Copper

Analog Aliens

The Lathe of Heaven

Now that's how to cut a record! Audio Engineering, February 1950. It wasn't a monster hit back in 1964, though Glen Campbell and Leon Russell played on it! Courtesy of...

Elvis Is Back in the Building

New records from deceased music icons are often filled with mixed emotions from fans: some will welcome any releases of previously buried or newly-discovered gems that captured the magic of...

Hard Times, Thrilling New Music

Hard times often produce spectacular music, and 2020 was a year in which artists responded to this disorienting year with songs of joy, insight and poignancy. This is a thrilling...

Caring for Records: Mark Mawhinney of Spin-Clean

Spin-Clean offers its Spin-Clean Record Washer MkII vinyl record cleaning systems, which have their origin in the first Spin n’ Clean record cleaning device in the 1970s. Mark Mawhinney currently...

To Test or Not to Test, That is the Question, P...

In a previous installment of this series in Issue 126, I discussed measuring the most important component of an audio system, which is the ear. It is most important because no...

Vintage Tube Amplification During a Lockdown, P...

There are some things that you just have to do at some point in your life. After reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig and Jack Kerouac’s On...

Hoping All the Verses Rhyme

Goodbye 2020 and here’s to a better 2021. Anything else I could say would pale in relation to what Ray Davies of the Kinks sings in “Better Things.” httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs6G9tisVdU Copper...

Confessions of a Setup Man 11: Can A System Be ...

As audiophiles, we are on what can sometimes seem a never-ending quest for better sound from our systems. After all, the better the sound, the closer we are to the...

Interviewing Genesis in the 1970s, Part Two

Or, How I Got to Meet My Idols My first two interviews with members of Genesis, in 1974 and 1975, were initially made possible by the fact that I was the...

The Pink Robot Welcomes You

Photo by Michael Walker, taken in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the entrance to the Meow Wolf immersive art museum.

On the Baron: Tim de Paravicini, in Memoriam

There was a message for me to call Dan Meinwald early this afternoon, December 17th. I didn’t think for a second the news would be what it was. Tim de...

Toshinori Kondo: Playing in Uncharted Territory

There’s a lot more to jazz than late nights on a club stage reading standards charts. Experimental trumpeter Toshinori Kondo sought to expand the definition of jazz to include the...

Shakin' It: Ray's Top 20 of 2020

2020 was a year that presented all of us with a number of challenges and curve balls, to say the least. One industry that ground to a complete halt was...

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: The Unbroken Circle

If you know anything about the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, you know to take jug bands seriously. Although this CMA and Grammy Award-winning country rock group has come a long...

Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

In Issue 125, I told you about my war on LPs and my search for an alternative. After a lengthy affair with cassettes, I switched to CDs. The CD gave me everything...

Award Season

Christmas came early last month! In the space of ten days, I got four back issues of Gramophone: August, October, November, Awards! (Somehow the September issue managed to arrive in mid-October.) Pandemic postal priorities,...

A Classic Reissue and Three Great New EPs

Booker T. & the M.G.’s – McLemore Avenue (50th Anniversary Edition) Booker T. & the M.G.’s were basically the house band at rhythm and blues label Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee,...

Oasis’ Remastered Masterpiece: What’s the Story?

There is a Saturday Night Live sketch from 1996 in which then Prime Minister John Major (Mike Myers) partakes in the traditional 15 minutes of questions in the House of Commons. He...

Steve Guttenberg: the Audiophiliac, Part One

Steve Guttenberg is the host of The Audiophiliac Daily Show, a popular YouTube channel with more than 157,000 subscribers. Steve has written for numerous audio and mainstream publications and websites including CNET, The...

Changers in the Night

Now that’s what we call holiday gift-giving! Circa 1960s.   Does it come with snake oil spindle lubricant? Circa 1950s.   We’ll take this over the The Yule Log. And in vintage 1959...

Zen and the Art of Criticism

Who hasn’t walked out of a show, turned to a friend and said, “that really sucked,” or, “that was amazing!” Everyone has the capacity to be a critic. My recent...

A World Without Keith Jarrett

“I even have dreams where I am as messed up as I really am – I’ve found myself trying to play in my dreams, but it’s just like real life.”...

Dave Alvin – From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unrel...

You’re driving through the New Mexico desert in the dark. Your teeth are grinding, though the buzz of the blue meth or whatever you were on has long worn off...

