and they would confirm it was not counterfeit. I agreed and when we entered the bank, I noticed the confusion on the teller’s face. I gave her my cash, she confirmed it was real and then the seller asked me to sign a document stating I was buying the turntable “as is” and for the agreed upon price.
Now, I’m all for safety and meeting at the bank was actually a great idea. But going inside to confirm my money was not counterfeit and signing a “contract” for the used item was definitely new for me. In the end, I got the table home and it worked great.
So let’s talk about why I love the PL-518 as a turntable in case you find one in the wild and want to consider purchasing one.
First, the only negative thing about this table is the isolation feet which will most likely have rotted off. This was the case on my table, something I was aware of when purchasing, and seems pretty common from my research.
Thankfully, the feet are easy to replace. I ordered a set of four feet from Ken’s Vintage Audio on eBay for just $44 shipped.
One of the new feet I installed on the table to replace the rotten ones.
The table is direct drive and technically a manual table, but I like to call it “semiautomatic” instead. Pioneer calls it manual because you have to manually set the tone arm on the record to begin playback, however, at the end of the record, the arm will return on its own to rest.
The PL-518 also features a S-shaped tonearm with a removable headshell. I’ve been experimenting a lot during the pandemic with listening to different cartridges and greatly appreciate a removable headshell when having to install a new cart.
Lastly, and something I’ve never encountered before, this turntable came with a leather cover that you can leave rested on the table when not using.
I found some PL-518 tables online where the metallic looking veneer on the plinth had been removed and replaced with a wooden veneer that looked beautiful. I’m not ready to apply veneer to a turntable yet (I’ve only tackled veneer on receivers) but that would be a wonderful upgrade to a solid performing turntable.
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Recently, a friend of mine asked if I would clean up “some Kenwood receivers” he found at his Dad’s house. He said none of them were working properly and he thought a good cleaning might do the trick. I agreed to try.
I was surprised when they arrived with the units to see three Kenwoods, comprising of one KR-4600 and two KR-5600s. One of the 5600s looked in pretty good shape and was fairly easy to clean, but the 4600 and the other 5600 were a real challenge.
The issue I was having was losing sound while using the phono input. I had cleaned the volume pot on each and had zero issues while listening to the radio or aux inputs. In fact, each of these units have two phono inputs, and often Phono 2 would play fine, but on each unit, Phono 1 was still giving me problems.
It’s worth noting that last year I bought a Kenwood KR-5600 of my own off Facebook Marketplace. The owner said it played great and of course I got it home and the phono input started giving me trouble, losing sound in one channel. I took the top cover off the unit and sprayed all the pots I could see, but couldn’t get it working again. I set it aside to deal with later.
While working on my friend’s units, I noticed that the sound was most impacted when I moved the Tape Monitor and Input Selector switches, both located on the right side of the unit. I also noticed you cannot spray DeOxit into the pots at the front of the unit as there are long rods extending to the back of the unit where the pots are actually located.
I looked up the manual online and found where you can unscrew the rear of the unit and slightly peel back the preamp board (I couldn’t get it fully removed, too many screws) where you will see the pots located on the bottom of the board to spray in Deoxit.
See below screen shot of manual explaining how to access the preamp.
Note, the long rods connecting the pots to the knobs on the front of the unit will separate from the pots when you peel back the preamp board. Reinsert those properly and then turn the knobs several times to work the DeOxit in and let it do its magic.
This worked for all of the Kenwoods, including the 5600 I bought last year.
I knew I’d probably never have that many Kenwoods around again so I snapped the above photo with them stacked on each other.
If you have a Kenwood giving you trouble, trying this cleaning technique before giving up on it completely!
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