For vinyl lovers

[Auburn Annie]

Putting vinyl back into your life
New phono preamplifier lets you listen to LPs on today's equipment

By Gary Krakow
Columnist
MSNBC
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET March 29, 2006


LPs are making a comeback. Not that CD manufacturers and Internet download sites should lose any sleep, but many people out there — including those firmly rooted in the iPod generation — are enjoying vinyl recordings and their rich musical sound once again.

Ready to jump aboard? You'll need a record player, obviously. But you may also be startled to find that your home stereo doesn't contain the circuitry that lets you listen to LPs. It's not that it's particularly complicated — but when CDs took over, electronics manufacturers stopped including the circuitry that lets you listen to records.

There are expensive high-end options, of course. But I’ve found a new, little red box that allows you to listen your LPs in style without paying a bundle.

The item in question is the Bellari VP129 Tube Phono Preamp made by the Rolls Corporation, an audio electronics manufacturer in Salt Lake City. It processes and amplifies the very, very small electrical signal that comes from a turnable's high output, moving-magnet phono cartridge and needle, amplifies it and sends to your music system. It’s very, very good at what it does. (Very low output moving coil cartridges will need yet another step-up device.)

The whole concept began when people at Rolls wanted to listen to LPs and didn’t want to spend a lot of money doing so. You see, once this type of circuitry was removed from equipment we can afford, people started making separate, super-duper boxes we couldn’t afford.

The VP129 measures 6 by 2.5 by 5.4 inches and weighs less than a pound. There are RCA inputs (from your turntable) and output (to your amplifier/receiver) jacks, a headphone jack, plus volume controls for LP playback and headphones, a rumble filter (in case you don’t appreciate heavy bass notes) and a mute button.

Oh yes, there’s one 12AX7 vacuum tube sticking up right smack in the middle of the box. For the record, it’s a modern-day Electro-Harmonix model made in Russia. Rolls chose a vacuum tube because it makes the VP129 sound terrific. The tube circuit was designed in house, based on a very old schematic blueprint.


Using the VP129 is straight forward. Plug the record player to the device, plug the device to your amplifier/receiver, let the tube warm up for at least 15 to 20 minutes, adjust the volume to your liking and then sit back and listen.

Sounds great, no? The Bellari has the sound of very sophisticated hi-fi gear, of items that retail for a lot more money. The VP129’s tube-driven circuit reproduces voices and allows them to sound real. There’s no other way to explain it. The bass is authoritative. The high notes are smooth and extended. And the critical midrange — where most music and voices occur — sounds absolutely right.

The VP129 now retails for $249 — still a relative bargain for such a terrific sounding device. Actually, the people at Rolls just raised the price after receiving raves in a recent issue of Stereophile magazine (a high-end hi-fi fanzine). When I received my test sample the box sold for $199. Luckily, if you search the Web you can still find the Bellari at the $199 price.

If listening to LPs sounds good to you and this preamp peaks your interest as it should — I’d recommend that you jump on the chance to own a great sounding device, made in the United States, selling at the old price. But even at $249 you won’t be disappointed.

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12065754/

[<Reminder>]

Auburn Annie,

Thanks for the info. This may be a part of the bridge between generations. Although I am fortunate enough to have equipment so old that I can still listen to my LPs, I imagine there are lots of folks that would enjoy unpacking their relics and sharing them with their grandchildren or children. The good old days.

RMD

[charlene]

Coming home fromt he Kristofferson concert the other I was in the train and a young girl about 10 was with her mum and dad sitting across the aisle from us. The parents were talking about music, singers etc. and the mum mentioned an old 45 she had bought as a young kid. The daughter looked at her parents and said "what's a 45?" And then the explanations started.....the poor child was bewildered and I think, slightly frightened!
lol
I have sitting beside my computer my 33 year old SONY stereo record player/am/fm unit with its two speakers.....I need a new needle and I'm sure it would work like I bought it yesterday....

[joveski]

lots of old albums are being re-released on 180g vinyl... i prefer the sound of vinyl over cd.

when you turn the volume up, cd's get louder, whereas vinyl gets louder and "fuller"

[Gord H]

I'm one of those people that didn't throw out their turntable and LP's when CD's became mainstream around 1988. I kept my LP's because I have several that will never see the light of day as CD's unless I convert them myself.

I've noticed a resurgence in the popularity of LP's again especially from the younger generation. To me there is nothing like holding an LP in your hands admiring the artwork and actually being able to read the lyrics if they are included.

