San Francisco based Pelotone has been named the new American Koetsu cartridge distributor. The company will also handle all Koetsu re-tipping. Shown is the $10,950 Koetsu Azul. Mounted on a top of the Pro-Ject line Signature turntable, driving Doshi electronics and a pair of Wilson Alexia speakers, the Azul produced some of the sweetest, yet most detailed sound heard at RMAF 2013.
Music Hall's new, striking- looking Ikura turntable is going into production. The Ikura is a split-plinth design, with the motor located on a lower platform (not shown in photo) isolated via points from the main plinth. It includes a Pro-Ject sourced alloy tone arm, the sound of which Music Hall preferred to the carbon fiber arm.
Richland, WA based Woodworking Solutions introduced at RMAF its Record phile LP storage cabinets. These solidly constructed units feature pull-out file cabinet style drawers, each capable of holding approximately 100 LPs. They are available in two and 4 drawer configurations and in a variety of wood finishes.
Funk Firm's Flamenca is a $1500 filament-drive, precision machined glass platter turntable/tone arm combo that includes the company's 'co-polymer "string" bearing F6 tone arm.
The vinyl-centric Ayre Acoustics room was one of day one's analog highlights for this correspondent. The room was filled with inexpensive used vinyl from local vinyl vendor Absolute Vinyl and everyone was in a festive mood.
These BBC recordings from 1963 and 1964 make clear that The Beatles were, even at that early stage of their career, a skilled musical ensemble and that even then they were eager to cast off the teen-craze image created for them by Brian Epstein.
After steam cleaning the flood damaged record (see 'Can Steam Save This Record?") I used Audio Intelligent Enzymatic Cleaning Fluid and the Loricraft cleaning machine.