not sure i'd want to put that record on my turntable ...

there was a mob scene at Lost and Found records up on Broadway .. probably continuing into the evening.

You have a turntable?

Heh. Actually I still have one, too, but it's out in the garage. I can't bear to part with it. Or the bunch of old vinyl.

(My turntable cartridge is ruined, though, because someone, ahem, not me, bumped into the turntable a while back and it somehow got activated with no album on it. It played the rubber mat for a couple of days before anyone noticed WTF is this? It was a really nice cartridge, too. Can you even still buy those? Even if you could, I'm sure all the belts are dried out/rotten. No, it's not a direct drive. Couldn't afford a good one of those.)

I've got an old pair of original Advent Loudspeakers (the large ones) with blown out woofers, also out in the garage.

(Blew them up playing Stranger*, a heavy rock band founded by South Knox drummer Johnny Price who I once played with in a sock hop band before he went on to fame and fortune.)

I see you can get kits. I need to see about fixing them.

The tweeters had already been replaced (another loud party) by that guy who used to be down on Northshore. I got them third hand (from BoB, thanks!) almost 40 years ago and the guy who had them before that was an electrical engineering student who had apparently hand made some replacement crossovers. The guy at the Northshore repair shop was impressed by his work.

Oh, and I replaced the grills, too.

So I guess the boxes are the only thing still original Advent. But still.

*Bonus points to anyone who can remember Stranger's name when they were playing joints in Knoxville like Bradley Station. (I can't.**)

UPDATE: **I just remembered, I think it was "Romeo."

I have a Denon turntable that actually applies tracking force and anti-skating force using microprocessor controlled linear motors. Until about seven years ago it used a Shure V-15 Type 5 cartridge. I was digitizing my 45 disc vinyl collection, the Swing Era from Time-Life Records when my Gino and Heidi got a bit too rambunctious and broke the cartridge and cartridge shell. Two romping Rottweilers are a bit like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

There is a Dual 1218 with a similar Shure cartridge in the basement. Someday I'll finish the job with it when I get a round tuit.

The Swing Era was a fifteen album set with three discs per set. Time-Life gathered as many band members as they could from the old big band era to rerecord the old numbers using modern (mid 1970s) recording techniques and the original arrangements.

They issued the 1941 set on CD but a dispute erupted between T-L and the artists about CD rights and the rest of the collection was shelved.

I was just out in the garage and noticed the Advents still have the original factory labels (yellowed now) stapled to the back, complete with usage instructions, warranty info, serial number (A31901), and inspected by/tested by signatures. That's probably worth more than than the speakers. Didn't notice a year of manufacture, but I'm guessing around 1969 or 1970.

My original V15-V is pretty low mileage.

A friend has also resurrected most of my mid 1980s stereo system by replacing some faulty resistors in my home-built Hafler DH-500 power amp and coupling it to my old Carver 'Sonic Holography' preamp. It seems that Hafler amps had several low wattage resistors that tended to open after a few years of service.

He also replaced the suspensions on the woofers in my JBL 250Ti speaker systems. I have never heard a better sounding system when properly fed. I had considered selling them but he told me he had always hoped I would leave them to him in my will so I just gave them to him.

Now I have to cross the street to hear them.

Tomorrow I'm going to double check my wiring and get everything rigged up and file a report right here.

Ye gods and little fishes, this wouldn't be your friend here in Knoxville would it? He just 'inherited' my Ti's and had them re-foamed locally.

In the old days I spent a lot of time (and money) hovering around the hi fi shops in town. I never heard anything to compare with these things. I sold an acre of land in Anderson County in order to buy them. I used to joke that I needed to take up a cheaper hobby, like maybe heroin.

I still use a pair of JBL's classic L100 Century systems (minus the foam covers that went away years ago) in the living room with the TV, but my main music source is just iTunes with the PC feeding an old Pioneer SA-5800 integrated amp and a Bose AM-5 satellite/sub system.

WOW! Found them at the Goodwill. Surely somebody somewhere regrets the decision to get rid of those.

Tell me about shipping them. We moved my Ti's down my steep driveway and across the road to Steve's studio in two trips with a hand truck. Each is 52 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds.

We installed them on 'Tip Toes', machined aluminum cones with very sharp points that are fastened to the bottoms of the speaker cabinets with double-sided tape, points downward, so the weight of the system pushes the point through the carpet and into the flooring. That way the woofer excursions will move more air instead of moving the cabinets. Before I installed these things my speakers crawled all over the living room floor during particularly enthusiastic listening sessions. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a pipe organ comes to mind.

I have 3 pairs of 1970's Advents. Everyone of them had the woofer foam replaced. I did it myself. Two pairs are the walnut trim style and one is the utility style. All of them are still being used and sound great. Two pairs are being used for surround sound on the main system. I bought the first pair back in the early 70's and the other two at Green Acres flea mkt for about $20 per pair. The foam was gone but that is very fixable. I only had to replace one tweeter on my original pair and got lucky on Ebay to get an original back in. Also, one crossover for the original pair from Ebay. They just don't make consumer equipment like that anymore. What a shame.

Ah, the old days.

