Mike Mettler

David Rawlings had a clear mission ahead of him. His dream was to release Gillian Welch’s acclaimed June 2011 alt-rural album The Harrow & The Harvest on reel-to-reel tape — but just how would he go about doing it? One word: DIY. During a recent phone interview with AP editor Mike Mettler, Rawlings discusses how The Harrow & The Harvest made its transition to tape, why making tape duplicates is a challenging process, why he also still loves cutting lacquers, and which Welch album might just make its reel-to-reel debut next. . .

Nagra is making a bold statement with their all-caps HD PHONO preamp. Read on to see all the specs of the high-end Swiss manufacturer’s flag-planting phono preamp. . .

Back in September, we asked you, the AP faithful, to “show us your turntables!” for an all-new feature section titled Table Toppers — and did you ever respond in full. Since then, we’ve been sifting through a cavalcade of your many great submissions, and we figured what better way to kick off the month of November than with the debut installment of Table Toppers — namely, a truly terrific trio of ’tables owned by Diogo Alfaiate of Lisbon, Portugal. Read on to see a score of cool pics of Diogo’s amazing system, plus get his firsthand account of his lifelong love of vinyl. . .

People always like to talk about spring cleaning, but we here at AP like to do it year-round — especially when it comes to making sure our records are as clean as they can be before we put them on our turntables. CleanerVinyl has a similar philosophy, and the company’s flagship ProXL record cleaning system and UC-3360 multi-frequency ultrasonic cleaner are clearly tailor-made for this all-important LP maintenance task. Read on to see how CleanerVinyl may have the literal solution for your own regularly scheduled record cleaning needs. . .