Hornographic

@muel, that reminds me of the Yamaha 820 I used to run in the late 70s. Loved that thing.

Yeah, that's a nice looking table, @hatrack1971. Your dust cover is clearer than my Yamaha's. It looks like I've found a table locally, tho, so don't worry about the shipping. I appreciate the messages.

Hey @mookiestl, that looks like just what the doctor ordered. Not looking for fancy. All I need is 78 RPM and putting my cartridge in the headshell. (Or swapping headshells maybe.) Is a month's loan too long? I can meet you at your place in V.P. or wherever you like. I'm close to 44 & 109 -- and I'm free any day of the week. Thanks!

Thanks, @codewritinfool. I'll get back to you after I work my way through cleaning & digitizing mine. Shellac to Shinyl, right? 🙂

@hatrack1971, I'm near St. Louis -- nowhere close to Helena. Idler drive is no problem, direct was just a preference. It looks like shipping 15 pounds would run $50 (USPS) to $70 (UPS). If you have a way to pack it, that might be tolerable. DM me if you want to talk price. Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestion and your comments on your experience with that Audio Technica. Manual is no problem -- so's my Yamaha. And it's a direct drive platter. 👍 I've seen several reviews of that turntable and they've been pretty uniformly positive. Good for its price, I read.. I was hoping to find something cheap in somebody's closet... but that hasn't happened yet. So I may end up with that AT or something like it.

I'm not a vinyl newbie. (Don't get me started on how little I miss vinyl. 🙂) But I am a shellac kind o' guy. I pulled out a set of 78 discs -- 70 or 80 of 'em -- that I'd collected 20-25 years ago and I'd like to digitize them. I used to play them on my antique gramophone, before I gave that away. My old Yamaha YP-D6 is a two-speed turntable (33.3 & 45) with a Shure V15 Type 3 cartridge. I can get a 78 stylus for the cartridge. And I know that I can playback at a lower speed and then use Audigy's "Change speed" feature to step up to 78 RPM. But I'd prefer to avoid that extra step in the sound-editing process. I'm not looking for anything fancy -- just a three-speed table (33/45/78) that I can mount my Shure cartridge on. Or one of those that already has with a decent cartridge with a 78 stylus. Direct drive preferred -- but hardly a necessity. Anyone have something like this gathering dust somewhere?

Here's an interesting and pretty well-written piece in the New York Times about audio mastering and compression. They Really Don't Make Music Like They Used To.

@codewritinfool in an alternate timeline. Cute blonde, dude. What's her name?

Pleasure to meet you, @No.4. We appreciated the Pony Express-style delivery. Roger on the pix. I plan to do a breadboard layout for my DIY LS's with your 401's and drivers I got from @codewritinfool -- just to verify before construction begins. Pix will start there. Happy holidays and all like that.

That's exactly right. When I stand at the midpoint, my head's right in the focus. It'd be great for parties. It's just a little too high for a sitting position - but still better than having the focus at furniture/monitor level. Since it's my office, I don't have the usual sofa-in-the-family-room layout there.

Good question. I hadn't tried the typical LS configuration, so I did and compared them. Subjectively, the "sideways" orientation shown in the pix seems to give a better presence and I prefer it. Because of all the other furniture & gear in the room, I wanted to raise the focus for the HF sections with that orientation. Objectively, I can't give a very good answer because the only measurement tool I have at hand is the Android Sound Meter applet, and that shows very little difference (no surprise). I don't have the gear to capture profiles of the room for each orientation. Those might give some useful info. In short, the usual "audio answer": no definitive data -- just some guy's opinion.

Yeah, they're looking pretty good. But of course they sound wonderful... even tho I'm missing that Khorn bass presence just a little. I think what I "need" is a more permanent pair. I should find a pair of old standard La Scalas and give them the @Matthews re-finishing treatment. Did Bob G buy those that you found a couple of weeks ago?

