Had my good ol' dad and his girlfriend over to check out my new place tonight, but along with them came her bratty little nine-year-old offspring. This kid is the reason I hate kids. I used to like them, really. I did.
So here we are, in my room, poking around, and I see him go for the turntable...
"Play it cool, he's just looking..." I think to myself. He picks up the tonearm.
His mother tells him to be careful with it and he sets it down. Phew.
A minute passes and I look over to see him jamming the tonearm down on to the bare platter, trying to make something happen.
"Whoawhoawhoa Daniel! Be careful!" I moved to intercept. My father rushed over as well.
When I was young, as far back as I can remember in fact, I always took great pleasure in sneaking over to my dad's equipment cabinet and pressing a random selection of buttons and fiddling with some knobs until I was satisfied with my "adjustments", and then sneaking away again. He LOVED that. But even back then, I remember knowing that the turntable was not to be played with.
Upon returning from dinner later, I plucked through my assortment of here-and-there vinyls and found an old blues album I'd never heard of. I felt bluesy. I placed the disc on the platter, brushed the dust, and fired her up, but no music came. Sound, certainly, but not music. A sort of terrible shrieking grind.
Closer inspection revealed that the cantilever of my beloved Grace F9E had been "relocated" a full 180 degrees backwards. Not upside down. Backwards. Needless to say it was broken.
But now I'm enjoying an ice cold recently matured autumn homebrew and looking at cartridges (Ortofon 2M Blue?) listening to my -digital- (grumble grumble) copy of Pink Floyd's "Meddle", and I think I'll be ok. ;) But, gaaaahh! Kids!