True there’s nothing like a dame, but I also firmly
believe that there’s nothing like a disc. I don’t mean the shiny palm-sized
object that reflects all the colours of the rainbow when you hold it in the
light; I mean the big black vinyl disc that should be held reverentially in
both hands. The record.
I’ve taught my daughter to revere the record. Although
she tends to stream Spotify on her hand-me-down laptop, she has informed her
parents of a dream one day to own an apartment in Paris, in which she would
have a hi-fi system built around a record player. She has already been up to
Brick Lane in London with a friend, who likes to go hunting for old vinyl at
weekends. And she has studied carefully as I’ve talked her through the ritual
of cleaning and playing a record on the deck.
I like rituals. We don’t observe the Japanese tea ritual
in this house, but we do tend to turn Sunday morning breakfast into something
ceremonial. The ritual of the record, though, is something that you can enjoy
every day. That careful removal of the disc from its inner sleeve at times
accompanied by a little snap of static; the initial brief inspection for
hazards lodged in the microgrooves; the laying of the disc onto the platter;
the lifting of the arm from its resting place and its careful sighting over the
lead-in groove at the edge of the record to start up the turntable; the
light-fingered dusting of the surface of the disc with a carbon-fibre and
velvet ‘disc cleaning pad’; and finally that deft flick of the lever to drop
the tone-arm – ever so gently – onto the record.
Over time, I have modified the ritual when necessary.
There was a period of my life during which I also had to point at the vinyl a Zerostat
pistol – a bright red affair that looked like something that Captain Scarlet or
Buck Rogers in the 25th century might have wielded – and gently
squeeze the trigger to counteract the static charge from the record. Even worse
and even more time-consuming was a cleaning device that involved rolling over
the surface of the disc a contraption that looked like a miniaturised garden
roller, equipped with sticky paper to trap all the particles of dust.
Fortunately, the carbon-fibre cleaner rendered both devices obsolete.
When you add up all the time involved in this ceremonial
faffing around, it would amount to a significant proportion of your life.
What’s more, the music only lasts on average 20 minutes, before you have to get
up out of your chair and go through the whole operation again. All this means
that it’s not ideal if you have to get on with something adult that demands
your attention. Much easier to slip in a cassette lasting 45 minutes, or – even
better – one of those shiny laser discs that provides up to 80 minutes of
uninterrupted music. The Daughter would advocate streaming MP3 files, but I
still can’t countenance something that you can’t actually touch.
Call me a Luddite if you will, but I still derive as much
satisfaction from re-discovering – on record or cassette – something forgotten
from the past as I do from finding something new. Besides, the record player
comes into its own during another outmoded operation, one that might even die
out with my generation. It’s December, so it’s… Christmas cards! Since this
involves great bursts of concentrated energy, it’s an ideal opportunity for
playing records. There are only so many cards in which you can scribble
Christmas messages without getting up to rest your brain and exercise your feet
– and 20 minutes or so is an optimum period.
This year, though, things went wrong. My trusty Dual deck
developed ‘wow’. Or I persuaded myself that it had. I experienced again the
angst of my teenage audio years. Was the music sounding as it should do? Was
there or wasn’t there a problem? If so, what was it and why?
I decided – as I often tended to in the past – that there
was a problem. If I were to enjoy spinning old vinyl treasures
while writing our Christmas cards this year, it meant acting fast. Since I had
to go to Brico Depot to check out some D.I.Y. materials, I popped into my shop
of choice. Cash Converters is like a flea market or American thrift shop under
one small roof. People who want to move with the times (or should I say people
who are so hard up that they need to raise a little urgently needed cash?)
bring their outmoded music and equipment there. The shop pays them a pittance
and offers the stuff for sale to foragers like me at slightly more than a
pittance. I have to resist a strong temptation to create a museum of hi-fi
separates. Two CD decks will have to suffice, even if there are Sonys on sale
for a tenner.
Anyway, this particular visit yielded a Dual record deck.
Not only a Dual, but one with the same interchangeable head as my current
ailing platter. A quartz model, what’s more. I’m not sure what ‘quartz’ means
in practice, but they used to cost quite a lot of money. More than I was
prepared to pay. I didn’t quibble with the 25 bucks asking price, even if there
wasn’t a box or a manual.
When I got it home, I did what I usually do with
electrical goods. That is, I left it fallow for a few days to stare at
occasionally, without quite daring to tinker with it – for fear that it won’t
work as God intended and that I will have to take it back or something equally
unpleasant. This time, because of the urgency of the Christmas cards, I gave it
only five days to mature before summoning up the courage to disconnect the old
deck and wire up its replacement. This was not easy, since all the machines
that produce music here are housed in an old item of furniture bought from an
auction in Sheffield. It’s gloomy inside. There are too many crucial looking
wires into the back of the amplifier to pull out for easy access. So it
involved connecting everything up with the aid of a torch and a pocket mirror.
Happily, it went as well as could be expected. I was able
to swap the interchangeable heads, re-balance the tone-arm, set the tracking
weight and anti-skating control et voilà… Off I went, happy as a little
sandboy to see how gently the cuing device dropped the stylus onto the record.
Analogue sound wonderfully restored, I could concentrate on the Xmas cards,
flushed with the knowledge that the ‘X’ derives from an old Christian symbol of
the Dark Ages.
The only trouble is, the platter seems to have a life of
its own. From time to time, the arm – as if moved by an unseen spirit – lifts
itself off the record. This has added an element of stress to playing records –
just as I’ve finally learned to be more philosophical about crackles and pops
and even skips and sticks. It doesn’t do it very often, but often enough to
make me uneasy. I give it the hard stare now when I drop the arm down and hope
that I can subject the self-raising tone-arm to my will.
It came with a month’s guarantee and I could take it
back, but I’m inclined to hang on. It’s quartz, after all. So far it has
resisted my iron will, but I haven’t altogether given up hope. If it does
renounce its propensity for levitation, then what I really want for Christmas
this year is someone to come round and play records with me.
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