Copper


You Can’t Think of Everything

Issue 115Opening Salvo

Sometimes even the most perceptive of us can have a blind spot or a complete brain freeze. I’ve been editing Copper for more than eight months and hadn’t realized that, unlike every...

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How Products Are Made, Part One: Initiation

Issue 115DEEP DIVE

We audio people often discuss products of all sorts, whether audio components, music media, accessories and so on, but do we really know much about how these are made and...

Nektar: Remember the Future

Issue 115TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

Richard Halem from Creative Management Associates calls and asks me for help. He has a group flying into JFK tomorrow and he wants me to escort them and their equipment...

After the Fire

Issue 115PARTING SHOT

Taken on the Mendocino coast of California, March 2008 with a Canon PowerShot A710 IS. This is an unprocessed color shot, not black and white.

Confessions of a Setup Man, Part Seven: You Can...

Issue 115FRANKLY SPEAKING

  When I was a few years out of college I had put together a pretty respectable stereo system, in large part thanks to the advice of my friend and The...

John Grado of Grado Labs, Part One

Issue 115THE COPPER INTERVIEW

Grado Labs was Founded in 1953 by Joseph Grado and has become synonymous with phonograph cartridge excellence and also, over the last 30 years, in the headphone market.  John Grado...

Mozart's Tito and Idomeneo

Issue 115TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Earlier this month I watched the Met’s free streaming presentation of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito; these nightly broadcasts are a generous, welcome gift to a pandemic-bound world. Yet as I...

The Earth's Heartbeat: Native American Music

Issue 115FEATURED

All plants are our brothers and sisters,they talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come. – Arapaho nation literature[1]...

The Ordinary Beauty of Elbow, Part Two

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 115MUSIC

I had thought that the intervening time between Part One and Part Two of these pieces on the great Manchester band, Elbow, would bring about greater familiarity with their recent works, but...

Jelly Roll Morton: Early Master of Piano Jazz

Issue 115TRADING EIGHTS

If you love the up-tempo, jangly blues and stride piano of Fats Waller and Fletcher Henderson, don’t forget to give thanks to Jelly Roll Morton, who practically invented that sound....

Pat Benatar: Rock is Her Battlefield

Issue 115OFF THE CHARTS

Brooklyn-born Patricia Andrzejewski wanted to be an opera singer. Instead, she ended up as one of the most successful female rock stars of all time. She’d started singing lessons as...

Basic Hi-Fi-Manship

Issue 115AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

Who needed audio forums back then, with this kind of advice? And who else thinks this looks like the work of Don Martin, Mad’s Maddest Artist? From Audio, May 1954. You can’t go wrong...

The Rolling Stones in High(ish) Resolution

Issue 115TO BE DETERMINED

I’m focusing on several “high resolution” releases by the Rolling Stones from different periods of the band  that have just been made available for streaming playback on Qobuz and Tidal....

Italian Progressive Rock, Part Four

Issue 115FEATURED

In this final installment, I’ll introduce you to three more bands. Part one in this series focused on Premiata Forneria Marconi (“Award-Winning Marconi Bakery”), or PFM, the most well-known of the Italian rock...

Are 180-Gram Vinyl Records Really Better?

Issue 115REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

Disk records have been around for a while, long before they reached their vinyl form. Since then, vinyl records have been available in different sizes and profiles. During the mass-manufacturing...

One Man’s McIntosh Mission

Issue 115EUREKA MOMENTS

My first stereo wasn’t as impressive as the effort it took to sell my parents on why buying it was such a good idea. I had received enough money in...