Kevin Bresnahan

This one is tough as Bobby was a guy I tried to catch every time he came through Boston. His concerts were great. The duet concert with McCoy Tyner was incredible. Rest in peace Bobby.

So let me get this straight... $2,000 for a CD made of GLASS?!? As in, the stuff you drop on the floor and it smashes to bits? Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

With this title, it should be a Grant Green movie.

Until we hear from Laurie, we can only speculate... so, I'll speculate. I have heard from several artists that they've made recordings for a few Japanese labels and never got paid. I'm talking $0. It would not take much legal legwork to get a ruling against a company that does something like this to get your rights back.

These are sold.

My wife and I are in the process of downsizing. We had an offer accepted so the clock is ticking. I am losing my dedicated listening room. Currently, I have two systems in the house, a surround sound/home theater system and a stereo-only tube set up in my dedicated listening room. After much deliberation, I am going to give up on the stereo-only system. This McIntosh MX-110/MC-240 tube system is one that I have been meaning to get for many, many years. I first heard a McIntosh MC-240 amp when I was teenager and I always said that I would get one some day. The McIntosh MX-110 was on my radar since the day I read a rave review on another music forum. I shopped around for the right units and have been enjoying this set-up for many years. I would like to sell both of these as a combo. My price for the pair is $3,500.00, plus actual UPS shipping in the US. I will also split them up. Separately, I am asking $1,000 plus actual shipping for the McIntosh MX-110 and $2,800 plus actual shipping for the McIntosh MC-240. International buyers will have to contact me to see if we can work something out. Doubtful given the weight, but I am willing to talk about it. PayPal is preferred but if you choose PayPal, we will have to split the fees as they are pretty steep on a purchase like this. A bank-issued money order is OK, but I will have to wait until it clears before shipping the units. Now the particulars... McIntosh MX-110 This is an M-series unit, which has its proponents due to its lack of a compactron tube in the signal path. It is also a bit rarer as they only made them for less than a year (in 1962). I bought this from someone who uses and maintains several tube systems. He kept it mostly original except for swapping out the Selenium rectifier and a couple of capacitors (I looked at his work and he did a great job - hard to tell which caps were swapped). I added a thermistor per the recommendation of McIntosh restoration guru Terry DeWick. I also swapped out the worn faceplate with an NOS faceplate that I bought from Audio Classics (at a cost of $200). I bought a number of RCA 6UA8 tubes as back-ups and I'll be including them in the sale. This unit comes with the original wooden slant-legged case - M-series are not Panlock. McIntosh MC-240 This is a mid-60's unit with the smaller holes in the metal tube cage. I bought this from Audio Classics. It was received their top A1 grade, although I think it should have been B1 due to some light wear on the lettering. Their lead McIntosh tech (who used to work there) went over it and certified it A1. It arrived with 6L6WGB output tubes that I swapped out for 6L6GC gray-plate GEs at a cost of almost $500. I will include the 6L6WGB tubes for the buyer. This is a beautiful sounding amp. I will be sad to see this go. I have shipping boxes for both but would prefer local pickup. I would be willing to drive a few hours to facilitate "local" pickup. The Audio Classics shipping box is very heavy duty and was designed for this amp so it should arrive in the same condition it leaves my house. Here is a link to my Google+ page where you can see plenty of pictures: https://plus.google.com/105967711995959913928 I took a video of the pair in action. It is also on my Google+ page. I was planning to list this on Audiogon but I've been reading some horror stories and I'd like to avoid dealing with strangers if I can find someone here who wants this. Thanks for looking and I hope I can get someone here their dream system.

West German pressings with this style of artwork are almost always first pressings. Note that I didn't say it is the best pressing, just the first pressing. Collectors want these first pressings no matter how they sound.

If the disc artwork looks like a target (see picture), you could sell them pretty easily over on the Hoffman forums.

What's the old saying... If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

I forgot about his thread... it started back when my mother-in-law died so I'm glad it was resurrected. It's good to hear that you go new speakers rather than continue to play speakers with a blown tweeter. I hope this fixes your problem. As I said earlier, if you have another problem, it's definitely time for a new amp though. Kevin

It's probably a lot better than what was used back when they were issued!

Depending on the assisted living facility she works at, she may work with my sister-in-law.

I can't help you here. I've never successfully flattened a warped record. I tried the panes of glass in the oven "trick" and it didn't work. It made it better, but the record certainly wasn't flat. If you do try it, you need to be careful that you don't apply too much heat. You want very low heat for several hours. I've heard people using the sun, but that can get as hot as an oven.

I was thinking about buying one of these for my office at work (figuring I'd bring in $1 bin records to play) but then I read the comments on their kickstarter page and found that there is a problem with skipping records on these units. I guess I'll wait until they get the bugs worked out. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gramovox/floating-recordtm-vertical-turntable/comments

I'd like this one please. Kevin

I'm spinning this again and it's weird that they only list Oliver Nelson on tenor when it's obvious that he's playing alto on a couple of tunes.

I was told many years ago (by Cuscuna maybe?) that the Atlantic fire only destroyed the 8 track masters because the LP masters were stored somewhere else. It would seem that not all mono LP masters were stored in the same place as the stereo ones.

I wonder how she got the rights for this recording? Didn't Concord get them when they bought OJC or did Galaxy just license them for their box?

I'm reading where these mono masters are made from the same 8 track recording as the stereo masters. So it's going to come down to how different the mix is. I think I'm going to pass.

I wonder how he's doing these days. A few years back, there was a fundraiser to raise money to help him with a medical issue. I haven't heard anything about him in many years. I hope the money they raised helped get him through his medical crisis. Here it is: https://www.youcaring.com/help-a-neighbor/please-help-julian-priester/38293 There's an update from 2014 that says that Julian had a successful kidney transplant. I do hope that he is doing well at 81. He's only a little older than my father who's been gone for almost 11 years now.

