With all the horror surrounding last months article in The Wall Street Journal, on “the vinyl boom being over,” it appears that records are still being made and records are still being sold.

Certainly, tons of turntables, cartridges and phono preamplifiers are being produced as well. So is the sky falling or is it not?

But what a lot of enthusiasts, hipsters, and industry pundits (especially the ones that are old enough to have been around for the first go of the vinyl trip) seem to always forget is that just because something is imprinted on a slab of vinyl doesn’t mean it’s automatically awesome, it’s automatically better than a digital recording and that “digital sucks,” because it doesn’t.

This isn’t the start of a digital vs. analog debate. That’s a tired conversation as far as I’m concerned. VERY tired. But back in the 60s and 70s, until vinyl’s near demise in the mid 80s, a lot of what gets pressed sucks, sonically. As inconvenient as records and tapes were, the CD was really produced as a stopgap to all the piracy that was going on.  With digital recording and data storage such new mediums, I’m going to guess that the suits in charge probably never foresaw the 52x CD writers and 100 pc cake pans of blank CDs at Costco in the mid 90s. Oops.

After a major resurgence, vinyl is probably going to wind down a bit. It’s a matter of logistics, spare parts, and availability of raw materials. Most of all, it’s got a lot to do with what’s being pressed. While most of the audiophile remasters are still being done with great care, a lot of what the remaining major labels are kicking out is definitely sub par. And even the reissues are less than adventuresome in the choices being made. If not for Mobile Fidelity going off the beaten path now and then with a little Judas Priest here and a little KC & The Sunshine Band there, the reissue market would be incredibly boring.

It doesn’t help that used prices keep going up, up, up, either. The good news is now you can find whatever obscure record you couldn’t find in your local used vinyl shop. The bad news is that you are going to pay dearly for it. All of this supply and demand stuff is what it is. I love music and will always listen to it, no matter what the medium and I’ll probably always have at least a few turntables and some records. Will vinyl keep rolling merrily along? I hope so, but I hope that we can see a little bit more attention paid to quality, instead of just banging it out. This isn’t what killed vinyl the first time, it’s what killed the music industry.

Here’s to hoping for the future…

The only thing I love more than cassettes is schmaltzy sci-fi movies, and I think most of you would admit that Guardians of the Galaxy, parts one and two are pretty silly. They had me with the Carfox as badass thing. But this is not a movie review.

TONE contributor Paul DeMara (also a mega cassette enthusiast) and I seemed to have the same epiphany to get our hands on the movie soundtracks practically the same day. When I saw that an actual cassette of the “Awesome Mix vol.1” and “Awesome Mix vol.2” along with a special “Cosmix Mix” was available at Amazon and I could have all three the next day for $5 (thank you Amazon Prime!!!) there was no stopping me. My better half just rolled her eyes, but hey, it’s not like I spend money on golf.

Packaged to look like a mega mix tape you might have made for a friend in the late 70s, albeit with handwriting that’s a little too neat, (though they do give the label a mock soiled appearance, insinuating that it’s been in the main character’s pocket for years) the music contained is pretty darn good. Certainly reflective of what might have been on one of my mix tapes back in the day.

But that’s where the fun ends. The sound quality sucks on the cassette version. Considering how much trouble it was to get rights released on something like this, why not go the extra mile and make it sound good? Bernie Grundman is credited with the mastering job, so maybe the LP version sounds good. Hmmm.

Well, I’ll fix them. Breaking out the Nakamichi 600II right now and a pile of vinyl. I’ll just substitute my own.

Yes, I know I’m a hifi reviewer and I’m supposed to have expensive and mighty turntables or I’m not an audiophile…

Ok, I may not have any six-figure turntables like some of the grand pubahs, but nonetheless, I think I’ve put together a nice set of disc spinners from AVID, Brinkmann, Soulines, VPI and now Grand Prix Audio, with a stable of cartridges and phono stages to match. They sound great and help me do my job at TONEAudio, evaluating pressings and components.

Much as I love these turntables, I started my analog journey with the Technics SL-1200. Bought a new one from Pacific Stereo on 27th street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a Stanton 681EEE cartridge. Worked all summer for that puppy. The first record I bought was Edgar Winter’s They Only Come Out at Night – and I still have it!

But then I became an audiophile and the 1200 wasn’t good enough to pass muster with my like minded buddies, and it was kind of unthinkable then to have more than one turntable. I’m not sure why, but the 1200 moved on to a good friend and a Rega Planar 3 took it’s place, soon to be replaced by an Oracle Delphi mk. II.

Though the 1200 has tremendous respect in the DJ community for its rock solid speed accuracy and ease by which you can vary the speed and scratch to your hearts content, it’s been heavily dissed by the audiophile community until recently, where a number of enthusiasts have upgraded every aspect of the table. Tonearms, external power supplies, you name it.

Having revisited the 1200 myself about five years ago, I did find it a little dark, but there were still things I loved, like the speed accuracy and the solid bass foundation it lays down. A quick swap for an SME 309 tonearm and a TimeStep power supply proves that this is a worth audiophile table indeed.

Needless to say I was more than a little bit excited when the new SL-1200G hit the market last year. And because Technics was so reluctant to hand review samples out, I jumped off the cliff and just bought one from my good friend Antonio Long at AVSF. I have not been disappointed in the least.

Combining this with my modded 1200 mk.2 and a much older SL-1100 (thanks to Erik at Gig Harbor Audio) and the new McIntosh MP-1100 phono stage, I can mix and match cables, cartridges and tonearms to my heart’s content. And I plan to do so as time goes on. But more importantly, I will be playing a lot of records in room two at TONEAudio, because the SL-1200 is so much fun.

I guess I’m not an audiophile anymore. I don’t think I ever was.

Stay tuned, and show us your 1200s (and your story) out on the Analogaholic section of our Facebook page. I look forward to talking to you! – Jeff Dorgay