Michael Fremer reviewed the original darTZeel NHB-18NS full-function preamplifier (it includes a moving-coil phono stage) in the June 2006 issue of Stereophile. He bought the review sample, then replaced it with the NHB-18NS Mk.2, which he wrote about in June 2017.
Although I performed a complete set of measurements on the original NHB-18NS, I never did…
Though it was cut on July 5, 1958, at the still-new jazz festival, for some reason I always had the year at '57 and didn't realize my error until recently; I had…
This is exciting news: It's good for all of us when the industry thrives. But another, less welcome thing has been happening, too: Prices have started rising.
In one sense, this is hardly surprising: It's supply and demand, right? If demand increases but supply is…
French earned fame in the 1980s as the lead guitarist for transvestite metal band Twisted Sister, which produced some of the most recognizable—and widely licensed—rock music in history: "We're Not Gonna Take It." "I Wanna Rock."
These days, French stays busy in other ways. He has a podcast in which he chats with other musicians, members of the music industry, and miscellaneous folks. He's a Beatles scholar with an impressive cache of Beatles records and memorabilia—he seems to have kept everything,…
"I walked in and watched this…
The Replacements have a great rock'n'roll Formation Story: Four rough-and-tumble Minneapolis kids, in and out of trouble, bitten by the music bug and headed for either stardom or dead ends. They chose to go all in and make this debut album, which is still heating the blood 4 decades on.
Front-man Paul Westerberg sums up the spirit of Sorry, Ma…
We are at a point in time when most new jazz releases were recorded during the pandemic. Many are direct artistic responses to the crisis. The response of drummer Joe Farnsworth is bound up with the city where he has lived for 30 years.
In New York, the center of the jazz universe, the music stopped in early 2020. Farnsworth says, "I've learned…
For fans of these two highly idiosyncratic artists, the only surprise this album may hold is the music. Others may reel as much at the spontaneous improvisatory nature of the playing as the wildness of the repertoire and the uniqueness of its sequencing.
If there's anything that Leclair's short Tambourin in C major and C.P.E. Bach's Presto, Helm 66 VI have in common with two movements from Jörg…
For those unfamiliar with them, in a moving-iron (MI) cartridge a tiny piece of iron—not a coil or a magnet—…
The other evening I played for a friend—a mastering engineer who shall remain nameless—Bob Ludwig's legendary "pulled from the shelves" (footnote 3) original mastering of Led Zeppelin's II (LP, Atlantic SD 8236). He was awed by the shimmer and sizzle of John Bonham's cymbals, and the tuneful slam of the rest of his drum kit.
The Hyperion's…