[Vintage-Audio] Vinyl making a comeback?

Mon Jul 7 22:49:24 EDT 2008

Hi Bob,

I was both surprised yesterday and delighted to talk with you in the mobile 
on the way through Iowa. Always enjoy our QSO's, they just never seem long 
enough, either on the air or by landline. I wonder how long you and I could 
chatter away before one of us ran out of something to say?

I met a Ham in Belgium on 20M Saturday who had an almost identical 
introduction to short-wave radio and audio as I did. He is a great fan of, 
and collector of, vinyl singles and albums. His favorite? The RCA Nashville 
Studio B sound!

Before the local vender of vinyl went into retirement, the place known as 
"Rarebird Records", I remember the owner, Bill, telling me that the Japanese 
would come into his store and purchase the entire Country Music section! He 
even got e-mails from Japan asking if he had several hundred albums he 
wanted to sell, as if he did, the businessman who would be in the state of 
MI would stop at Bill's store and buy them.

There seems to be a tremendous worldwide interest in America's Country 
Music. The Ham in Germany, Dit, pronounced as Deet, named off dozens of 
Nashville instrumental and vocal Artists. So you know that he and I are just 
going to have to exchange a little RCA Nashville vinyl remastered to CD!

Considering my health issues Bob, I keep wondering what to do with my fairly 
extensive collection of 45 rpm singles, 33 1/3 rpm albums, commercial 
cassette tapes, DBF recorded cassette tapes, (mostly a wide variety of songs 
and Artists), Master DAT tapes, 7 inch reel to reel tapes, commercial CDS 
and DBF remastered CDS? Besides my three stereo systems! The main system, 
the custom by DBF surround sound system for the 50 inch Pioneer TV - not HD, 
and the vintage totally rebuilt to perfection H.H. Scott system.

Remember that collection I made from the new reissued 45 rpm singles? All 
the original songs, no rerecorded songs or electronically enhanced songs 
etc., a total of 890 songs by 356 Artists? I still can not find anyone who 
wants the forty audio cassettes I made as emergency backups using the best 
metal tape I could buy.

Because I had recorded all the new 45 rpm singles by using my professional 
direct drive DJ turntable to the Sony DAT deck, then 'stupidly' sold all of 
those 800+ singles back to the Dealer I bought them from for a fourth of 
what I paid, I decided I better back the DAT Master tapes up. I did find one 
studio within fifty miles in any direction that would copy DAT to DAT for 
me. However, he wanted $40 per DAT and that did 'NOT' include the price of 
the DAT tape! Depending where one bought them, from $10 - $15 each. So I 
copied each DAT to C-60 low noise metal tapes. All forty still reside in the 
special padded protective holder that I bought to store them in.

Then in July of 2003, when I learned that I had advanced colon cancer, I 
decided that I better remaster those DAT Master tapes to CDS! That took me 
almost a month, working ten hours every day.

When I was finished, I had forty CDS with an average of 22 songs on each.

I later went back and put all of the 61 instrumental hits on their own three 
CD set. They are all on the forty CD collection, but sometimes I just want 
to listen to instrumentals and having them all on three CDS makes it easy to 
listen to just instrumentals!

I think you, and others on this list, are fans of the Southern Gospel 
Quartet sound. I just finished remastering five vinyl albums by "The 
Imperials" to CD. The original vinyl albums do not have any release or 
recording dates on them. They were all recorded in the RCA Nashville Studio 
A, not "B"! I could even pick out Chet Atkins on guitar and Floyd Cramer on 
piano. A total of 58 songs. However, some were repeates, so I did not record 
them to my Master DAT tapes.

Then I found a commercial CD of their fifteen "Best Gospel Songs". The first 
five were repeats, but songs six through fifteen were not! I ended up with a 
total of 62 individual songs and eleven repeats. A very nice three CD 
collection of "The Imperials" from about 1965 - 1970. Now Robert, that 
project was one heck of a lot of work! Whew!

Only one song was damaged and not useable, "Swing Low Sweet Chariot". I got 
lucky this time! A different album also had the song on it and it was in 
perfect condition! So I got every song without having to skip any due to 
damage. Since I was working with albums from 38+ years ago, that does not 
happen too often!

If anyone on this list has any suggestions as to how I might dispose of my 
music collection, other then any electronic auction, please let me know.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Nickels" <w9ran at oneradio.net>
To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 back" 
<vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 7:05 PM
Subject: [Vintage-Audio] Vinyl making a comeback?

> Probably not a surprise to anyone here, but maybe others saw the recent 
> Associated Press story about vinyl records.  According the article some 
> store in Portland inadvertently specified LP instead of CD on some new REM 
> release, and was amazed to find that 20 copies sold the first day.  So now 
> they're test-marketing more vinyl at more stores.   The article also 
> mentioned Amazon having an LP section.   They quote RIAA as saying that 
> shipments of LPs jumped more than 36% from 2006 to 2007, with more than 
> 1.3 million copies sold.  In that same time period, overall CD sales 
> declined by 17% to 511 million copies.  Audio quality, liner notes, and 
> "the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record" are cited as 
> reasons for vinyl's new popularity.
>
> Maybe you can't phoole all the people?
>
> 73, Bob W9RAN
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