Gramophone Dreams

One August night in 1965, I parked in the driveway of my best friend Derf Marko's house and let myself in the back door. As I entered, I could see to the bottom of the basement stairs, where I observed a loud pulsing darkness with plumes of agreeably acrid smoke floating up through the stairwell. Back in the darkness, I heard Derf/Fred and another person making declarative statements in loud unintelligible bursts. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, Marko's basement rec room looked like a trashed-out tiki bar illuminated by a single red Christmas light hanging just above a Dual turntable. The room was dark to a point where it was impossible to walk without stepping on records or to make out who was there and what was going on. I slouched on a couch, closed my eyes, and let my mind follow the sounds of rock drummers wailing like angry cats.

Soon it was obvious: Marko was frantically playing one drum solo after another while some crazy old dude kept hollering for the next solo before the last one finished. The revved-up stranger kept slapping his knees, muttering, and drumming along with each different drummer. Stacks of unsleeved LPs littered the linoleum floor and pink wool couch I was slumping on. But unbelievably, Marko adeptly—without cursing, fumbling, or hesitation—located every solo he wanted.

I found out later that the crazed "old guy" was Ginger Baker, which means that Marko was tripping out, putting on his best blues shaman deejay show, an act he'd been perfecting since he started working at his dad's Chess Records outlet (footnote 1). Every Sunday, Fred's job at his dad's store was to play records, keep an eye out for shoplifters, and scrutinize the bin browsers in order to play records he thought they might buy. He called that "casting baits," and that's how he met Ginger Baker.

Not counting speed-typing and getting arrested, Marko's best skill was playing records for people with a thirst for far-out blues and gospel.

Another summer night, at about 2 in the morning, I was sitting on the sidewalk next to a motel door when Fred appeared carrying a professional-looking battery-powered reel-to-reel recorder. Before he sat down, he set the machine on the sidewalk next to me. Then with perfect nonchalance, he pushed play and lit up a Lucky Strike. I expected some Del-Vetts or Shadows of Knight recorded at The Cellar; instead I heard a screaming black preacher power-thrashing his way out of the deck's tiny speaker.

That distorted thrashing morphed into radical African dance music with strong body-yanking rhythms accompanied by the raspy hollering of someone channeling the Holy Spirit.

I never imagined a band with those kinds of tight, ratcheting rhythms or that quantity of emotional force being emitted from a performer. The sound was so forward and danceable that a trio of big-hair girls came over and started gyrating in front of us. When this short tape ended—it was in fact a live James Brown concert—I looked up and saw Marko smirking sinisterly. He knew I'd never heard of James Brown. He knew I'd freak. And I knew he was the coolest kid in Chicago.

Deejay Coolosities
This year at AXPONA, I started and finished each day visiting renowned audio show presenters like Bea and Luke Manley, John DeVore, Jeffrey Catalano, Andrew Jones, Jeff Joseph, Kathryn "Kat" Ourlian, and Peter Qvortrup. The DeVore Fidelity room became my personal hide-from-the-hubbub oasis, a place to breathe quiet air and refresh my spirit, hanging with my favorite tall wizard and DJ Supreme, John DeVore. Sitting next to me was my humblest friend, Triode Mafia brother and legendary amp designer Noriyasu Komuro. Together, we watched John D and Box Furniture's Anthony Abbate spin 78rpm discs on EMT's new, supercool 928 turntable. DeVore's own O/Bronze speakers were being powered by the beyond-cool, just-released, single-ended 300B amp from the newly formed Komuro Amplifier Company. When John and Anthony spin discs, each one is a wow-level surprise I've never heard and a wonder to behold.

The power of skilled presenters is in how their vibe, their charisma, and their record-playing choices lure showgoers in and hold them—then bring them back for more. I call that seduction. High Water Sound's Jeffrey Catalano is the master of such "bring them back for more" seductions. He draws roomfuls of repeat visitors and has created a legion of fans with his charisma and famously good taste in both music and sound.

This year, record players and CD players were the most common demo sources. Black and silver discs work well at shows because they don't depend on internet, and because the repetitive pauses of changing discs allow presenters to set up the next musical selection, answer questions, and connect with their audience.

If you're a new-to-the-scene startup company and need to introduce yourself, here are some recommendations for demonstrations. Smile constantly and keep the tech talk simple, quick, and understandable by anyone. Never boast or put other companies down. Let your passion for music and the sounds from your records sell your product, not your blah blah blah.

The savviest presenters merge the personas of therapist, carnival barker, and evangelist. The best part of visiting audio shows is the possibility—nay, the likelihood—of falling into a live scene where an evangelist presenter is on their deejay game, and the audience is locked in for the ride. I call this enhanced listening: when a group of strangers are hypnotized en masse in a small room listening intensely to a recorded performance.