Hey Joe Covers: Crime or Sublime?

The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix’s recording of “Hey Joe” was in English class at Shelter Rock Junior High School, an institute of higher learning where students dissected both...

To Test or Not to Test, That is the Question? P...

In the last installment, I discussed the most quoted test measurement in audio, total harmonic distortion ((THD), and its correlation with sound quality. Once upon a time, audio magazines mostly...

Beck: Where He's At

Let’s talk lo-fi. Not on the listening end, of course, but as an approach in the recording studio. Singer-songwriter Beck is a pioneer of this strategy that lets the listener...

Whatever Happened to Honk, Bonk, Boing and Blomp?

While doing her Stripsody, performer Cathy Berberian expressed herself by making vocal sounds like woo woo, stomp, boing. blomp, honk, bonk, thud, ouch, ugh, brrrrr, pant and achoo. She wasn't...

Audio Research: Making the Music Glow

If I had to bet on it, I’d say 99 percent of Copper readers are familiar with Audio Research Corporation (ARC) and its creator, William Z. Johnson, as Audio Research is one...

Hope for the Holidays

The term “Happy Holidaze” has become a cliché, the progenitor of silly memes and cards – and has also taken on a new meaning in 2020. What a year it’s...

When Jerry and The Big Man Almost Busted This C...

This past March Round Records released GarciaLive Volume 13. The Grateful Dead’s output over the prior twelve months had already been prolific so it was surprising to see another Jerry Garcia-related...

Hit the Board, Jack

When I was a teenager, no one understood how I suffered. No one detected my secret genius. When I saw kids my age on TV or in the movies, they...

Those Christmas Movies

I don’t live my life by many rules. Basically, I have two. First, treat others as you would like to be treated. Second, don’t store super glue next to the...

Vertical Tracking Angle Meets Stylus Rake Angle...

In Issue 125, J.I. covered the mechanical aspects of record cutting with respect to stylus rake angle (SRA) and vertical tracking angle (VTA). The series concludes with a further examination...

Bach’s Goldberg Variations

According to an anecdote in an 1802 biography of J.S. Bach, the maestro had a harpsichord student named Johann Gottfried Goldberg who worked for a certain Count Kaiserling, an insomniac....

Wedding Belle Blues

Christmas Songs Worth Listening To

As the calendar days inexorably approach Christmas, the usual playlist combination of the same 20 or so songs, such as Mariah Carey’s, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Wham!’s...

Steve Guttenberg: the Audiophiliac, Part Two

In Part One of this interview (Issue 125) we talked about Steve’s first memory of listening to music, his careers as a projectionist and an audio salesperson, and how he...

A Holiday Gala

The 2018 Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society annual gala. A reminder of times past, and times to come. Bob Levi (in the black coat, standing, on the left)...

Rossini (Bel Canto Part 2)

Here’s a question that should be a softball: who was Europe’s single most influential musician in the early 19th century? Was it Beethoven? After all, we had hoped to celebrate...

Two Big Hits...and a Definite Strikeout!

Smashing Pumpkins – Cyr Smashing Pumpkins was one of my favorite bands of the nineties; Gish and Siamese Dream are still in regular rotation in my listening room and in my car, and are among...

Timing Is Everything

Johnny "Guitar" Watson: A Real Mother for Ya

In 1980 I find myself working on another bus tour in Europe. Jim Kellem of CMA (Creative Management Associates, later ICM Partners) calls and says that an acquaintance of his...

The Good Old Days

“You’re not likely to believe this son, but when I was your age, you could walk into Disney Hall almost any weekend evening and enjoy a fantastic concert without being...

SOS

All Kitted Out

Something for everyone for the holidays from Audio Fidelity. From Audio, December 1958.   A circa 1964 Harman Kardon FA30XK receiver kit in astounding condition. Courtesy of the Audio Classics collection....

AES’ Audio Wonders of the World: Blackbird Studio

The AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show Fall 2020 was of necessity an all-virtual affair. This season’s marquee event was “7 Audio Wonders of the World,” which featured in-depth video tours...

AES Fall Show 2020, Part Three

This fall, the Audio Engineering Society (AES) held its annual convention online because of  COVID-19 restrictions. Ordinarily hosted at the gargantuan Javits Center in New York, this had the unforeseen...