Here's my mid 1980s rack with the Carver preamp and the Nakamichi cassette decks. The power amp was in the basement because it had a three speed cooling fan that was annoying during quieter moments. I had already removed the turntable from the top of the rack. I still have that dbx disc noise reduction system in the basement for all that's worth.

And the music room it fed (That's my uncle's souvenir Wehrmacht helmet on the library table. The speaker systems do tend to dominate the room.

And below is my early 1970s rig with home-built Dynaco PAT-4 preamp, FM-3 tuner (vacuum tube), and Stereo 120 power amp (inside an old sideboard with the legs removed). This one fed a pair of JBL L100 Century systems.

About ten years ago a friend sold me a Dynaco PAS-3X tube preamp and Stereo 70 tube power amp that I had built for him a hundred or so years ago. I put it on a shelf in the basement and there it still sits.

Some other classic components:

Kipschorn - still available from the mfg. - first made in 1946 - see it here.
Marantz receiver - photo I bought one of these at the Salvation Army thrift store for $5 - had one burned out panel lamp - otherwise, it worked flawlessly.
Teac 3300 reel to reel - another one of my prized possessions. Great machine!
Also have owned pairs of AR 2 & AR 4 speakers.
I spent many Saturdays at a place called The Stereo Center on Northshore Dr. at Kingston Pike. The guy that ran the place, Mr. Collins, got nearly all of my disposable income.

Free barbecue, free beer, free tunes and, yep, I finally bought a vinyl copy of Elvis's Quadraphonic 1973 LP, "Aloha From Hawaii."

Oh, and I also found a vinyl copy of my all-time favorite bluegrass album, "Bluegrass: The World's Greatest Show," featuring the Seldom Scene, the Original Seldom Scene, the Original Country Gentlemen and the (Almost) Original New South.

Mike, Maria, Nathan and the gang at the North Knoxville store do a great job, y'all!

I ran a tab with Mr. Collins for years. I think every one of my multiple Betamaxes came from the Stereo Center.

I bought a Marantz receiver similar to the one in the photo for my mother years ago. My brother still uses it with a pair of AR3a systems. Nowadays he only feeds it with FM and a 120 GB iPod Classic that I filled with music since he has no computer. It still performs beautifully. Marantz went through a change several years ago and their quality plummeted.

Now that I think of it, I've gone through a number of components in my time. I built a Heathkit AR 1500 receiver when they first introduced it. The first sounds I heard from it came from an FM station in North Carolina doing a request show. A listener was just calling in asking them to 'please play Double Shot by us'. I assume 'us' was Swinging Medallion. Hey, wasn't that another one hit wonder?

I even took a week's vacation and built a 25" Heathkit TV working sunup til the wee hours every day. I could never get the convergence just right on that thing and I was forever fiddling with it. Sony announced a 27 inch Trinitron a couple of weeks after I finished building it so I sold it (for next to nothing of course) and bought the Sony.

My first integrated amp was a homebuilt H.H. Scott. It was powerful but had the infamous early transistor hissssssssss that caused Dynaco to stay with vacuum tubes for so long. During one of the Consumer Electronics shows a competitor was giving away popcorn popped on a Dyna Stereo 70 power amp. Cheeky bastards!

In '79 I had a beautiful Yamaha preamp, tuner, and power amp combo with a JBL L212 satellite/sub system. That was a sweet speaker combo, but . .

The first thing I heard on the 250Ti was Faithfully by Journey and that drum roll pushed me right over the edge.

And here's the Denon turntable digitizing the oldies.

My first Hi-Fi moment came when I visited an uncle that owned a pricey stereo rig with components that he built. The male voices came from the left channel & the females on the right. BAM - I was hooked.
Soon after, I took my old portable mono record player and installed a Grado stereo cartridge that I connected to a Monarch stereo integrated amp that I bought with the $20 I earned from mowing yards. It was a kit that had 4 vacuum tubes and put out a whopping 2.5W RMS/channel! Bought it from Wade Shields that ran Shields Electronics on Central Ave.. In '76, I too built a Heathkit AR 1500. Took me 40 hrs. stopping only for food & bathroom breaks. When I first turned it on and everything worked, my head was bigger than a watermelon!

See if this doesn't take you back to some happy times. I spotted it a couple of years ago on Flickr and set it as one of my favorites.

And, as to kits, I have an ugly scar on my left thigh right now that came from dropping a ball of molten solder when I was just learning to solder with a KnightKit 7.5 watt mono power amp from Allied Radio when I was 13.

So, I moved the turntable into the den tonight. On the player is Jimmy "Orion" Ellis's "Reborn," released on the Sun Records label in '79. (This is a special collector's edition of clear gold vinyl.) On this particular spin, I was listening to him sing Billy Swan's "Lover Please."

Sadly, Mr. Ellis died on Dec. 12, 1998, shot to death during a robbery in his Alabama pawn shop. A buddy and I saw him at the Tennessee Theatre two years before his tragic death. His voice was the closest to later Elvis Presley recordings than anyone I've ever heard.

I can't figure out how to make the image bigger here, but you can view it at my blog (link...) if you are so inclined.

Thanks, y'all, and have a great night. As a friend says, "Wax is where it's at." Keep those records spinnin'!