#13: Kill Yr Idols

Vintage vs. Modern Stereo Gear and Great Sounding Budget LPs

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Ambient Audiophile. Thanks to the generous support of paying subscribers, I’ve upgraded the Mixcloud account to pro and every single episode of The Trailhead is once again streaming in really good (320kbps) quality. If you haven’t, I highly recommend making an account there as it’s a great platform with really amazing content for every taste. The best stuff there is obviously Sounds of the Dawn mixes, but there’s so much. 

I did my first giveaway to paying subs this past week. Taylor in Manhattan picked up a nice extra  US copy of Richard & Linda Thompson’s First Light (Chrysalis, 1978) I had laying around. I have a terrible habit of buying backups and extras of LPs so as I come across them, I’ll pass them along when I can. So it’s worth paying attention to Substack notes and my Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Mastodon. 

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This week’s radio show had a good feel. We heard new music from the cosmic Colorado project Golden Brown, Finnish fourth world master Shakalli, California psychedelic electronics from LFZ and a whole lot more. You can jam the show here and check the tracklist below. 

The Trailhead 125 / Playlist:

1. Far Away Nebraska - Finita questa pioggia sarà un nuovo giorno - Uno sguardo all’orizzonte prima di tornare a casa (Home Normal, 2024)

2. Paul Oednom - The Courtyard - Equal Parts (Umé Records, 2024)  

3. Hiram - First Light - Yucca Music (Self, 2024) 

4. Shakali - Aihkimännyt - Rihmastossa (Not Not Fun, 2024)

5. Infinity Machine - The Lost Flute - Infinity Machine 002 (DFA, 2024) 

6. Golden Brown - Return - Kindness (Aural Canyon, 2024) 

7. Derek Monypenny - Poor Richard - The Oppositional Imagination (Debacle, 2024)

8. Post Moves - Dark Air Quiet - Ground Echo Dust (Debacle, 2024) 

9. Buck Curran (featuring Jodi Pedrali) - Sadness - One Evening and Other Folk Songs (ESP-Disk'/Obsolete Recordings, 2024) 

10. Toby Hay & Aidan Thorne - Burden - After a Pause (Cambrian, 2024)

11. Man Rei - Lossless Landmass, Avoidant Thought - Doer (Crash Symbols, 2024) 

12. LFZ - Extinction Burst - Raveled Veiled Known (Gnome Life, 2024) 

13. Montgomery and Turner - Nowhere to Go - Sound Is (Our) Sustenance (Astral Editions, 2024) 

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Something I’ve been thinking about since the earliest days of my journey to higher fidelity music playback is: What’s better? Vintage or new equipment?

This is a deep, deep rabbit hole that I couldn’t possibly hope to fully map out in one newsletter (or a hundred). But I thought I’d share my current beliefs in an abbreviated form for when one is considering a new piece for the system. 

Reliability/Warranty

This feels like the most important thing and a growing stack of receivers, amplifiers, speakers and turntables in my closet reinforces this argument against buying super old gear. 

Old stuff has issues. Sure, we like to say they don’t build them like they used to, and in many ways that’s true but the fact is almost any piece of gear over 25 years old has something wrong with it. At least that’s been my experience. I bought my old, beloved Tandberg TR 2025 receiver in rural North Jersey. It was cheap because the tuner wasn’t working. It’s been years of emailing techs and getting negative responses if they could or would fix it. What do you mean you can’t fix my 40-year-old obscure Norwegian equipment?! Since then channels started dropping out (Deoxit didn’t help) so here it sits. Elsewhere, I have a neat little Harman Kardon A 401 control amplifier with a bum phono stage, a pair of EPI 100s with fried tweeters and one bass driver that is toast, my old Celestion SL6S speakers that need new surrounds (which basically don’t exist),  and so on and so forth.

Yes there are people who can fix these things but they are few and far between and they can’t always get your piece up to spec. Sometimes replacement parts are hard (or impossible) to find. Capacitors go bad, connections come loose and rubber and foam deteriorate. Yes, the wood panels look great but within that pretty box could be 50 years of poor storage and misuse and headaches. I do trust a stereo repair person more than a car mechanic though, so I wouldn’t worry too much about getting ripped off. Just feel them out and get a sense of whether they do this for the love or the money.

When you buy new, you generally have some kind of return or warranty policy to fall back on. Although more expensive, small audio companies often love to be hands on with their customers and are quick to address issues and offer advice. If you buy your system off Craigslist or Facebook, well, you’re on your own. Buying used equipment that is only 5-10 years old is a nice middle ground and you can often have problems addressed by the manufacturer if they are still around and aren’t named Sony or are some other huge multinational corporation. 

Technological Advancements

I’m not an engineer or even that smart, so here I’m just repeating what more experienced and technically capable people have told me. 

There’s been a lot of advancement in stereo since the early 70s (apparently more with speaker tech than amplifiers although Class D is currently all the rage and was basically non-existent in home audio in the disco era). I like that there are smart people always trying to make playback better and making stereo so much sweeter. Watts are cheaper than ever and although they aren’t everything one must consider when driving speakers, they do matter and I’m in the school that believes get as much power as you can afford. Then there’s the “measurements are everything” crowd. These are people who believe the performance of a turntable or a CD player can be completely and accurately summed up by numbers and graphs. That’s well and good for them, I just happen to have and love equipment that would give these heads a heart attack. This is all to say that sometimes the pursuit of perfection in technology can leave us cold and present a sterile listening experience. But it’s worth investigating. Although I’m not particularly a fan of all-in-one solutions, there are very well-regarded integrated amps that have built-in DACs, phono stages and streaming capability if you just want to make one or two purchases and be done with all this insanity. 

