Copper
A Turntable of my Own, Part 3
Copper#90 ; Part 2, in Copper #91---Ed.> All of the brass points/receptor cups were designed to have cored-out cups so they could be filled with a lead/elastomer matrix. Using a...
End of Summer Musings
How fast can the summer go? It seems like it lasts all of 2 weeks. So here I am, having returned to my renovated NYC apartment finally listening to my...
The California Audio Show Part 2
Part 1 of my report on the California Audio Show appeared in Copper #91. That article gave an overview of the show, and described the exhibit rooms on the first floor. This concluding piece will...
Sounds Good to Me
What attributes should an item of equipment in a sound reproduction chain possess in order to meet the objectives of high-end audio playback? One attribute we tend to think of...
Paper
It’s everywhere. We take it for granted, blow our noses on it, wipe…. and yet, paper has been a vital part of sound reproduction from the earliest days. Despite the...
So You Think You Love The White Album?
Probably not as much as Rutherford Chang. This is how I first heard about a collection of the Beatles’ White Album: “Hey Jay Jay, there is a store somewhere that sells...
The Long Goodbye
Over the last few years of writing this column, I’ve had to write “RIP” in titles several times as friends and colleagues have passed away. Being a typical male, I’ve...
The Mystery of The Making, Redux
I never think about how mysterious the process of contemporary record making is, or was, to the people who buy those records. Which, when you think about it, is really...
The Sound of Recorded Music
Different time periods in history are associated with particular architectural trends, building techniques and construction materials, different stages of technological development, as well as different styles and forms of musical...
The California Audio Show Part 1
The Ninth California Audio Show took place July 26-28 at the Hilton Oakland Airport, which has been the hosting venue for the last few years. Our reports on the 2017 CAS can...
Five New Releases, No Losers
Tom Gibbs' record reviews to Copper. Tom has reviewed records for years, but may be better known to most readers for his gear reviews. We're happy to have him stick...
Billy Taylor: Eight Great Tracks
Pianist and composer Billy Taylor (1921-2010) grew up in Washington, DC, where he took classical piano lessons with a man named Henry Grant. Grant’s other claim to fame in jazz...
A Turntable of my Own, Part 2
Copper #90---Ed.> Here we see the finished laminated fiberglass plinth sitting atop the 1 ½” thick machined aluminum sub-plate. You will notice the ¾” thick grey MDF pieces sitting between...
Django, Act 5
On January 29, 1947, Django Reinhardt landed in New York. Because of poor communications, Django was a late add to the new tour and Ellington didn’t have the arrangements for...
Hall Sounds
Late this May I fulfilled a longstanding wish—to attend Choral Evensong at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Director Stephen Cleobury retired at the end of June; this was one of the last...
Steve Winwood & the Spencer Davis Group
It was 1963 in Birmingham, UK, when guitarist/songwriter Spencer Davis convinced Muff Winwood and his little brother Steve, only 14 years old, to join him in a band. With the...
The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of the Vinyl Record
Two of the world’s leading chip manufacturers have recently announced moving on to 5 nm manufacturing. Nanotechnology and micromachining are becoming hot keywords in technical and scientific publications. Micro Electro...
Spandau Ballet
The London punk scene was wearing some musicians out. People like songwriting guitarist and keyboardist Gary Kemp, who wanted to seem like a rebellious musician, but not in the same...
We All Shine On, Redux
49 years ago, in the first international worldwide television broadcast, John Lennon sang to us, “There’s nothing you can do but you can learn how to play the game –...
30 Years
I am an ex-Pat Brit, living in Canada for the last 30+ years. During that time I have been back to the UK many times, but this year I spent...
Happy Landings!
Welcome to Copper #90! By the time you read these, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing will have come and gone, and my landing in Oakland for the California Audio Show will also...
The Dave Clark Five
When writing this column, I frequently close my eyes and go back to certain times in my life – in this case 1964 post Beatles arrival – and try to...
A Turntable of my Own, Part 1
Copper #72, #73, and #74. In that series of articles, Ken described how he cut down trees on his property, milled, planed, and cured the lumber, then built his listening...
Django, Act 4
In 1940 the Nazi war machine engulfed France and Paris in a cloud of black smoke. Misery came to freedom lovers everywhere, not just the continent. The silver lining was...
Guillaume de Machaut
His poetry was admired by Geoffrey Chaucer, he survived the Black Death, and he wrote the most-recorded Mass of the 14th century. That’s a decent thumbnail bio of the multi-talented Guillaume...
Quintessence
Sometimes you encounter stories where it turns out that the story you think you want to tell, is just a very small part of a much bigger story. This is one of those stories-within-stories....
All Fingers on Deck
Welcome to Copper #89! I hope you emerged from the 4th (Independence Day, for our friends around the world) with all digits intact. By now, you've undoubtedly noticed some changes in the...
The Sound Of Music, Redux
There’s something I’ve been thinking about for around 25 years; ever since I started working with Bill Bottrell, and he made me aware of how different my sound was. What that...
Fairchild, Part 5
We’ve spent a fair amount of time and pixels on the brand Fairchild (part 1 in issue #75, part 2 in issue #76, part 3 in issue #77, and a sidebar/part 4 in issue #82), but there...
My First Visit to China
[This article was first edited by Art Dudley and published by him in the May/June 2002 issue of Listener magazine; I thank Art for his help. Originally titled, “In a Shanghai Speaker...
What Is It To You?
Rock and roll music – the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms. – Salman Rushdie I’d rather play jazz, I hate rock and...
Django, Act 3
The Hot Club On a night in 1934 Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli found themselves playing for Louis Vola in a pedestrian dance band at the Hotel Claridge. During a...
Can An Atheist Love Gospel Music ?
Hmmmm…… If I weren’t a writer, always looking for interesting stories, this article would not have been written. Why? Because I wouldn’t have ruminated over the fact that, as an...
To Sleep. Perchance to Dream.
What do we do, as a society, when we are obliged to face uncomfortable realities that require us to make major changes to things we have grown to think of...
Stéphane Grappelli: Eight Great Tracks
Nobody would dispute that Stéphane Grappelli is one of the top jazz violinists in history. So it says a lot about jazz history that, during much of the 1940s and...
Been Down So Long, It Seems Like Up To Me
As a parent, I’m used to my references being met with blank stares or an overt “Huh??” from my children. But I know I’m getting old when more and more, I encounter...
Budapest
I was sitting on a bidet in Budapest, thinking of Sam Tellig. Sam had told me about the Gellert baths many years ago. It’s a massive building decorated in Art...
Etta James
Born to a single teen mom and passed around foster care, Etta James did not come into this world with many advantages. Even the choir director at her church in...
20th Century Classical Music – the “Navel Gazin...
In the world of Classical Music, the end of the 19th Century brought with it the end of the “Romantic Era”, which had followed on from the “Classical Period” after the...
Is Audio Seasonal?
I’ve been a salesman or worked with salespeople most of my working life, and one thing I know is that as a group, they work hard. They have to. It’s...
TONE!
A recent conversation ‘twixt Uncle Bill and me: Me: This is great bass playing to me: TONE! Bill: Yup. Me: I hear many bass players who have shitty tone, and if you...