You don't need to spend $300 on a preamp to listen to a record. You can find many recievers in the thrift shops that still work for less than $20. And to me those recievers were better built than the stuff that is made today.

I still have a 1970's Pioneer upstairs! :D

[geodeticman]

YES..... ah yes vinyl LP's, the rituals of bowing-out the cardboard to insert the beloved mint condition record; futzing with the static-inducing anti-static plastic poutch inside that would scrunch-up at the bottom of the sleeve and obstruct careful insertion. such nostalgia.

But on a esoteric front, audiophiles seem to like older good-quality stereos from the 70's and somewhat earlier like Charlene's Sony and my beloved "Scott" stereo for many reasons.

They also loved, often, the acoustic-suspension speakers that further promulgated the "warm" rich sound biasing the bass end, like Harmon-Kardon or Advent 15" 3-way speakers sealed airtight and HEAVY, versus current cheap, lighter current ported speakers utilizing resonating tubes curled up inside like (expensive and good) Bose wave-somethings nowadays.


They especially liked the old tube-type stereos. Remember your folks' old "console" dry-sink-like HI-FI stereo console with Perry Como and Reader's Digest big boxed collections (some things never change..) playing ? They were usually tube-type I think.

At least one company is still making stereo components with vacuum-tubes since the advent of the integrated circuits and chips of modern stereo components. I recall McIntosh was one of the high-end vacuum-tube hold-outs.

They maintain tubes sound warmer,truer, and have more soul than their all integrated circuit and chip progressions that followed. Also true of the records themselves.

One genuine audiophile, an old boss of mine, (read:he's spent over $30,000 on his rack) I know is so into it that he has a record player worthy of its own paragraph for english 102 lovers out there:

It (HIS..) one and only custom-built turntable (fun fact: know what the difference is between a record player and a turntable? - at least another $100 in old days, and 400-800 more now) is comprised of a "linear tracking" tonearm as opposed to a tangential-tracking.

That's the most common type (although strictly speaking it is a tangent only at the very first outer spiral start, then turns into a trig "secant" .....er....yawn..).

Moreover, what makes his really unique is that he , an EE like John (I believe you said you were an EE John, yes?) in a Quixotic quest (boy do I like that term as a GL fan..)to reduce or near-eliminate the old bain (and current, too) of high-end vinyl record enthusiasts.

This was how many grams of tone-arm weight bore-upon the groove in the record; all eventually causing wear, adjustable in old mid-end units like Dual brand versus Garrards, so as to cause minimum record-wear ironically by virtue of the less-than-innocuous method whereby they read the analogue data.

This is with bumps in the groove transferred via (mentioned above in this thread in principle at least ) the "piezo-electric" affect whereby pressure (the bumps hitting the needle) is converted into electrical impulses corrolating with specific sounds.

(Am I good so-far Obee-Wan Sir John [E. Engineer]?), not unlike old(er) circa 1950-1975 telephones where the carbon stuff transducer in the microphone end converted voice vibrations to electrical signals via same piezo electric bag, and were converted back via same in reverse I think (John?).

Well, my boss' one-of-a-kind turntable is already linear tracking where the tonearm typically would move laterally across the semi-diameter of the record on bars at both ends of the tonearm, but has a big surprise to go.

This was not good enough for my boss, who blew over $7,000 on the turntable alone where he furthered the linear principle with this: (its a hoot!). He had them build an air compressor that ran (quietly) in an adjacent room, sending pressurized air through small plastic tubing up to the turntable where it COMPLETELY supported the tonearm on a precisely-regulated pressure equilibrium completely by puffs of air.

This permitted the barest minimum of tonearm needle pressure that would read the bumps (data). This happily keeps wear and tear to a minimum no matter the amount of babying otherwise. HIS very turntable was featured in a Playboy issue in the 80's where they described it as one-of-a-kind.

This was theoretically a Playboy article to engender the comical pretense that some husbands would use to purchase the naked pix (although more tasteful than others...... ;) ) in girly-mags by purporting to have excellent articles, interviews, and reviews (Playboy does..) . Oh well his stereo story is played out here i think.

My old Scott is a marcel, 31 years old, and sounds better than ever. Once it developed a humming-buzzing, and I discovered that one wire inside, if ( do NOT do this ZZZZZAP) I wiggled it a certain way it would stop humming.

