Full Circle

Okay, coming so close to shelling out S$250 for a damn CD really woke me up and I decided that it would be really far more cost-effective to just buy a turntable and take all my records out of cold storage. So that's exactly what I did this past week.

Of course I had to first go and look for a turntable. And in this digital day and age, you're really not sure where to start. You think you saw one or two models in the corner somewhere of the stores you visited in The Adelphi, but you're not sure. So I went to the place where I always go when in doubt about such things: super-atas hi-fi magazines. And one brand kept getting recommended in all of them -- Pro-ject.

Now, I had always grown up with very entry-level turntables. My dad's old Lenco was a fully-automatic machine with speed control. Then when I went to the UK to study, I bought an even cheaper plasticky set but it worked fine. But it never really hit me what an absolute turntable philistine I was until I went to Norman Audio, the agent for Pro-ject turntables here. Because when I said that I wanted a turntable with switchable speed control between 33 and 45, the guy looked at me like I was mad.

"No, no, no..." he smiled gently, "Anything electronic like that will spoil the sound. That's why we only have one model in the entire range with the speed control."
"So how you change the speed?" I asked. And was truly aghast when he said: "By removing the platter and adjusting the belt lor."

REMOVE THE PLATTER?? I was to learn lots more that afternoon -- it's important what material the platter is made of, and also the tonearm. You want a heavy platter that will stabilise the spinning record, and a carbon fibre tonearm vibrates very little so the sound picked up by the stylus isn't distorted.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I decided in the end to go for a thing with far-too-many-model-numbers-and-funky abbreviations -- the "Pro-Ject 1 Xpression Mk II". At S$850, it is the probably the least electronic electrical appliance I have. Only the motor is electric and everything else is manual ("handmade in Czech Republic by 5,000 worker", said the guy at the shop). There is an on-off switch to get the platter going. It doesn't start automatically when you cue the record, and no, the tonearm doesn't auto-return when the record ends.




Then when I went home to finally plug the thing in, I realised that my new amplifier is so modern it doesn't have a phono input. That meant I had to buy an amplifier just for the turntable (another $220!!). AND then of course, the phono amp didn't have RCA red-and-white cables of its own. Having invested more than $1,000 already, I couldn't very well use old 50-cent cables, so I shelled out another $80 for high-end cables.

In the end, though, it was all worth it. When the first bars of Deacon Blue's "Are You There With Another Girl?" belted out of the hi-fi, I was floored. And I continue to be floored listening to extended versions of songs like Furniture's "Brilliant Mind" and OMD's "Secret" at top volume. I had long forgotten how good records sound, but I have also never, since I bought them, heard my own records sound like that.

So it's back to the good old days. Kneeling and freezing your butt off on the cold marble floor putting on one record after another. Not being able to walk away and do something else because you know you have to be back to stop the record and put on another in exactly four minutes, give or take a remixed minute or two. Sitting there like a doddering idiot while the record is spinning, having nothing else to do but stare into space or re-read every word on the sleeve. Getting high on the toxic anti-static spray fumes as you clean the next single you're about to put on. Congratulating yourself needlessly again and again on your prescient purchase of the oh-so-beautiful Tears For Fears picture discs. This is all about the circles we've found. Through the ups and downs, it goes round.