All That is Good: Part I

For my first post of this series, consider the turntable. I had a couple of weeks off, and I wanted a project. My previous turntable was destroyed in the move, and I had a heap of luscious vinyl just begging to be heard, so I bought an under-appreciated Marantz 6100 (circa 1976) on Ebay for $100. It was a pretty machine with the silvery aluminum accoutrements, but the plinth was covered in an ugly wood-grain veneer. My project: strip off the plastic veneer and stain the underneath wood blue. This involved taking it apart, and I've never tinkered with a turntable before, so I was risking taking a working turntable and, well, destroying it.

Before

Stripped

Stained

Finished

Looks good doesn't it? Or, at least it looks better, I think. But, there was a problem. I put on a record and I only had audio from the right channel. Not a sound came out of the left. I was disappointed to say the least. I took it apart again, resoldered some wires, and tried it again. Still no left channel. At my wits end, I took it to a repair shop that had a guy who knew a thing or two about turntables. Funny thing is, the problem was the output cord, the one that connects to the receiver. In other words, I didn't screw it up. I bought it screwed up, even though the guy I bought if from assured me it was a working table. Let that be a lesson to you when you buy something from a stranger on Ebay. Anyway, the guy installed a new cord, and today I picked the baby up and spun a couple of records.

How does it sound? First record I put on was Beck's Guero. Wow! Was a sumptuous slab of vinyl. The detail is just amazing. Compared to the CD of the same album, vinyl wins, hands down. In fact, it is a rout. The CD just can't compete with the vinyl when it comes to musical detail. The vinyl is warm, detailed, full of little surprises that are inaudible on the CD. If you have a turntable and a decent receiver to connect it to, and if you want to lay back and float away with your music, vinyl is the only way to fly. It is one of the good things.