[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 11:38:30 -0800, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ):

In article ,
Audio Empire wrote:
I think your experience is pretty common to a lot of audio enthusiasts.
Now,
in my case, on the other hand, I was nuts about electronics when I was a
kid.
This led me in two directions at once HAM radio and Hi-Fi. I am still, all
these years later, extremely interested in audio, but somewhere along the
way, amateur radio lost it's grip on me. The difference, I think, is the
music. Music held my interest in a way that communication over long
distances, via radio, never could.

Well, now we're talking about something else. I friend of mine and I
put together a pre-amp kit for a high school project. I majored in EE
at college, built a number of kits thereafter and have always been into
electronics. OTOH, I am a bit lazy and that's why fiddling with tubes
never appealed to me as much as solid state, where if it didn't die in
the first 90 days, it probably never would.

I had a Mapleknoll Ariadne TT for a long time, but it just got too
tweaky to stand so I got a VPI which I could pretty much set and forget.
Ditto with tape of all sorts. I think that's why I like iTunes. It
sounds good and I don't have to tweak it.

I had one of those once. I used to know the (then) old guy who ran the
company - can't pull-up his name off the top of my head. I still have the
prototype of the floor-mounted turntable stand that he was going to market .
It has a sheet-lead top on it and I still use it to hold my Gyro SE.

You're right, they were tweaky. The only way I could get mine to work
properly was, ultimately, to use two pumps. One for the air-bearing platter
and one dedicated to the air-bearing arm. Trying to proportion the air from a
single pump to both hold the 'table platter up and make the arm
"frictionless" was futile. And the noise of those aquarium pumps! Had to put
them in another room and run plastic hose to the turntable!