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I didn't technically spin this; it came on the radio:

Sollscher-T01%5BDGG%5D.jpg

I have some CDs and LPs by Narciso Yepes and Goran Sollscher. The Yepes recordings blew me away; the Sollschers from 30 years ago, not so much, but that could have been the recording quality and/or before he mastered the extended range classical guitar, invented by Yepes.

Today I heard a movement from a Bach cello suite, transcribed and played by Sollscher. It was obviously an extended range guitar; the bass lines were rich, full, and deep. So was everything else about this recording and performance. Sollscher has followed in Yepes' footsteps and then some. I recommend you chasing down some of his extended range guitar recordings. They are significant in musical performance, development of a genre, and have drop-dead gorgeous sonics. I may have to get off my high horse and buy some of these CDs.

I believe Sollscher's playing an 11-string guitar here and I think Yepes mainly played a 10-string. Not only do these guitars have more range, they make the standard guitar range sound better too because it sits squarely in the sweet spot of the guitar's overall range. You also get the benefit of more sympathetic overtones from all those strings.

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I didn't technically spin this; it came on the radio:

Sollscher-T01%5BDGG%5D.jpg

I have some CDs and LPs by Narciso Yepes and Goran Sollscher. The Yepes recordings blew me away; the Sollschers from 30 years ago, not so much, but that could have been the recording quality and/or before he mastered the extended range classical guitar, invented by Yepes.

A killer player. My best friend took a lot of photographs of him ten years ago for a big exhibition. Apparently he was a great guy. They kept contact for some years after that.

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Johnny b,

A-you think I'm dumb enough to miss a speed knob

B-gtrfaddy just Johnny b'd you into oblivion

But - I still don't know if the soeed can be fixed, unless it drowned in Gtr daddy's post.

I keed! I keed!

.-)

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Johnny b,

A-you think I'm dumb enough to miss a speed knob

B-gtrfaddy just Johnny b'd you into oblivion

But - I still don't know if the soeed can be fixed, unless it drowned in Gtr daddy's post.

I keed! I keed!

.-)

I just realized something it might be. Unless you lubed the platter bearing when you got it, it probably needs some oil there. You can find Technics DD spindle oil on this page. Scroll down about 3/4 of the way. It's a frameset within this website. They're supposed to get an oil refresh every couple thousand playing hours, and that TT is over 30 years old.

It could also be something with the servo speed control, and that's probably more complicated. Maybe gtrdaddy knows.

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I just saw Johnny's link to KAB regarding a Technics bearing; are we not talking about a Denon Dp-45f?

My link was for the Technics bearing oil, which I thought would be a closer match to the Denon's required viscosity. But you're the one with a collection of top-line Denons and Kenwoods from the '80s, so if mineral oil works for you, have at it.

I also thought about the magnetic strip, but have never really looked inside much, and I certainly didn't know the Kenwood's inner layout like you do.

One handy thing about the Technics SL12x0 series: you can lube the spindle by removing the platter and doing it from the top.

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I'm on the Pulse right now and think it outpaces the originial two post Waters era Floyd albums. Of which both are nice too, but very different.

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Les Paul and Mary Ford: The Hitmakers

Yes, they were!!! It's still amazing to listen to his outrageous recording techniques and his astounding sound effects. This and the velvet voice of Mary Ford… even if the music sounds a little old-fashioned today. Still great!

Here on original late 50s/early sixties 60s vinyl...

By the way: I'm very pleased to see other guys here still using those big old turntables. Better and truer than anything else!

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I felt like I was due for this today. It's more of an experience than an album.

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This was a meticulous limited production run made from the original master tapes, and mastered at half speed. It was Sinatra's first commercially released live album, made in 1966 when Sinatra was 50. Great recording quality and it puts Sinatra and the Basie Band in the room.

When I ordered this in early 2011, the vendor sent me two. I returned one still sealed and as a thank you they gave me a permanent 11% discount for future orders. A couple days ago I looked the album up and it's long out of print. Lightly used copies are hitting $600 and Amazon has a sealed one at $999.99.

So I decided to give my thousand-dollar album a spin. I could never have bought it at that price, but I'm glad I have one.

What makes this recording special: Most of us are familiar with Sinatra's ability to really make you feel the essence of the song he's singing. He had an unusually strong ability to sing in a studio into a microphone in a way that playing the resulting record would feel as though he's communicating directly with you. As good as that is, however, the capture on this live performance where he's singing directly to a packed room full of eager, attentive listeners, bumps that sensation up several notches. The way he communicates to a live audience on "It Was a Very Good Year" alone is worth the entire album. I'm really glad I got it.

Edited by JohnnyB
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I've been a huge Stan Ridgway fan since his late 80s solo albums, and I get to see him live a couple of times during the early 90s, after his Mosquito album. Very fun shows. During a recent road trip, I put on his "Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads & Fugitive Songs" cd, which came out in 2004 and which I hadn't listened to in a long, long time. I really liked this song, Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues, which chronicles his MTV rise to prominence and subsequent demise:

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Yesterday I also saw the Wall Street Journal article about Steely Dan creating Deacon Blues. So I just had to spin Aja in its entirety. The article mentions how they went about getting Tonight Show Band tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb to do the solo in Deacon Blues. According to the article, the whole meeting and his improvised solo only took about a half hour.

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I had the great fortune of hearing Pete Christlieb in 1975, three years before Aja. I was living in SoCal and Louie Bellson was performing live. I went. It was a great band, Louie was in his prime, but the outrageous thing was he had both Don Menza and Pete Christlieb as co-leads of the tenor sax line. I also have the Louie Bellson album recorded in SoCal at that time with the exact same personnel:

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Menza had made his reputation a few years earlier with a brilliant and extended solo on "Channel One Suite" with the Buddy Rich band live at Caesar's Palace. It's really more like a cadenza where the band stops playing altogether and Menza rips it any way he wants. I call it Menza's Cadenza. That solo is on this album (which I also have). Can you tell it was 1967?

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Anyway, it was an evening to remember hearing these two monsters of the tenor sax at the height of their vigor busting solos back and forth, each trying to outdo the other. I'll never forget it. But it was also great to re-acquaint with Aja in general and Deacon Blues in particular. It was the first time I'd played that album since getting my panel speakers and handwired tube electronics. Absolutely fabulous writing, arrangements, production, performance, mixing and mastering.

Edited by JohnnyB
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Every once in awhile I just have to have a Rossini Overtures fix. This one really delivers with great playing and blow-you-out-of-the-room dynamics. Spinning it as I type. Those passionate Italian explosive fortissimos are a big part of the fun.

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