Whats on your turntable tonight?

Rushton and Slipknot1, Yesterday I received both my 6SN7GTB's from andy at Vintage, my copy of "Il Cornetto" and "Stationen deutscher Cembalomisik" from Elusive Disc. Need I suggest it was quite the evening.

First off, the replacement of the Chinese Electron tubes was nothing less than stunning in every way. The smoothness and control of those old Sylvania valves from top to bottom was a huge step forward. They show consistent attention to detail throughout the presentation with a much nicer resolve of the tonality. I should have done this a long time ago! My Atma's sound gorgeous.

On to "Il Cornetto", Thank you gentlemen. The Klimo records are truly of excellent pressing quality and were nicely mastered. The performance was an unusual mix of instruments in tonality and texture (new to my ears) very pleasing and gently engaging. The acoustics were very nice, intimate but of a large enough scale to let all the instruments breath adequately. On both the third and seventh track on the first side I was struck by the clean, clear brassiness and scale (like that of a flugelhorn possibly?) of the lute. The contrast of the harpsichord and chamber organ played together is something I have not heard before and liked very much. Overall for me the experience was one of pleasure in the juxtaposition of musical caricatures and the interplay. Wow! Do I wish I had been there for the live performance. So often large scale symphonic works are lost on these ears. I don’t get it and they don’t move me, conversely these little gems are a joyful treasure IMHO. Cheers!

Foster, great report on both the Sylvania tubes and the Klimo LP!! Glad to hear both have worked well for you. Regarding the Klimo LP, you've nicely described what I find so attractive about this record. There are so many gems like this, but sorting them out is the challenge - one reason I've enjoyed this thread so much!
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Foster,
Thanks for letting us know your impressions of "Il Cornetto". It struck me very much the same on the first listen.

It will be a few days to a couple of weeks before I post any more listening notes. You see, I am taking my Scoutmaster apart this evening in order to deliver it to it's new owner this weekend. My new turntable should be ready shortly, so hopefully I won't be without music for too long.

I've been A/B auditioning some interconnects and power cords over the last few days, so I'm primarily listening to a few familiar disks I find useful for sonic evaluations, including stuff like Bill Evans' "Waltz For Debby" and The Buena Vista Social Club. (In addition to tweaks which involve the digital front-end, with those that affect the whole system or its back-end half I tend to do most of my preliminary auditioning with CD's instead of LP's, due mostly to the convenience factor of being able to repeat sections and tracks by remote control from the listening chair.)

One of these recordings may be worth mentioning in particular, both because I consistently find it to illuminate subtle but musically meaningful sonic differences, and because most folks won't have heard it: Reknowned songwriter Jimmy Webb's 1996 CD on the Guardian label entitled "Ten Easy Pieces". Everybody recognizes Webb's famous 60's 'easy listening' pop hits as performed by others ("Galveston", "Wichita Lineman", "By The Time I Get To Phoenix", "Didn't We", the hideous "Worst That Could Happen", and the admirably infamous "MacArthur Park" are all included here), but this set features the man himself with just his piano and occasional light accompaniment (guests of note include Michael McDonald, Dean Parks, Marc Cohn and Shawn Colvin; there is no drum/bass rhythm section.)

This material may not be everybody's cup of tea -- in many ways it generally isn't mine, in fact -- while the handful of 70's and 80's selections here are not nearly as strong or idiosyncratic as the older material IMO. And the recording itself is probably of debatable 'accuracy' or honesty from an audiophile viewpoint -- although relatively simple and unembellished, it's a studio product that doesn't make a pretense of adhering to a strict standard of 'naturalness' -- and anyway will not test a system's highest highs, lowest lows, or stretch its dynamic envelope to the bombastic limit. Not necessarily the most 'believable' or 'present' of recordings (it's close-mic'ed, so larger-than-life images and proximity-effect chestiness can threaten, though it never sounds bright or over-processed unlike most pop recordings), I've heard many that will make a system sound 'better' in terms of crystal clarity and spatiality, yet few that will so easily and reliably reveal system tweaks or changes.

There's something about Webb's throaty, sinusy, rather rough (in the sense of seeming 'unschooled') vocals -- his baritone voice is equal parts smoke, honey, and not-quite-gravel ("mulch"?) around the edges -- together with the darkly rolling chords and bell-like arpeggiated figures emmanating from his piano (which, oddly enough, can slip at times into sounding, depending on the playback, as if it might in fact be not an acoustic piano but a digitally sampled one -- a point the instrument credit to "Young Chang - Kurzweil" leaves curiously open-ended, though I assume it's really acoustic), which along with the way the disk was recorded and for whatever combination of reasons, proves to be exceptionally sensitive to changes in the playback chain, especially within the all-important broad midrange.

Whenever something (like a power cord swap) I'm trying to compare the effect of seems maddeningly elusive with other, potentially more confusing or obscuring disks, this is one I know I can pull out and feel confident of hearing whether and how the alteration in question impacts fundamental musical expressiveness and communication. I'm sure I wouldn't own this title if I hadn't stumbled onto it in a thrift store for $3 and decided what the hell, but I've grown to value it as an auditioning tool (and since I don't really listen to it for enjoyment -- not that I don't enjoy it in its way when I do -- I don't risk spoiling something I love by subjecting it to repetitive A/B's focusing on the sound, which can be a bummer when that starts to happen with stuff I actually care a lot about).

Here's the Tower Records webpage with sound samples for anyone interested. At any rate, if you're a fan of these songs there's no arguing the authoritativeness of Webb's own interpretations of his compositions.

Hi Zaikesman, thanks for that great discussion of Jimmy Webb. I'm one of those who know his songs as presented by others, but don't know anything about him. I'll have to explore this more!
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