This is Stefano Bertoncello's Blog (ステファノ・ベルトンチェッロ - トゥーグッドイアーズ − ブロガー、オーディオ＆ミュージック・コンサルタント) devoted to pacific topics like Music - live and reproduced - i.e. discs, audio, guitars and whatever musical: concerts, workshops, exhibitions, etc. Furthermore: travelling - as a mind-game and real globetrotting - and books, movies, photography... sharing all the above and everything which makes Life better and Earth a better place to stay, enjoying Life, in Peace. Proudly ads-free since 2007! Enjoy.💫
About half a century ago, Duck Baker’s Tintinyanna and John Renbourn’s Little Niles renditions on acoustic guitar introduced me to Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim’s music… after these epiphanies, I collected many of his discs - my most beloved his superb records on Enja label - and saw him alive in 2024.
RIP for one of the greats.
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It was some years I was exclusively using the mighty Tim de Paravicini’s TX-4 “The Head” MC SUT, always with Analogtechnik’s DST15 IceAge cartridge and The Peak 13” arm, while my (now-reduced-to-the-bone collection) other SUTs’ remained in a closet… BUT, the overwhelmingly radical changes I made in my system - i.e. the woofer-less Gotorama 2.0 - asked for further investigations.
Why?
Easy said: the level of introspection and overall tonal palette changed drastically… this augmented transparency brought my ears to re-consider TdP’s superb SUT, which was sometimes, with some dry-sounding ECMs’ discs, sort-of imposing a slight sense of leanness and “thinning” highs without improving air among instruments or imaging.
Mumbling, I today choose Western Electric 618B SUT, searching for that little, tiny quid of “musical warmth” (a naturaI, detailed, breathing smoothness) which I felt I was missing.
I know: some more technically inclined will suggest I could/would measure this or that and adjust here or there to (try to) find the best electric matching among Daniel Kim’s master built cartridge, Misho’s Phono Stage and SUT, but…
… I’m such a stoopid romantic and I strongly believe in fractals and in - precisely - trial & error approach: the first attempt, after removing The Head, was with Peerless 4685 SUT, with a quite satisfactory sonic result, but I felt the need to further explore this fascinating audio niche.
The Garrardzilla combo: the best sounding clamp proved to be a cheap Audio Technica’s 🤭
The WE 618B - which I bought eons ago from late Koji-san at EIFL in Japan - immediately clicked with the sound I was looking for: drums skin became more true-to-life, trumpet remained dramatically and violently dynamic, but rounder… piano got some wood from soundboard without loosing the felt and strings, the tension and drama in a climax with increasing volume became more natural and impressive, surprising.
The strong wish to explore more and more records, both well-known and new, drastically increased but without any hurry to change a disc, enjoying what was actually playing.
Vinyl surface noises became more apparent yet less intrusive with music, like an annoying but very background blob, not interfering with musical flow.
I had to fiddle with three different clamps, because the overall sound quite impressively changed at different weights and materials!
A question arises: what would think the people, the engineers and artisans who designed and built these amazing 80+ years old transformers, about my weird enthusiastic words and - most of all - to the incredible intricacies and nuances they are able to resolve and make them alive?
Was the transparency an unwanted design by-product obtained by chance or something they precisely knew how to get?
Were they aware of the care and quality they infused into these industrial parts which turned into musical instruments, almost a century after they built them?
Satori
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… with an intruder from Germany 🤭
Popol Vuh
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A work of beauty from a legendary brand.
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Charles Cleveland Poole was born in Randolph County, North Carolina in 1892 and grew up in the mill town culture of the Piedmont South — the specific world of textile workers and small farmers and the string band music that those communities made for themselves in the years before commercial recording arrived and transformed regional folk traditions into marketable product.
He played banjo with a three-finger picking technique — his right hand's index finger had been permanently damaged in a childhood baseball accident and the damage had forced him to develop an approach to the instrument that was not the standard approach and that produced a distinctive, rolling sound that became his signature and that influenced the subsequent development of banjo playing in ways that Scruggs-style picking later overshadowed without entirely displacing.
He formed the North Carolina Ramblers with fiddler Posey Rorer — who had limited vision — and guitarist Norman Woodlieff. The specific circumstances of having assembled a band from himself, a partially sighted fiddler, and a rotating cast of guitarists did not produce a compromise but a distinctive sound — the limitations of each member shaped the music in ways that conventional ability might not have reached.
Columbia Records came to North Carolina in 1925 scouting old-time string band music. Poole auditioned and was signed. He recorded "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues" as his first session — a song of such commercial and musical effectiveness that Columbia had him back immediately.
He recorded eighty-four sides for Columbia between 1925 and 1930. The pace of production was driven by the combination of commercial demand and Poole's specific relationship with money — he received advances, spent them, and needed more sessions to receive more advances in a cycle that the drinking accelerated.
The drinking was comprehensive and constant. His wife Maude had left him. His daughter lived with Maude. He moved between mill towns and recording sessions with the specific rootlessness of someone whose relationship with place was secondary to his relationship with music and whiskey, roughly in that order.
"White House Blues." "If I Lose, Let Me Lose." "Leaving Home." "He Rambled." Songs that documented the specific world he moved through with the accuracy of someone who had not romanticized it and had not needed to — the mill town culture was interesting enough in its actual form to require no embellishment.
Jimmie Rodgers had heard him. The Carter Family had heard him. The string band tradition he refined fed directly into the country music mainstream that Rodgers and the Carters established commercially and that Hank Williams subsequently refined into the genre's emotional foundation.
In May 1931, Poole received an offer to perform in a Hollywood film — the specific dream of the era, when the sound film had created demand for authentic American music performers that Hollywood was beginning to address. He celebrated the offer. He celebrated comprehensively and for an extended period.
He died on May 21, 1931, of heart failure following a prolonged drinking binge. He was thirty-nine years old. The Hollywood job went to someone else.
He recorded eighty-four sides in four years. He spent every dollar before the next session. He drank himself to death a month before the opportunity that might have changed everything.
The Carter Family built their commercial career in the same years Poole was recording. Hank Williams absorbed the tradition both were working in. The three-finger banjo picking that Poole developed from a damaged hand is in the foundation of every country and bluegrass recording that followed.
He is not remembered the way the Carter Family and Hank Williams are remembered. He is remembered by the musicians who trace the lineage back past the names everyone knows to the names that the commercial success was built on.
I scored these humble gems…
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Took a trip to the old Guild factory in Westerly, RI with my
1970 F212. Bringing it home to where it was made!
Thanks to Dennis Malenfant.
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It's always a celebration when a new Mary’s album comes out!
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An investment in awesome music and sound!
The peak of modern remastering and quality vinyl-records making from Chad Kassem… not cheap but the level of enjoyment and musical bliss is worth much more than the mere expense.
Sonic merits are far beyond my high expectations.
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One of my most beloved jazz labels 🤟
… as found inside this record by one of my most revered and beloved guitar players!
(Couldn’t resist 🤭 - My second copy, just in case my other one will get worn!)
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Some nice waxes I scored today…
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