Aesthetics

How our system looks matters. Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m not putting a piece of gear on my rack that isn’t easy on the eyes. A lot of modern, mass production stuff is black plastic awfulness, for sure. This is the key difference between Hi-Fi’s Golden Age and today. They made thousands of beautiful Marantz and Pioneer amps and receivers and the modern equivalents you can find at a big box store are cheaply made garbage in comparison. The old stuff looks better to a lot of people but there is a lot of vintage inspired modern stuff from the likes of NAD, Wharfedale and PSB if you absolutely need that wood veneer. 

Personally I love the more industrial, minimal looking gear from Audio Research, PS Audio and Naim but you do you!

If you’re looking at Walmart or Best Buy for gear, you are off the path. There is more high quality modern budget gear available from small companies than ever. Just take a look at the Cheap Audio Man on YouTube for a good survey of these brands. It’s an entertaining channel and can give you some brands to research but PLEASE DON’T BUY SHIT ON UNION-BUSTING AMAZON.   

I’ll leave it there for now and remind you that I’m happy to consult with paying subscribers over gear choices and setups, just send me a DM!

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Clockwise from top left: Eric Kloss - One, Two, Free / Ryley Walker - So Certain / John Martyn - Foundations / Michael Gulezian - Unspoken Intentions / MV & EE - Alpha Lyrae

I watch a lot of stereo/hifi content on Youtube and there’s been this recurring theme on one channel where a panel of audiodudes pick their “budget audiophile picks”. The idea being these heads are going to hip the audience to a great sounding record or pressing they may have never heard of. The discovery aspect pretty much never happens as the picks are generally just the same old classic rock or jazz artists, labels and titles being presented for the millionth time. It’s fine, great music, popular or not, is great music. But I watch this stuff just hoping and praying they break out of the stuffy stereotypical mold every now and again. I will give some credit though, last week one guy picked Dylan’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid soundtrack, the great bard’s truly slept on classic from 1973 (and perhaps my favorite of his) and another picked the Roches’ Robert Fripp-produced S/T debut from 1979. But honestly,. Would it kill these guys to go to their stacks and pull out any record on ECM or Windham Hill?

This is the problem with audiophiles, the old guard needs to embrace some new and different sounds. 

So, here are 5 great sounding records I think every audio nerd needs in their lives. 

Ryley Walker - So Certain EP (Husky Pants, 2022)

Hands down the best modern purveyor of folk-prog out there today, Ryley Walker has yet to do a full-length, song-based follow up to his 2021 masterpiece Course In Fable. However he did do this great EP in 2022 and self-released it through his own Husky Pants imprint. The session was recorded and mixed to TAPE at Electrical Audio in Chicago by Cooper Crain and mastered by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering in Greenpoint. It’s pressed at 45rpm and is one of the best sounding records I own. And I think he’s blowing them out for under 10 dollars on Bandcamp. Run and grab one for yourself. 

MV & EE - Alpha Lyrae (Child of Microtones, 2014)

I promise I will do a deep primer on Vermont’s finest makers of psychedelic sound one day soon but for now, the uninitiated will just have to venture out on their own into the world of Matt Valentine & Erika Elder. This 2014 full-length on their in-house imprint Child of Microtones is a fine entryway and one of the most beautiful sounding releases they’ve ever put out there. That’s saying a lot as the quality control is always pushing into the cosmos with these folks. Limited to 600, MV & EE still have some stock and I highly recommend you spend some quality mornings with this one. 

John Martyn - Foundations (Island, 1987)

This could be and probably is a digital recording and that’s fine we love digital around here. Not the period most folks go to with Martyn but one that yields a lot of treasures to those who are patient and unafraid of 80s production. By the mid-80s, John Martyn was undeniably the Godfather of Slushwave (appointed retroactively, by me) as any number of live bootlegs will attest to. This live album is way less blurred and boozed as he could get in the Reagan/Thatcher era but it’s a great listen. The guitar is totally decentralized and the bass and keyboards are out in front on this gorgeous and atmospheric recording. Folk purists will hate it but you probably aren’t one if you are here. Can be gripped for a latte.

Michael Gulezian - Unspoken Intentions (Takoma, 1980)

This could have been one of the last records John Fahey had a hand in making with his Takoma label as it came not long after he sold the operation to Chrysalis. If you look at where the roster went after the 1980 release of Michael Gulezian’s Unspoken Intentions, you’d likely agree. Anyway, that’s speculation and neither here nor there. What is here is what is likely the best sounding record to sport the black and gold Takoma label. Unspoken Intentions is actually technically a reissue of Guelzan’s privately pressed debut but it is nonetheless a stunning collection of solo guitar pieces with a mastering that places the talented young guitarist in the room with you. And it’s cheap as hell. 

Eric Kloss - One, Two, Free (Muse, 1973)

This Eric Kloss record is a reminder to me that the best way to go record shopping is to go with a friend who has a lot more records than you. That’s how I came to this one as my buddy Clifford Allen called to me from across some shop asking if I knew this one. I didn’t but I do love Dave Holland and Pat Martino, who appear here alongside the lesser known drummer Ron Krasinski and keyboardist Ron Thomas, so I took it home (after paying for it). Kloss is an American alto & tenor saxophonist who has never really caught on with newer jazz heads but that should change. This record isn’t a wild free session but rather it lives in that Miles Smiles / In a Silent Way zone on Side A and plays things a little more straight and funky on Side B. It’s a head nodder all the way through and the recording is nice and thick and smoky.