Max Roach, R.I.P.

Max Roach, R.I.P.

I have a <I>Slate</I> <A HREF="http://www.slate.com/id/2172543/">column</A&gt; today, an appreciation of Max Roach, who died last week at age 83. (Sometimes my editors let me break away from war and peace, though I have one of those <A HREF="http://www.slate.com/id/2172634">columns</A&gt; today, too.) The headline writer has me calling Roach the “greatest drummer” in jazz. I think Billy Higgins was probably better, but I didn’t make a fuss. In any case, all great jazz drummers who came up after the mid-1940s, Higgins included, leaned or built on Max Roach’s innovations. Listen to the sound-clips that I link to in the column, and be sure to watch the YouTube clip toward the end. If you didn’t know before, you’ll see and hear what we’re all now missing.

Subwoofer Interconnect

Forums

I admit to being a semi-convinced skeptic when it comes to cables and interconnects; I can readily hear differences between cables and interconnects even though part of me does not want to admit that this is possible.

Yet, I am a holdout on the concept of special subwoofer interconnects. I have a nice flexible Monoprice RCA terminated interconnect that seems to do fine. But if this can be improved upon in an audible way I am interested.

Beatles and Stones MFSL Box

I am going to sell my Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab box sets ... "The Beatles" and "The Rolling Stones". The Beatles was played 3 times and the The Stones was played once for recording to tape. They were played on a SOTA vacuum turntable, but it's been too long for me to remember the tonearm and cartridge I had at the time. Is eBay the best place to sell these? And what would you say a fair market price would be?

Cheers,
Gerry

Rega VTA

Has anyone tried any of the VTA adjusters for the Rega arms? I currently have the Expressimo piece, but it only adjusts for VTA on the intial set up and then is a fixed height unless I loosen the nut beneath the table for each adjustment. That's a bit of a pain for each disc. I've seen the Pete Riggle VTAF which looks interesting. Of course, everyone claims improved sound for this product even without adjusting VTA. (I thought "blacker blacks" was just for TV's.) I can understand the idea of a gravity held arm with this device but it almost seems a bit like a Rube Goldberg design.

O Macdonald!

O Macdonald!

I've written before about the Crippen & Landru publication of <I>The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator, Including Newly Discovered Case Notes</I>, edited by Tom Nolan, which has a cover by my buddy <A HREF="http://www.jeffwong.com/caricature.htm">Jeff Wong</A>, who also happens to be an internationally acknowledged expert on Macdonald.

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