You never know how well things will work until you release them to the dumb users. 🙂 So today I hauled @codewritinfool's splits from the garage, where he'd left them after the BBQ, to my place. Ain't nobody using 'em in that garage, right? Here's a set of pix that shows packing them into my Toaster (Scion xB) and then set up in my home office (and cat refuge). No problem at all fitting them into the Toaster. CWF had made a very nice pair of speaker cables for his splits. They're 50 feet long with Speakon connectors at each end. I don't know if he's done any time as a roadie, but I did a little (long ago) and those connectors are great. Tear-down and deployment were both a snap. The only comment I have about moving them is the edges of the corner guards caught on the upholstery in the Toaster in a couple of places. No big deal and nothing got damaged, but it did take a just a bit of finagling when unloading them. Then I rolled them in, set 'em up, poured a fresh cup of coffee, and cranked up a little Stacey Kent . Mmm-mmm-good...

Here are a couple of pix of @codewritinfool's LaScala splits at the company BBQ he mentioned. The grill was outside, but the party was inside a storage area near Spirit airport due to the cool weather. Thanks to our host, Bob G, for the brats, burgers, beer & wine. The splits looked great - nice work by CWF (& @MookieStl). They sounded great too... but we all expected that.

Best wishes for the new grandchild. And it's a beautiful night indeed. Raise one to the Colonel.

1. I'd check around for a machinist/metal worker to see if someone could hack the ball corners for me. 2. Barring that, I'd make a "corner jig" out of a piece of wood stock, screw the ball down to that jig - skipping the one screw that'd be cut - and then run the whole assembly thru a bandsaw. You'd need a lot of those jigs, maybe, but they only need to be blocks big enough to hold the balls securely a couple of screws. 3. I don't know if I'd bother with trying to add material to the opened-up balls on the rear corners. If those are cut with two cuts -- one in line with with the "ears" -- they'd look like they were designed for the angle, I think. 4. Sorry bout the long-ended comment. It's hard to talk w/o a pencil. 5. I missed the alternatives you & Mookie talked about. Good luck, they're shaping up nicely.

The grille mock-up was a good idea. "Measure twice..." I have to vote with @DizRotus and @MookieStl on this one. The grilles detract from the look you've already got - they'd be like socks on a rooster. Plus, you were able to paint the throats of the bass horn and get the same finish on all visible areas. There's nothing to hide, so why bother with grilles?

Looking good with that bottom door & casters in place. That's a road-ready piece there.

They're looking sharp. The nose cleaned up pretty good I see. Be happy to audition those for you while I'm giving my Khorns the Matthews Black Beauty treatment.

Thanks, @MookieStl. I thought the lighter pair of LS's in the back of that picture looked familiar. They were up for sale last year, right? It's surprising @Matthews got such a nice finish out of a spray can. Lots of coats and lots of patience, I suppose. Maybe he can tell me where he bought the grille cloth. I'm not sure I could manage that spray can feat, but there's a guy close to me who does really good furniture repair work. Or maybe I can find an auto body shop to put a black lacquer finish on the horns.

@mookiestl, the black lacquer finish on those La Scalas is really impressive. It looks like the finish on a grand piano & the blonde grill cloth is a great contrast. Do you know who painted them? (I'm in the StL area too.) I've got a pair of Khorns that were originally raw birch before someone stained them with a dark walnut color. I've been thinking about how to re-finish the Khorns... Now I'm thinking a finish like the one on these black La Scalas (grill cloth included) would look really good on the Khorns.

It looks like the CL ad may have changed since yesterday. It now reads $500 per horn.

@codewritinfool, she noticed that hack when I pointed it out to her one day. She didn't really care since (a) it's hard to spot with the cabinet in place and (b) fixing the trim (someday) is no big deal. @mark1101: good eye! I did *not* move the tap on the auto-transformer. I should probably do that... but we're happy with the way they sound at the moment. @mark1101: Got a few minutes today and made the tap change on the auto-xformers. They sound good so far. Hard to tell if that change makes a lot of difference but I'm thinking there's a bit more bass now (could be all in my head).