# Trip down memory lane... my old vinyl collection.



## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

To put this in the proper context: I'm 32; born in 1982. As a youngin', I had a love for some Michael Jackson's Off The Wall (remember: context!). As I grew my parents helped me build a cool little vinyl collection until CDs came full bore. Luckily, my mom is a totally awesome mother and she kept all my records. They were boxed up sometime in the early 90's never to be seen again...

Additionally, when my wife and I got married, her grandfather passed down his old 8-track/record player furniture. I used to comment how cool it was and when it was time for him to move, he let us have it. That sat in our garage/storage for a very long time...


These things kinda remained "out of sight, out of mind". Until today.

My wife and 4yo were downtown shopping and came across a new trendster store which has some old records. My daughter spotted a Disney's Sleepy Hollow record and my wife paid the $2.50 for it. Motivation cometh...

I get home today and am shown the record which my daughter is ready to listen to. So, me and the mrs. finally move the record player out, dust it off and fire it up. It still works. Woot! 
I got the box of old records and opened it up and found some absolute gems (at least, to me). All sorts of my old favorites and stuff I completely forgot I had. Total blast from the past. Everything from MJ to Loggins & Messina to The Mormon Tabernacle. Not the world's most vast collection, but seriously, I'm stoked. 

This re-discovery shows me how far back my love of music goes. With some of these records, I remember laying in the floor as a 5 year old flipping through the stacks of records my parents had and staring at the jacket pictures while listening to records. It reminds me that even though caring about speaker specs and technical jargon absolutely is a means to an end of a great hi-fi system, all of my desire to learn more about audio and improve my stereo system is founded on a simple love of music. 


Here's some pictures of today's fun:


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

ErinH said:


>


Every person's house I went to as a kid and some of the older folks I know today have or had some iteration of this stereo system. My parents still have theirs in the old living room and it usually gets fired up at Christmas time with some Andy Williams.

The majority of my musical memories are either listening to a setup like this or my Mom or Dad's Am/Fm radio in their car.


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

I'm just surprised it still works after being in storage for 8 years.


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## jackies (Jan 14, 2010)

Vinyl is awesome in a number of ways!
Giggles: my daughter referred to records as "those big black cds".
Musicality: I think generally, the level of musicianship took a dramatic nosedive after the 70s - people just stopped trying to impress the listeners with music, relying instead on "novelty" factor and shocking or outright pornographic music videos. Therefore vinyl records mostly represent the musically better music.
Audiophilia: To a discerning audiophile, records give a chance to hear what music was supposed to be before it was subjected to the digital mutilation. Granted, digital - and digitally processed - music may sound cleaner the the very highs and lows, but most of the sonic information is conveyed via the mid frequencies, and with a somewhat quality setup you could easily hear how much more tangibly real the real music is.


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

Just don`t play your precious collection on that record player if you want them to survive another decade,while it might looks cool and ****, it certainly isn`t.
I`ve seen people upgrading old consoles with modern turntables,along with restoring beautiful tube amplifiers in them.


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

As some of you know, I recently moved.

Probably the most difficult aspect of this move has been transporting my vinyl collection. I'm not sure how many pieces, but estimate it to be somewhere around 5000 records.

Here are some pictures I snapped while packing them up for the move.


I took the first photo after I had cleared out most of the top shelf. Used those gray, plastic tubs you find at Wal-Mart. They work great for storing records.
I filled 33 tubs, plus 2 flight cases. 

The annoying part was that the moving truck could not transport them because it's too hot this time of year. The back of a moving truck gets very hot in the Florida summer. So I had to load up my wife's SUV with 5 tubs at a time and shuttle the record collection to an air-conditioned storage unit in Orlando. They are all waiting in storage until I can get back down and rent a bigger vehicle to transport them home. Or until the winter, when it will be cool enough to have the movers load them.

Then I have to figure out where to put them when I finally get them home. :worried:


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## Victor_inox (Apr 27, 2012)

THat is serious collection dude, I`m envy!


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

I hope those things are alphabetized!


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

ErinH said:


> I hope those things are alphabetized!



:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Alphabetized by Label, with plastic comic-book sleeves on every record and plastic tab dividers between the labels.

Within labels, the records are in catalog order. 



It's all 1990s and 2000s house music, by the way.


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## jackies (Jan 14, 2010)

Nice collection for sure - I love house music, even though my previous remarks about superior musicianship and all-analog-real-instruments recording do not apply, even digitally produced, sampled/sequenced music does sound better on vinyl. I have some theories as to why, one of them is to do with the record speed variation, aka _slow wow_, I been planning to build a "slow wow dac ®" to imitate that effect, but haven't had a chance to get around to it yet...


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## subterFUSE (Sep 21, 2009)

I always felt it is because pressing vinyl is expensive, and the labels were more inclined to use good mastering engineers if they were going to the expense of pressing vinyl.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL (Jan 31, 2011)

It's better mastering. Most modern music I listen to has been ripped from vinyl, as the mastering is just better. This can even be seen in rips vs the cd version in audacity or other waveform programs.


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## matty169 (Nov 19, 2009)

I just gave about 200 albums away yesterday.............


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