I paid pretty much record fair prices for everything. I spent a lot on a Davy Graham mono album I’ve been after for years and which I’ll almost certainly never find for much less than what I paid for it today. It made the trip worthwhile and I’ve listened to it twice on the spin tonight.
Probably the best bargain was a mint copy of 1st press Tango In The Night for a very generous £7. I gave it a spin earlier and it sounds absolutely incredible.
All in all though I saw way too many records well above discogs prices, often almost double the average price on discogs. I heard lots of moaning from sellers about turnout being low, trade slow, but the pool of people willing to pay - £500 say - for a very rare record that you could probably get for half that on eBay with a little patience must be shrinking all the time.
The funny thing about the record I splurged on - the stall next to the guy I bought it from was a bloke I sold 30 LPs to at a car boot last month for £4 each - mostly very average 80s library stuff and not very rare disco LPs, so he actually sort of paid for the record I bought!
This fair has been won over by clear sound where a conversation is easy, 91 dB is max on my meter. I have offers to play at the other fairs around the area by the organizer. Probably classic pop and guilty pleasures would be the perfect combo for this. Another dealer was slagging of this Miles Davis album I was asked to play by the organizer, otherwise no problems or sarcasm.
Give it another few years and every bar and coffee shop will have ‘audiophille’ sound and lounge pop, would be nice to facilate some other gig in a bar or such.
Didn’t know where to place this but it’s an update on activities.
I’ll have to bookmark the fact that audio electronics test and repair is my profession. In addition I’ve been involved at the coal face graft of large concert production for domestic and europe tours in a lighting production capacity. My father was a Hi Fi salesman in the post war era on Tottenham Court road, sold ex war valve electronics to the fledgling Windrush generation of soundsystems and worked for Tannoy in the Lords for a short period. (Possible that all of this is in my blood)
Just saying as I get a lot of resentment for any skills, ideas or experience. I get paid nothing or next to nothing for the above. I also DJ.
After thinning out a fair amount of my project items to Liverpool I’ve been assisting Barney and Heather. This weekend I’ve lent and delivered my huge DJ console to them and we have set it up roughly for a test session. Just me and Barney playing records and having a little bop to ourselves at midnight on Saturday on a Richard Long Soundsystem.
The console comes from the short lived Phazon system at Home and it’s small ego resident(we track the whereabouts of all the old club systems from Sankeys, Cream etc). It was a no brainer for me to buy this and any other components to build the system at the time. The system now here in Liverpool was on my shopping list about 15 years ago, but lack of venue or indeed any kind of interest in decent sound left it on my one day list until Barney imported it.
It’s the best sounding system I have ever heard, this includes any large studio monitoring, kind of vindicates my work,research and experimentation over twenty years on this. A bit bittersweet as a fair amount of the parts here were mine. Only scratching the surface of what can be achieved production wise at this time.
If any body reading wants a to know the pressings which blew us away I can list? I don’t do WAV/flac but there are CDJ’s so fill your boots with sugestions, I don’t think files will get close but I’ll foward it on. This was my last record bag I took to the record fair, so no time to make a specific selection due to the logistics of geting to Liverpool from the south.
In order of sonic quality, at least the first few. I don’t think you could beat this Steve-Miller pressing but might possible on others. Mostly from the bootsale £1 jobs and a lot found since I started to dig about again.
I had no idea how much was in the mix of that. Only recently got this extended version as its much better than the yellow sleeve one. The first four records are just ridiculous, it’s like getting new ears.
Hi Andrew
It’s a RLA soundsystem. I’ve literally been screwing drivers into the boxes which carry the RLA logo, it’s late era system. It is documented on facebook club sound systems if you want to get deep into this.
The big Berthas are EAW built and carry modern drivers. The rest is super sensitive we are talking a few watts needed only old skool drivers.
Amps are BGW and Bryston. Decks are stock, SME 3009 is better, SME IV better still, they float on rubber bands, arm upgrades won’t work unless floated or isolated.
My personal system I take out is the same set up apart from I don’t have RLA-X3000 (I think they go for thousands now)
We stockpile Stanton NOS 680EL, never rated the 500 for anything apart from it was cheap.
We have a dozen or more new pairs between us, I can tell which ones are the best, had them under the microscope, had a friend round who worked for Stanton and even he needs some new ones!
I have a memory from somewhere that Richard Long made some contribution to The Warehouse system in Leeds (definitely one of the best club sound systems I ever heard, regardless) … whether any of those elements remain I doubt after 40 plus years but I am sure I was told he was a consultant on the new system they put in there in the late 70s/early 80s.
Barney tells me, don’t know the sources:
The warehouse as far as I know was classic jbl, lenses, bullets, think they even had some cats eyes
HH amps, I think a Bozak and a boombox