Usually what fails in a crossover is the caps. When they fail, not only does the capacitance change, which changes the cut-off frequencies of the crossover, it usually adds DC resistance. No matter the use in the crossover (shunt or series), added resistance could affect the load being presented to the amp. Not always, but usually. In a bad cap failure, you could see a short in that cap, and that would likely wreak havoc with your amp, especially if it's a shunt element. When my friend rebuilt the crossovers in his B&W speakers, he found that the old caps were very resistive and the capacitance was way off. When he swapped them out, he was amazed at how much better they sounded. I don't think that's what's going on here, but it's easy to check by Ohm-ing out the speaker terminals to see if there's a high resistance or a short.

I didn't mean to imply that a failing crossover is the culprit here. I agree that it is probably his amp. i was just pointing out a possible speaker problem that could be affecting his amp. His amp might be fine until he hooks up speakers with messed up crossovers. I also agree that if he puts new tweeters into his existing setup, he's probably just going to blow them again if everything stays the same, which is why I listed some things to check before doing that. Something has to be causing those tweeters to fail. Personally, i would replace the amp and carefully check the speakers (both internally & externally) as well as the speaker wires and interconnects before cranking it up again. About tweeter resistance... I think most speaker's impedance is measured ~400 Hz, well below the tweeter's operating frequency, so the tweeter's resistance is not usually anywhere near the speaker's rated impedance. I was under the impression that most tweeters run up around 12 Ohms of resistance. A tweeter's impedance can be as high as 40 Ohms at higher frequencies. The voice coil of a tweeter is several winds of very fine wire which will have more resistance than a low frequency driver. Besides, the impedance a tweeter presents to the amp is not the tweeter by itself. It's the tweeter hanging off of the crossover. This circuit combines to present the load to the amp. FWIW, this is why I would never run my amps into a blown speaker or a speaker missing drivers (like tweeters). Without all of the drivers or damaged drivers, who knows what load that speaker is presenting to the amp? Believe me, I've seen more than one amp fried after a speaker blew. It's usually accompanied by horrible-smelling smoke.

Thanks for the additional information but this information does add more questions... 1) How are the speakers wired? One pair to Speaker Out A and the other to Speaker Out B or did you wire them out of one output? If they are wired out of one output, are they in parallel or series? 2) Which tweeters crackled to indicate that they were blown? The little speakers on top, the big ones on the bottom or both? 3) How old are the speakers? If you have to crank up the bass so you can hear it, the woofers may need to be re-foamed or they may be blown too. As I mentioned above, the crossover circuit may need to be re-built. My buddy re-built an old pair of B&W tower speakers and after he was done, he was amazed at the change in sound. 4) What is the impedance of these speakers? 4 Ohm or 8 Ohm? If any of them are 4 Ohm and they're hooked up in parallel, either out of one output or two, the combination could be stressing your amp. Worse case (all speakers 4 Ohm hooked up in parallel) puts a 2 Ohm load across your amp output. Not many amps can drive a 2 Ohm load continuously without problems. 5) What "music" or sound do you believe is blowing your tweeters? Every piece of audio equipment is designed to reproduce any signal in the audible range. No audible signal played back at a reasonable power level should be able to blow your tweeters. If there is such a signal, I would have loved to have known this in my younger days. There were some neighbors stereo systems that I would have liked to have been able to silence with the simple gift of a certain piece of music. For what it's worth, before I put anything new into this set up, I would look at the wiring. Check that your speaker wires are connected well. There have been several times I was told by someone that their system distorts at low volumes, usually clicking sounds, only to find that at the speaker wire terminals (either end) there was a single strand of speaker wire that didn't quite get into the hole and that single strand bridged across the two terminals. That one strand isn't a dead short, but it seriously messes with the whole relationship between the amp & speakers. It often results in blown speakers. I've also seen a broken i.e. almost shorted RCA interconnect cables cause big problems during playback. Does the speaker always blow using the same music source? Consider swapping the RCA interconnect.

Wow. I have never blown a tweeter in my life. Typically, tweeters fry if you send a bunch of "audio mud" through them. If you're blowing your tweeters, chances are that you're asking your amplifier for way more power than it is capable of delivering cleanly. Tweeters generally present a higher impedance than the woofer, so they usually handle more power. What they don't handle well is clipping. Do you need tweeters? Well, since you've blown them out a few times, how does the subsequent music sound to you without tweeters? If you like what it sounds like, leave the blown tweeters in there and keep enjoying what you have. If you don't like the sound, get new speakers (or tweeters). Either way, what it sounds like you really need is a new amp. One that can deliver a lot of power into whatever load your speaker is presenting. The other option is that your speaker's crossover circuit is damaged or failing. If the speaker is older, you may need to re-cap the crossover. Old caps fail.

HDD is fine as long as you back it up... maybe even multiple times. HDDs fail and when they do, it's almost always catastrophic. I have my HDD music backed up on two separate hard drives. I used to have it backed up on another drive at work too, until my company decided to encrypt any files attached to a work computer. It's always good to have one back-up drive located outside of your house in case of a house fire. Also, if you use a solid-state hard drive, it still needs to be backed up. There are stories that solid state drives may lose data with time, especially if it's not connected to a power supply. If you do have a solid state hard drive, make sure that you have automatic defragmentation shut off. First off, you don't need to de-frag a SSD. Secondly, the defrag process involves shuffling data around for several hours. Each "bit" in an SSD is rated for hundreds of thousands of flips from 1 to 0 (or vice versa). You don't want to use yhem all up needlessly defragging the drive.