Where in the World

[rhmbus]

im in the posh part of the east end of London "ackney" but have lived and worked all over only to live half a mile from my birthplace ."brung low by a woman " you could say.
ray maxwell

[charlen mills]

I live in Pretoria, South Africa. Beautiful scenery and very pleasant climate.

I collect turntables and are also in restoring valve amplifiers. Lucally there are lots and lots of seconhand turntables available in my hometown

My favourate turntable is a Thorens 125 with SME 3009 arm.

[gleichnerr]

Greetings to all

Looks like it's been a while since new members have posted to this one.

Very interesting, quite a multi-national crowd.

I live in a Western suburb of Milwaukee Wisconsin. For those not familar with the US, Milwaukee is on the Western shore of Lake Michigan, and we're about an hour's drive from Chicago. I grew up a few miles North of here, in a city called Manitowoc (maybe some of you have seen our cranes - red ones with an orange circle emblem).

Maybe it's due to our proximity to Chicago - quite an assortment of decent used gear filters its way into the shops that sell / refurbish it around here, but new dealers tend to sell either the junk or the stuff that nearly noone can afford.

Milwaukee is sometimes called "Cream City" / "Brewtown" for those of you who like beer, although the industry here has dwindled over the years. Statewide, though, good microbrews have been popping up all over the place. Otherwise, other than T.P. and high taxes, (Oh, and Harley-Davidson - they call it "Milwaukee Iron") Wisconsin is gradually becoming the "nothing state". (Tell me again why I live here? -- oh yeah, it's "God's Country" / Beautiful Northwoods / no hurricanes, and the ground stays in one place).

I am nearly 100% of German (third generation) decent - most of my great-granparents were from the Prussian region.

ginovino, if you read this - I had a roommate in college, who was from Wading River, on "da iiland".

Sorry for the long-winded message, but hey, I've pesently got time to kill.

[Blue Angel]

Hello All

I live in Cape Town, RSA. Mountains and two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) all around. By car, 15 minutes from the Indian ocean and 30 mins from the icy Atlantic. Nice parks, mountain walks and cosmopolitan too.

There are also vinyl people here but deeply secretive and sort of ...underground.

Blue Angel

[ReelDeal]

Yes it's quite a shame that some are ashamed or down-low or secretive about thier analog passion. To me it's just retro on a grand scale. I have my high-end sound equipment directly across the room from my two monster computers with 6to 1 digital sound and an assortment of processing programs like Pro-tools and cakewalk & such. But when I fire up the Otari 10in Reels or the Empire turntable or Kyocera TT or Sony TT through 1200 REAL WATTS it's like Merrill Lynch "People Listen", with awe and respect they realize the diffrence between reality and Virtual reality. Digital is more versitile But Colder in most cases.

[Merijn]

Hello my fellow inmates

I live in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Maybe you know the town becouse of Operation Market Garden (novell "a bridge too far") in WWII.

Not to much vinyl culture over here altough a little piece of heaven is onely 60 km away (Van den Hul Cartridges). To bad the best shop to buy your stuff is like 150km away in Sneek (Northeren Frysian region), I'm pretty picky about where I buy my stuff, and this is one good shop (Audio Selectief)!

[bauzace50]

Had not seen this particular thread. My home is in Puerto Rico, surrounded by the warm Atlantic Ocean, and Caribbean Sea. It's curious how Blue Angel refers to the icy Atlantic! Same world, different perspective!
Over 30 years ago, my uncle gave me his Thorens TD-124 with the SME 3012 and Ortofon SPU's (two). I already had my AR XA, and could not truly prefer one over the other. This fueled a lifelong hobby, plus speaker building, apart from frequent singing in choruses, opera productions, and some clarinet playing.
There is a local white cheese we call "del pais" ("from the country") which goes rather well with brut champagne, crackers, and (ready?) bananas! Had some last night, with a good Spanish bubbly.