When I got home, I wrote to deejay sensationnelle Kat Ourlian, SME's global sales and marketing director, asking if she had any advice for aspiring presenters. She titled her response, "Kat's brain dump for deejaying hi-fi," and here are a few of her thoughts:

• Know your equipment.

• Create a vibe.

• Musical transitions keep the mood flowing. Extremes can be thrilling but only allow for instant gratification, so keep showgoers in the room with a "magical trip of flowing music" (emphasis mine).

• My favorite advice of all: "If the presenter enjoys being there, so will the visitors."

At AXPONA 2024, I noticed a direct relationship between my perception of a room's sound quality, the nature of the products being demonstrated, and my feelings about the presentation and the presenter. If merely being there caused me to feel adventurous and enticed, the music offered greater pleasures. When I felt annoyed or bored, I scanned for sound quality issues as I skulked to the door.

During my flight home, my brightest memories were of the most surprising recordings played by the best presenters and how those unexpected treats triggered my brain to listen for new things.

AudioQuest Yosemite tonearm cable
By my count, 105 distinct tonearm cables are listed on the Cable Company's website. The most expensive was Tara Labs', at $14,900 for 1m. The least expensive was Cardas Iridium, at $170 for 1m. My experience comparing tonearm cables suggests that each of these 105 wires could make your sound system sound more or less enjoyable, more or less real. My experience choosing tonearm cables suggests that audiophiles seeking to upgrade theirs have little choice but to narrow the criteria of their search to a range of prices they can comfortably afford and to what they consider their favorite house sound by manufacturers they trust. That's what I've been doing.

For use with EMT's 912-HI tonearm (which did not come with a cable), I chose Cardas's Clear Beyond tonearm cable ($4000 for 1m). I use Cardas Clear throughout my system, and I thought its moist organic character might add some juice and flavor to EMT's $3195 JSD6 moving coil cartridge, which leans toward a dryish studio monitor sound. Turns out that was a good hunch: The Cardas wire put just the right amount of meat on the JSD6's well-formed bones.

Sonics-wise, I consider tonearm cables to be equal partners with phono cartridges, but I never felt a need to experiment with cartridge-to-cable matching. Mostly I use whatever cable came with the tonearm and switch cartridges when the spirit moves me.

In that lazy spirit, high-quality materials and pro-level build quality were the chief reasons I started using a discontinued Grado Labs cable with my Sorane SA-1.2 tonearm. One day, I couldn't find the Sorane cable, and I spotted the Grado cable in my tonearm junk box. I couldn't remember how it got there.

As I installed it, I asked myself: Will this antique cable sound as good as it looks and feels? After I put it in, I listened casually: the Grado wire appeared to have a little more vim and body than the cable that came with the Sorane, so I left it in. Months later, I compared the Grado wires to the stock cable that came with the Thomas Schick arm, and once again, it seemed fuller and better toned, but not as transparent.

Once the Grado wire was attached to the Sorane, it stayed there until now, when I took it out to audition AudioQuest's Yosemite tonearm cable ($549 for 1.2m; footnote 2).

Wildlife in Yosemite: I've been binging on Barbra Streisand since I bought five lightly used early albums at a stoop sale for $1 each. So naturally, the first record I played after installing AudioQuest Yosemite cable on the Sorane tonearm was My Name Is Barbra, Two ... (Columbia LP CS9209). It sounded dramatically clear and super-detailed, but also a bit hard and bright and off tone. I concluded that the cable needed breaking in, and the only way to do that was play more records.

The fifth record I played, using Dynavector's XX2 moving coil, was one of my favorites: Bela Bartók: Eight Hungarian Folk Songs (Qualiton LP SLPX 1253); it features Hungarian singers Erzsébet Török and Terézia Csajbók with Erzsbébet Tusa on piano. This stunning recording of an inspired performance comes in an artful gatefold cover and delivers peak analog pleasures of every kind. With the Yosemite cables, this glossy (mint-minus) disc sounded pure and fresh and utterly transparent in a manner not unlike a DSD recording made by Todd Garfinkle on M•A Recordings. It had that same dense, wet, strangely lit transparency as DSD.

After 20 sides, AudioQuest's Yosemite cables sounded radically more transparent than the Grado, Schick, and Sorane wires they replaced. These Hungarian folk songs never sounded more succinctly rendered and beautiful than they did that day with Dynavector's XX2 moving coil loaded at 100 ohms into MoFi's MasterPhono moving coil input. This was crisp, clean, high-performance audio. Compared to the Sorane and Schick wires, the Yosemite put through a more nuanced and transparent version of the XX2's dynamics.

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Footnote 1: Marko's Surplus City at 602 South State Street in Chicago.

Footnote 2: AudioQuest, 2621 White Rd., Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 790-6000. Web: audioquest.com.