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The Mood Was Ruined

I recently bought an analog set up and a few lps.  I have always been militantly pro digital.  I’m trying not to accumulate lps and trying to limit purchases to interesting stuff that may not be available digitally.  I have my lps cleaned ultrasonically.  My tastes are generally confined to Classical Music.

  Today I was playing a Columbia lp  that had just been cleaned of Charles Rosen playing late Beethoven Piano Sonatas.  Specifically I was listening to Beethoven’s last Sonata, Op.111.  The second and final movement has very long trills, great arcing trills that tend to dissolve into arpeggiated chords in the highest octaves and played at various shadings of the pppp range.  A great performance and recording can make you afraid to breathe because you don’t want to break the spell, and Rosen ( a noted scholar and author of the Classical period besides being a great musician ) had me transported there.

  And then it happened.  With perhaps a minute to go, as I was in rapture, a loud POP! and then the music stopped.  Apparently my turntable, a Technics direct drive, when it can’t track a divot in a groove, stops playing and the tone arm lifts up.  I grabbed a magnifying glass and there is a visible interruption of the vinyl surface.

  It was every thing that I have ever hated about vinyl crystallized in a moment.  
  This record was as presumably clean as it will ever get.  I just picked it up from the business that cleans it, and provided a new MoFi inner sleeve as part of the service .  I am not blaming the service.  I had never played the lp before getting it cleaned, but the other lps that I had cleaned the same day came back in great shape.

  I will never probably play this lp again.  It was like having great sex and then having the husband knock on the bedroom door with the stock of his shotgun.

  I am now listening to a CD of Jonathan Biss playing Op.111, but the magic of the moment is gone
  

mahler123
Post removed 
oltexan
35 posts
 

You did not say if the record was new but since you had it cleaned I presume it was used. I have  bought and listened to new LPs for 60 years. No new Lp ever had a defect like that. Maybe some ticks or warped but never something like that. f it was new the presser should be outlawed. I have never found a great used record only some less damaged than others. Caveat emptor. Digital is way better from a noise or defects perspective but get it ripped off the CD.

 

 

mptor.

dmk_hifi
61 posts
 

Sounds like Technics auto lift triggered sooner than this particular record ended. I believe Technics allows adjusting when auto lift is triggered. 
 

Personally, I like the idea of auto lift feature very much. It saves those expensive cartridges from damage and allows your to properly reflect on the last record track instead of being forced to rush from your chair to manually lift up arm.

And those add-on auto lifters require extra step of arming them. 

elliottbnewcombjr
5,091 posts
 

Yes, the auto lifter, especially Audio Technica are terrific. They have height adjustment, and you simply rotate the top barrel to position the trigger.  You keep it's amount of lift a bit lower than your cue lever lift.

In my case, because the rim of the JVC TT81 is so wide (denons are similar) there is no room to position the lift for my 9" arms, it only fits my 12.5" arm because the arm base is small and so far away.

It's a good reason to buy from someone who accepts returns.

lewm
12,433 posts
 

I have never used an auto lift nor owned a turntable with that feature built-in. I am  in no particular rush to get up and change the record when it reaches the run out grooves. So my cartridges log many seconds in the runout grooves per side, looking very happy. I have no evidence that this damages the cartridge in any way. In fact, why should it be even as damaging as playing an LP?

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