A thought on Aspirations ...

[dee]

I have negelected my audio system , which was reasonable back in the 80s , went crazy on cameras post ' dee day ' when the Autism / Miss Alignment hit the fan .

Now the 1979 Rega arm has gone skating on my record deck [ don't ask ]

To my amazement , the guru who sold me my long deefunct Pink Triangle [ I kid you not ] turntable has agreed , for old time's sake , to rebuild it for me with one of his £1200 arms ... in exchange for a suspect Gyrodec turntable and valve amplifiers .

AND another guru has offered me his £750 MusicMaker cartridge for £150 .

This led to me scrabbling around amongst all the deecaying Hi Fi to sell in order to do ' justice ' to the new turntable ... Phono stage , £250 , new speakers £400 because my Linn one box thingy is not powerful enough for my existing ones .... etc etc .

Then , a moment of sanity - e-bay sales have netted me £350 , peanuts in Hi Fi terms but it will pay for the cartridge and a service / restoration of my 1982 , good quality amplifier which thrashes my tiny , battered , repainted RCL 1982 speakers quite contentedly .

If it was fine in 1982 , than it will be fine now . I don't need the most modern which I can't afford - just a return of the music .

Hopefully , I can apply this philosophy to my cameras as I ' instinctually ' grab my outdated ,squinty ,4/3rds Leica Digilux 3 when I need to be certain of a shot and when the ceiling bounce built in flash is invaluable .In keeping with this policy , I also bought some headphones used but unused for half the cost of new ones .

The total cost will be £400 plus £1000 ? worth of swaps of stuff from the garage - that's a sound deecision !

I just had to adjust my aspirations .

dee

 

[FrankS]

Just last week I bought a new cartridge for my modest Dual turntable. The sales guy at the DJ oriented music shop asked if I was planning to "scratch" with it. <gasp!>

 

[Roger Hicks]

Aspirations are sometimes akin to 'hardening of the categories', or 'if I can't do [or have] this, I won't do [or have] anything'. I sometimes think of how I used to spend a lot more on some things, and of how, in a sense, I don't live 'as well' as I used to. But in other ways I live much better, and closer to the way I want to, simply by cutting my coat according to my cloth. For example, a lot of our meals are based around seasonal food or special offers, but yesterday was home made confit de canard with roast potatoes, courgettes and garlic, and steamed cabbage, so we weren't exactly suffering. The price of duck legs varies widely, but a confit lasts for months and we make 'em when duck legs are cheap. Tonight is a Greek dish of pepper (currently in season) and sausage (never expensive, even for the good stuff) -- but there's no frozen New Zealand lamb available at the moment (13-14 euros a leg: I normally barbecue it on a sword) and I'm not paying 35 euros for fresh, so no leg of lamb for a while. But then there's an offer on rabbits, so it's fenech stufat, Maltese rabbit casserole...

Cheers,

R.

 

[mahleu]

Funny to read this as i've just started to get into vinyl. I'm slowly building up a system and the only way I can do this economically is to use old but good components.

I guess with most things, what you have works. It's the clever marketing people that make us 'need' the latest and greatest...

 

[oftheherd]

Dee, good to see you posting again. If you had been, I missed it. I always enjoy your perspective as well as you knowledge.

Life can be fulfilled more easily than we think sometimes. We just need to get our priorities properly aligned. Mr. Hicks example is good.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Thrust and Parry (well known Kiwi Providores)

Thrust and Parry (well known Kiwi Providores)

.....there's no frozen New Zealand lamb available at the moment (13-14 euros a leg: I normally barbecue it on a sword)
R.

That's got to be worth a photo! Frances?

 

[JoeV]

I rebuilt my neighbor's Rega Planar 3 with parts from another identical unit, giving him the cosmetically better of the two but also ending up with my own turntable in exchange for the labor.

Collecting vinyl is addictive, and also very fun.

~Joe