felixscerri's blog

As I've mentioned on the forums of late, I had a bit of a 'score', as they say in the classics, during the week. Visiting my favourite charity/ second hand shop in my nearest city where I frequently buy records and wandering through the second hand section, I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I spied a complete 1980's Kenwood audio system consisting of a turntable, AM/ FM tuner, stereo amplifier and two 'Sonab' (made in Sweden) loudspeakers up for sale. I bought the whole lot for a ridiculously low price and took it home.

An interesting few weeks!

For this blog entry, more slightly philosophical ramblings! I guess for me apart from the wonderful qualities of the musical sounds made by instruments expertly played by people, 'words' have always been a big thing for me with music over the years. I guess I'm referring to mainly Pop/ Rock/ Jazz/ Blues/ Country stuff, however in more recent years I've been exploring the words/ lyrics from within the world of Classical music....and there is some pretty impressive stuff in there too!

A New Year With New Possibilities.

Well the New year of 2010 is here, and I hope it will be a good year for all. The year has got off for me to a slightly mixed start, but with many good possibilities in the offing! Recently in the forums, I detailed an unfortunate incident where a lack of considered thinking on my part resulted in the destructive warping of a newly acquired and washed record. It was sadly thrown away as a result. That's the first time that has happened whilst washing records and hopefully it won't happen again (if I can possibly help it).

As the Andy Williams- 'Merry Christmas' album is playing on the Dual, I automatically start to think about and reflect on the past twelve months, and I guess overall it's been a pretty good year.. in fact one of my better years in recent memory. I admit that right now I feel a general sense of optimism that has been quite rare with me before! Music and particularly vinyl has been a big part of things this year. I think I've almost kept one of our local charity shops in business with all the records I've purchased this year! Well maybe not quite, but nearly!

Pop Goes Australia!

Rainy Days and Vinyl.

Storing records in some kind of organised way!

My favourite phono cartridges.

I've been doing a fair bit of 'cartridge stuff' of late, and whilst I haven't sampled a huge range over the years I have listened to a few of the popular moving magnet types and it is interesting to reflect on their 'sound' and other sonic and related characteristics. The list: well in recent times anyway there has been the Shure M97xE, various versions of the Ortofon Super OM series, the Ortofon 2M Red and quite recently a cartridge I've 'rediscovered' in a sense the 'budget?' Audio Technica AT95E.

Kit building and my workbench.