Urban Chic and Old Technologies...

I did not realize that you could plug a turntable directly into a PC until a friend of mine told me of such a unit about one year ago. She said they sell them at Urban Outfitters, and so I had to go and see for myself.

I found Urban Outfitters; it’s in the heart of downtown, on St. Catherine between de la Montagne and Drummond. What they sell is clothes: t-shirts, hats, vests, trousers, more t-shirts. They also had quite a bit of accessory-type stuff: books, deco-art, lamps, key-chains, games. What they didn’t have was this – what they didn’t have was a turntable.

My friend, however, not to be contradicted, sent me a link to the web catalogue page with the turntable. She thinks she is smart, and perhaps she is.

I think of this because I have rescued my record player. I wasn’t going to take it with us when we moved. But at the last minute I jammed. I jammed, and I grabbed it from the kitchen where the owner had put it while he renovated, and I grabbed the old Sony receiver also.

This was not my first turntable. In fact, I didn’t even buy this one; it was my kid sister’s at one point, my father having bought it for her when I left home and took the stereo with me. The record player I took at that time was a Sony direct drive; I don’t remember exactly what happened to it – possibly nothing, could be that I had one too many at one point, and I sold it.

I remember that in its latter days it ran a bit fast, the Sony that is. The speed was adjustable, but even at its lowest setting it could be fast. I couldn’t figure that out really; how could a direct drive run fast? But I replaced it with a Technics that someone had the courtesy to steal from me one fine day in 1993. They stole a tuner also then, but left me the amplifier and the CD player. Strange thieves. Anyway that was probably when I retrieved my current one.

But even the Sony wasn’t my first, oh no. The first turntable I got was a Garrard. It was a bit clunky, but it worked well enough, except for a constant rumble, which was an accepted hazard of high quality record playing equipment. The rumble made me proud, really, because cheap turntables didn’t have it.

But the one I have now, I don’t use it much. Really I don’t use it at all. I still have LPs, and I have a stereo receiver with phono preamp, but when I put the whole thing together only one channel plays. I’m sure it’s easily fixed, and I’m sure I’m not going to fix it any time soon. But I will put it on my list, and get that thing working again, if it’s the penultimate thing I do.

The sound systems they make now (I don’t think they call them “stereo systems” anymore) don’t have phono pre-amps, so all the turntables they make now have them built-in. There was a secret equalization they used called RIAA equalization, so you can’t just plug a regular turntable into, say, an auxiliary jack, and expect it to work. The other thing is the stylus – that’s the “needle.” Last time I replaced a stylus was in 2001, and there was only one place in the city that sold them. I worked then with a 20 something year old kid, and I asked him to stop by on his way to school and pick me up a stylus, and I gave him the specs, and he did it, but he had no idea what it was he was buying.

So I went back to Urban Outfitters last week and there it was on the mezzanine, in all its $145.00 plus tax glory. Plug it into your USB port, and convert your vinyl to digital music, scratches and all…