Copper

Back to Basics

I had a minor-league epiphany, courtesy of Waylon Jennings and my seven-month-old granddaughter. I sang in choirs and choruses for many years, floating between baritone and bass depending upon the...

What Made Woodstock So Different?

In several years of so very many noteworthy 50th anniversaries, two stand out: the July 20th, 1969 landing of humans on the Moon, and the Woodstock music festival. I admit, what made it...

See You in September

Welcome to Copper #92! With the last gasp of summer comes the start of school years, Labor Day outings and gatherings...and with any luck you won't be haunted by the...

A Turntable of my Own, Part 3

Copper#90 ; Part 2, in Copper #91---Ed.> All of the brass points/receptor cups were designed to have cored-out cups so they could be filled with a lead/elastomer matrix. Using a...

The California Audio Show Part 2

Part 1 of my report on the California Audio Show appeared in Copper #91. That article gave an overview of the show, and described the exhibit rooms on the first floor. This concluding piece will...

Rococo Loco

Hunting Big Game

Too Tweaky?

Issue 91

So You Think You Love The White Album?

Probably not as much as Rutherford Chang. This is how I first heard about a collection of the Beatles’ White Album: “Hey Jay Jay, there is a store somewhere that sells...

The Long Goodbye

Over the last few years of writing this column, I’ve had to write “RIP” in titles several times as friends and colleagues have passed away. Being a typical male, I’ve...

The Sound of Recorded Music

Different time periods in history are associated with particular architectural trends, building techniques and construction materials, different stages of technological development, as well as different styles and forms of musical...

The California Audio Show Part 1

The Ninth California Audio Show took place July 26-28 at the Hilton Oakland Airport, which has been the hosting venue for the last few years. Our reports on the 2017 CAS can...

Billy Taylor: Eight Great Tracks

Pianist and composer Billy Taylor (1921-2010) grew up in Washington, DC, where he took classical piano lessons with a man named Henry Grant. Grant’s other claim to fame in jazz...

A Turntable of my Own, Part 2

Copper #90---Ed.> Here we see the finished laminated fiberglass plinth sitting atop the 1 ½” thick machined aluminum sub-plate. You will notice the ¾” thick grey MDF pieces sitting between...

Hall Sounds

Late this May I fulfilled a longstanding wish—to attend Choral Evensong at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Director Stephen Cleobury retired at the end of June; this was one of the last...

Abandoned in Occidental

The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of the Vinyl Record

Two of the world’s leading chip manufacturers have recently announced moving on to 5 nm manufacturing. Nanotechnology and micromachining are becoming hot keywords in technical and scientific publications. Micro Electro...

Spandau Ballet

The London punk scene was wearing some musicians out. People like songwriting guitarist and keyboardist Gary Kemp, who wanted to seem like a rebellious musician, but not in the same...

We All Shine On, Redux

49 years ago, in the first international worldwide television broadcast, John Lennon sang to us, “There’s nothing you can do but you can learn how to play the game –...

Happy Landings!

Welcome to Copper #90! By the time you read these, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing will have come and gone, and my landing in Oakland for the California Audio Show will also...

The Dave Clark Five

When writing this column, I frequently close my eyes and go back to certain times in my life – in this case 1964 post Beatles arrival – and try to...

A Turntable of my Own, Part 1

Copper #72, #73, and #74. In that series of articles, Ken described how he cut down trees on his property, milled, planed, and cured the lumber, then built his listening...

Issue 90

Quintessence

Sometimes you encounter stories where it turns out that the story you think you want to tell, is just a very small part of a much bigger story. This is one of those stories-within-stories....

All Fingers on Deck

Welcome to Copper #89! I hope you emerged from the 4th (Independence Day, for our friends around the world) with all digits intact. By now, you've undoubtedly noticed some changes in the...

The Sound Of Music, Redux

There’s something I’ve been thinking about for around 25 years; ever since I started working with Bill Bottrell, and he made me aware of how different my sound was. What that...

My First Visit to China

[This article was first edited by Art Dudley and published by him in the May/June 2002 issue of  Listener magazine; I thank Art for his help. Originally titled, “In a Shanghai Speaker...

Adelpha Californica, Zion National Park

Badwater Basin, Death Valley