[abril]

I see I am the first one to say they live in Ontario,Canada, would you believe London! Came across the pond from Plymouth, Devon in 1965.
(allfunkedap ) honeymooned in North Torrington. ( abril ) do they still have the "Cobweb Inn" in Boscastle? probably against health dept. rules now. greetings Bob

Still there and still going strong and still with hundreds of dusty bottles on the ceiling.
Happy New Year

[Monsterle]

I'm from Stuttgart, that's in the south west of Germany. Stuttgart is an industrial region - many of you will probably know companies like DaimlerChrysler, Porsche or Bosch who have their headquarters here.
Anyways, there's a lot of forest... Black Forest is only about 35km from here, the Lake of Constance approx. 140km.

Well, my first HiFi components I bought from the money I earned when working in a factory in my school vacations... a Telefunken TR550 receiver, a Dual 728Q turntable, Dual C830 cassette deck and Telefunken RL2000 speakers. I still use them, except for the C830. Meanwhile I bought some more by auction... a TR1200 receiver, CS10 turntable with Goldring 1006 and TLX2/8 speakers form the 2nd system (all devices from AEG-Telefunken). Recently I snatched another 25 year old Telefunken system in a run-down shape, the ST1-series, which I restaurated sucessfully and added TLX1 speakers plus an S600 on which I installed an Ortofon MC1 turbo.

Regards, Monsterle

[seppstefano]

Ciao!
I'm writing from Genova (Genoa on english map - and the very name of the oldest italian soccer team - date 1893), a small town on the ligurian sea.

It's located in the nortwest of italy, around 130Km from Milan, but on the sea

I'm 38, and being a music and hi-fi passionate, I obviously started listening music on vinyl and have recently set up a analogue setup.

I heavily rebuild the plinth of my TT, build on the basis of a Cadberg plate, a scheu motor and a RB250. Then I tweaked the 250 (paint stripped, lift removed, headshell, holes drilled, foam filled, rewired, Expressimo cw). Cart is a G1042.

Sound is nowhere similar to original setup, nor absolutely to the sound out of my previous Thorens TD160, sportinf TP-16 and a DL103 (don't ask me why, I bought it 2nd hand, as a whole).

Yet, I'm experiencing boring speed stability issues. A SLA battery is just waiting for me. I have to build the 12v->9v regulator.

Besides, some motor left around for months is crying to be connected, let's see...

Stefano

[Blue Angel]

Hi Stefano

I'm from Cape Town. I read your post and about the work on the arm. That takes skill and patience! Maybe when you're finished we have another OL mod?

blue angel

[seppstefano]

Ciao Blue Angel,
thanks a lot, it's very kind of you!

Indeed I can recognize only a bit of patience. I simply followed some instructions already available on the web and took the risk to have a trashed arm... (and living w/o TT for many months) that's all.

While you are building cartridges!!!

When I read your great experiences I suddenly thought: man I have to build a cartridge for myself!!! But I don't know if I'll ever manage it (just to start: finding time is always an issue

Ciao,

Stefano

[Blue Angel]

Hello Stefano

Anything is possible. Cape Town is beautiful to live in but quite isolated from mainstream high end audio with only very few analogue addicts still using vinyl.

There are high end audio shops here and some may have heard a little bit about vinyl but most think it has no more relevance. I guess if you ask these stores to get you a good moving coil, they will either think you're nuts or otherwise rip you off moneywise.

The difficulties in having no choice of cartridges locally available, was one of the motivations to discover if I could make one. Things just kind of spiralled out of control once I started...

I have some good Italian friends I meet with and one in particular (Gino Arena) gave me very good advice long ago when I tried to recreate the sound of my Supex or Dynavector carts. The advice I got was valuable: He said 'Ignore the sound of the others - create your OWN sound'.

Ciao

Blue

[seppstefano]

Hi Blue,
this morning I've just learned that something is "moving" for vinyl.

It seems that in Milano (the italian most commercial town) a large store (FNAC) just opened a section for new vinyls

Stefano