The Sounds Of Thriftsmas

[Zed Simon]

I went out east to check stuff out and was kind of disappointed. The Salvation Army is closing to remodel and they were just about plucked dry. They had no vinyl at all.

But the other Salvation Army had loads, all for a quaddah. My finds:

Lou Rawls: Merry Christmas Ho! Ho! Ho!
Esso Steel Band: Front Street
The Best Of Donny Hathaway
Quincy Jones: Walking In Space
Ramsey Lewis: Sun Goddess
Hubert Laws: Land Of Passion
Julie London: Tenderly Yours
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)
And Chuck Ohman: The Sound Of Brass. Chuck is the announcer for a religious show I used to run. Every Christmas the host's wife would sing and Chuck would play trumpet. Quite an experience.

I found some cool CDs too:
Dido: No Angel
St. Germain: Tourist
And from Groove Armada, Lovebox and Vertigo.

Less than $7 for all of it.

And at the Goodwill I picked up a Jeff Conaway LP. Yes, THAT Jeff Conaway. From Taxi. Also, Marty Gold's Wired For Sound (a cool '50s experiment in sound I'd bet Good Buddy knows something about). I've got my Sennheisers wrapped around that one right now. Delicious.

[SeSo_Says_So]

Zed, your finds sound vinyli-cious!  I bet the coverwork on the Quincy Jones and Ramsey Lewis is funky beyond all git-out.

Don't you just adore Julie London? I think I may have that album.

Off to google Marty Gold. I'm intrigued.

[SplashsMom]

Hanging out on this list is becoming dangerous for me - between Shiny Brites and Pyrexia, now you audiophiles are pulling me in.
I have always loved albumn art but yesterday on my trip to the "big city" I came across an old microphone, a Mercury Electro-Voice 611, in hardly used condition with the original cord.
Why in the world would I want this I asked myself?  And yet I could not leave it.
My Splurge was only 2 bucks and googling it I find it is actually worth more ( a decent bit more) but I find myself wanting to hang on to it. I have nothing to plug it into and no voice to use - even the dog hides when I hum.

I am hoping my non-thrifting son will think it is interesting.
I may put it together with some other items as a theme gift for him.
I have no clue about his musical tastes (he's grown and out)...any suggestions on what to put together with a mic for a gift?
(I do have a Karaoke tape of him from when he was 12)

[genuineimitation]

oh zed, your vinyl finds are incredible! i only saw the nat king cole christmas album at the store yesterday.. and i have no way to play it, so i left it alone.

i saw a turntable at best buy the other day - are they making a comeback?? we got rid of our great turntable years ago when we decided there wouldn't be a way to replace needles.

[Zed Simon]

Turntables are coming back, but unfortunately a lot of their good sound quality isn't. The hook with some of the ones at Best Buy is that they have USB ports and software to make it "easy" to burn LPs to MP3. What they don't tell you is that the tables themselves are often just a step above a toy and track records heavily enough to cause them damage. Let's not talk about how they sound.

My cool new way to turn vinyl into CD is with the Pioneer CD burner I paid $25 for. It's hooked into my Pioneer receiver along with my turntable and works just like a cassette deck. Pop in a CD-R, start recording, advance the CD track with each song, pause for side change, repeat, then initialize the CD so it plays on every player. You can't clean up really scratchy records, but it's so convenient to do it this way you won't mind a little extra noise. And my records really aren't that bad.

And yes, Virginia, there are places online that sell needles (and belts, and even whole tables - some that cost more than your car!). I'll be shopping at one soon for a couple things.

[Troy McClure]

I am in the market for VPI record cleaning machine, but I may build my own.