So, in a brilliant stroke of the Rube Goldberg school of fixing by bashing and removing something...NOT.. I comically RIPPED out the offending wire, never knowing its purpose (although green likely for ground, hence it not stopping the box cold) and it fixed it for good !

I had previously had it repaired professionally for $75 while in college ( a lot of money to a student in '78) and it started humming in a matter of weeks.

Scott allegedly was first to refer to their equipment as "Hi-Fi", of course high-fidelity as you all know. I LOVE the warmer sound (to me and many others who profess same) of gen-u-ine vacuum tubes.

I sure don't remember 20 minute warm-up times, but if you kept your record's scratch-free and, like newer CD's, handle them ONLY by the edge and center whole, and used some mysterious solution ( probably denatured alcohol) to clean them, they faithfully re-produced the warmest sound, with (to me) a definate emphasis on bass, low-end of the mhz-spectrum, voices too.

I played ALL of Gordon's records on that Scott, and have since supplanted it with some NEWER BUT GOODER rack equipment I inherited from my Uncle (who spoke in admiration of Gord's music and intrinsic poetry enthusiastically at age 84 !)

I am thrilled to hear LP's are making a slow comeback. I understand they have always been available in audiophile shops; however "new' I do not know.

They also had "audiophile-quality" digital-mastered copies of top-selling albums of all time. The digital mastering I found confusing, given all the praise of everything analogue and old... perhaps it was digitally re-mastered to have a warmer sound by design.

I have to my knowledge one of the only Gordon Lightfoot LP's issued in audiophile digitally-mastered recording (or some such distinction on the cover) of.... you guessed it... the Sundown LP.

My puff-of-air turntable boss (never liked him) played it for me on his system; it was absolutely...awesome. The strings and orchestration we have many times spoke so highly of by Nick DeCaro in the early 70's on Seven Island.. and Anyone Home.... were staggering, soaring, epic comes to mind. He dryly commented he was not a GL fan, citing GL being too "tin-pan".

Will someone explain to me what tin-pan *really* means ? I suspect it means "can sing well and read and write written music", and also being accused of being effite bourgoise,i.e. the would-be soulful but alas born with a silver spoon, comparitively...

That's the feeling I have had when reading it, and find it offensive.
Certainly middle-class people can have lives of myriad forms of genuine suffering and be posessed of genuine "soul", I do not consider it a financial or societal "class" question, but rather one of how the individual experienced their own personal genuine sorrow and joy; successes and failures; loves won and loves lost.
This knows no economic bounds.

Actually, I *think* they mean for "tinpan": "too vacuous, without "soul" born of suffering, and lives of the (forgive me) "sub-proletareate" (read: can't sing but rather *croak* with immense feeling and poor musical listenability speaking/singing of admittedly VERY hard times), where the meassage was, perhaps, survival songs born of terrible suffering, not to be criticized.

Rather perhaps tin-pan to be praised instead for beautiful music listenability and understated suffrage of the kind we all share, i.e. popular?), and having too much "production" - sometimes maybe in later albums as noted by many serious GL fans re: Lanois and Foster. I don't know.

I have always loved the Gord=-over-Gord harmonies in 3-5 part in the 1969 - 1978 time period, peaking (to my taste in this regard) of high production value adding of hired union string sections, full orchestra, french horns (where would Circle of Steel be without that French Horn and wood recorder?), etc. in the 1970 - 1976 time period.

Boy oh boy I rambled here, but I certainly hope only those wishing to read did so; I pity the thoughtful fan who read all this without wanting to. Its just that.... thinking of all those years listening to my RECORDS on my old record player of Gordon brings back floods of memories, ones I would bet we all share at least in part.
Thank you for allowing me this if you read it.

Let's see, this thread was to be one of vinyl records coming back. I have debauched this concept to the point of GL fan high treason. The punishment, I suspect, should be a thorough verbal thrashing by some poor fool who read all this when they did not want to.

I shall brace myself for the onslaught by this person. I will accept my crime and punishment, but beg the court de jour's indulgance on one fact: I love all things that pertain to listening to or pondering GL music, and claim freedom of speech. And the right to be a Lighthead !
j/k LOL thanks for your patience; in fact I DO hope parts of this were interesting or memory-rattling. Its good to blow out the cobwebs sometimes on old stuff.

"...Be known as a man who will always be candid on questions that do not relate.."

- Steve geo-man

[ March 31, 2006, 06:33: Message edited by: geodeticman ]