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Friday 45 – Dave Scott Trio – Dave’s Boogie

Last week I was visiting a friend who called and said he had some records to sell me. He had a box of LPs that he wanted to get rid of and sold to me for a great price.

While chatting, I told him I was always on the lookout for odd 45s and he said he had some I could go through. I flipped through a small batch and brought a handful home.

Whenever I’m flipping through 45s, I always look for plain labels featuring artists I’ve never heard of. I quickly snatched up this 45 with that plain green label and simple black font by a band called the Dave Scott Trio.

I couldn’t find any information online about the Dave Scott Trio nor could I find any other releases by Cay-Scott on Discogs. My guess is that this was self released since Scott is included in both the label and artist name.

Side 1 finds the band covering Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine. Nothing special jumped out to me about the performance but you can stream it below to judge for yourself.

Side 2 was more enjoyable with a track called Dave’s Boogie. This finds the band loosening up a bit with more electric guitar, some organ and a boogie woogie style piano throughout. Listen to a recording from the 45 below…

Judging by the amount of piano featured on each recording, I’m going to guess that Dave Scott is on piano. But I’d also love to know who is playing guitar on Dave’s Boogie!

An added bonus on this 45 is that Dave autographed the label on Side 2 with an inscription that seems to read “Red, Best Wishes, Dave Scott”.

What a fun discovery last Friday and I’m excited to post about it here on Forever Analog!

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2021 Summer Soul Mix – All 45s!

Last week I had my first DJ gig, post pandemic, at a local brewery here in Nashville, TN. There were several DJs on the bill and we each got a 30 minute set.

Because of the short set, I decided to use all 45s and pull from a lot of the great records I’ve found during the pandemic.

The result is a short but sweet soul 45 set featuring songs by Aretha Franklin, J.J. Jackson, Betty Wright, Etta James, The Detroit Emeralds and more.

Click below to listen and follow me on Mixcloud!

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How To Really Clean a Kenwood KR-4600 and KR-5600 Stereo Receiver

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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Affordable Headphones: Tribit XFree Tune Bluetooth Headphones

My teenage sons burn through the cheap Apple earpods monthly, always needing a new pair. We travel a lot for the holidays so I thought they might enjoy a pair of nice headphones but I wanted to find a pair that wasn’t too expensive in case they met the same fate as the earpods historically have.

Insert the Tribit XFree Tune headphones for just $50. I have not heard of this brand before but I found these headphones while researching online and decided to give them a try as a holiday gift for my boys. I read they sound amazing and are very comfortable to wear so I gave it a shot.

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I’m happy to say my boys loved them. We travel by car and the way things work is, Dad is boss of the radio and I choose what is listened to while driving and they listen to music on their headphones. Well, the earpods would allow my music to easily bleed into theirs and they would turn the earpods way up in response which I knew couldn’t be good for their ears. After their first listen on the new headphones, the first two things they complimented the Tribits on were the bass response (they love hip hop) and how well they blocked out my music in the car. The headphones were a hit.

I recommended these on my personal Facebook page recently and a few people ordered them and also loved them. The headphones come in a nice carrying case as well which is great for my boys when we travel.

If you’d like order a pair and support this site further, you can order a pair of the Tribits on Amazon here! (This is an affiliate link and helps support Forever Analog.)

Read an in depth review from CNet on the Tribits for more information! 

I do not personally have a lot of experience listening with high end headphones so I wouldn’t try to make the comparison here. But, I do love a good bargain and great sound at which point the Tribits are my headphones of choice!

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Vinyl Emergency Podcast!

We had the pleasure of being interviewed for one of our favorite podcasts, Vinyl Emergency!

We talk with Jim about hobbies, how to juggle those with a day job, how we got into vintage audio repairs, vinyl collecting and more!

You can listen wherever you play your favorite podcasts but we’re including the Spotify link below. Check it out and be sure to subscribe for more great podcasts from Vinyl Emergency!

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Need To Hear This: Micromega M-150 Amplifier

Have you ever set a personal goal and immediately realized your life is set up to operate in complete resistance to that goal?

I set into motion a plan to pay off some lingering debt. I’m tired of paying the same monthly bills and seeing the balances barely decrease. Let’s pay it off. I’m ready.

Back to having my life set up against my goals…if you decide to do everything possible to pay off debt and still subscribe to stereo magazines showing you fancy new gear that makes you want to spend money, you’re doing it wrong.

I have two options here: 1) cancel my subscription or 2) understand most of the gear presented is way out of my price range anyways, with or without debt, and continue to read for the educational aspects of it and maybe have a blog where you can write about what you’d like to hear even when it’s not affordable, ahem.

That final point brings me to the Micromega M-One amplifier which I first discovered in the most recent issue of Sound & Vision Magazine.

The first thing I noticed was a slim orange box that looked more like a weight scale rather an integrated amplifier. I showed the magazine to my wife and said, “Weird, this thing is actually an amplifier!”.

Image Courtesy of https://www.stereophile.com/content/micromega-m-one-all-one-streameramp

Receivers are historically nothing but large black boxes (at least these days) that weigh a ton and sit rather unattractively in an entertainment center. Every day our partners stare at that black box hoping for its demise. Unless you bring home a pretty vintage Pioneer, Sansui or Marantz, the black box integrated amps are asking to be kicked out of the house from day one.

Has Micromega solved this issue by offering a colorful slim design that looks like anything but an integrated amplifier? Perhaps.

More importantly, how does it sound?

With a price tag of $7,499 (and my debt pay off plan mentioned above), I will not be personally listening to a M-150 anytime soon. After all, I titled this post Need To Hear This, right?

I suggest jumping over to Sound & Vision’s great review to read more about how the amplifier sounds. All I can say is after reading their opinion, I definitely wanted to hear one myself. Maybe someday I will!

If interested, here are specs for the unit:

  • Class AB Stereo Amplifier
  • DAC PCM 32/768 and DSD256
  • DLNA
  • Ethernet
  • Bluetooth SBC and apt-X
  • S/PDIF and I2S digital audio inputs
  • Asynchronous USB input
  • Acoustic calibration by microphone M.A.R.S
  • Power: 2x150W (8 Ohms)
  • Signal-to-noise ratio: 100 dB (RCA), 103 dB (XLR) and >75 dB (phono)
  • Channel separation: 96 dB at 1 kHz and 80 dB at 10 kHz
  • Sensitivity phono input: 12 mV and 1.2 MV (MM and MC)
  • Line Input Sensitivity: 1.4 Vrms (RCA) and 1.7 Vrms (XLR)
  • Low Low Output Filter: 400 Hz
  • Inputs: 1x USB type B, 2x USB Type A (service), 2x HDMI I2S, 1x optical S/PDIF Toslink, 1x S/PDIF coaxial RCA, 1x trigger, 1x XLR, 1x RCA, 1x MM/MC phono, 1x microphone,
  • Outputs: 1x pre-out XLR, 1x RCA box, 1x trigger, HP Terminal Blocks

If you own a Micromega, let us know! 

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