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 - both vintage and new, concerts, workshops, and related stuffs. Furthermore: travelling - as a mind-game and real globetrotting, and books, movies, photography... sharing all the above et al. and related links... and to anything makes Life better and Earth a better place to stay, enjoying Life, in Peace.
Illustration by Derek Bacon 💫
A - singin’-along your fave songs ✅
A sort-of private karaoke… something - I noticed - I only do when an astral coincidence happens: right mood, decent health, no technical issues whatsoever… and music is perceived at a 2.0 level of satisfaction, sweet like a nectar.
I missed “this” nectar for 12 long months… I knew and my pain was my pain was sincere and palpable: I felt like I was living a movie without a soundtrack, like I was constantly wearing glasses with gray lenses and, I swear: today a lazy, feint, bashful tear moistened my eyes ☺️
Satori 💫
Thanks to Michael Franks’ “Passion Fruit” 💎
I’m in the lengthy process of awakening my gears after an years-long storage…
A bit of apprehension and the behemoths - the mighty Studer C37, the MCI JH110B and the Telefunken M15A - were carefully checked and turned ON.
My wife impeccable good taste for composition 💫
The emotion - Yes, emotion! - I felt when the machines began spinning, again… the smell of rubber and warming-up electronics with a bit of motor-oil scent, well: I truly felt blessed and experienced a stooopid, pleasant sense of inexplicable unreasonable happiness ☺️
These music-machines owns a soul
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Tango - A rare Bauhaus poster by Ernesto Garcia Cabral. Mexico, 1920's
Com imenso pesar, comunicamos o falecimento de Sebastião Salgado, nosso fundador, mestre e eterno inspirador.
Sebastião foi muito mais do que um dos maiores fotógrafos de nosso tempo. Ao lado de sua companheira de vida, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, semeou esperança onde havia devastação e fez florescer a ideia de que a restauração ambiental é também um gesto profundo de amor pela humanidade. Sua lente revelou o mundo e suas contradições; sua vida, o poder da ação transformadora.
Neste momento de luto, expressamos nossa solidariedade a Lélia, a seus filhos Juliano e Rodrigo, seus netos Flávio e Nara, e a todos os familiares e amigos que compartilham conosco a dor dessa perda imensa.
Seguiremos honrando seu legado, cultivando a terra, a justiça e a beleza que ele tanto acreditou ser possível restaurar.
Nosso eterno Tião, presente!
Hoje e sempre.
Instituto Terra
Costumes and sculptures by Constantin Brancusi
Telepathic Amplifiers of the 1920s, Paris.
A little-known topic in the field of paranormal research is the fairly constant overlay between art and psychic attempts, particularly in the avant-garde 1920s.
Constantin Brancusi's work in design is thought of by moderns as mere art. However, his special helmets were designed to amplify telepathic transmissions, as we see in these fascinating photographs.
Subjects with low-level telepathic abilities could, with this telepathic helmet, project thoughts into the stratosphere where they could bounce about and then, using the Earth's spin, travel Westwards. Alternately, the forward-and-rearward cone could use the Earth's magnetic field as a transmission layer. Successful application of these telepathic amplifiers sent a thought accurately as far away as India.
Toyah Wilcox and Robert Fripp on their 39th marriage anniversary, in France 💫💎💫
This famous and exquisite painting, "The Cellist," was painted in 1894 by the renowned French artist Paul Gauguin. The subject of the painting is Swedish cellist Fritz Schneklud, a professional musician who was a friend of Gauguin's.
It is displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm.
… and I know them all ✅
John's 'Shakti' guitar, designed by Abraham Wechter, currently exhibited at the MuPop Music Museum in Montluçon, France.
You can take a closer look at the guitar's scalloped fretboard…
… and sympathetic strings and tuning pegs
Some truly unique and awesome music was played on this one of a kind instrument, able to mimic - in the right hands - the complexity of Indian ragas, almost like a sitar or a surbahar do.
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Just back from an exhausting, exhilarating experience at MOC 2025… to properly recover from the 5+ hours drive back home, I found some energies (don’t know where 🤪) to assemble a little music system… because I needed to listen to music 😉
So, a Studer A730 CD player with Philips TDA-1541-S2 Double Crown DAC, a 1961 ReVox A-40 integrated amp and my beloved 1965 solid oak Jordan-Watts loudspeakers are - once again - the proof that you don’t need to spend zillions to get “music”…
Ego-maniacs and zealots will swear that if you enjoy (as I do!) such a minute, minimalist audio combo, your dick is pinky-sized, too 😉🤪😉
Be sure that in both cases, they’re wrong… and I’m enjoying Vivaldi and his healing power immensely 💫
Tony Levin pictured in the late '60s with his Ampeg electric upright 'Baby Bass'.
It was Tony who was John McLaughlin's first choice for being the bassist in the newly formed Mahavishnu Orchestra - the reason for not joining has to be one of the funniest stories in modern music history.
When John called the house at which Tony was staying to formally invite him, Tony wasn't home at that particular moment, so his mother-in-law passed on the message that 'some guy Murray Vishnu called about joining his orchestra'.
When Tony heard this, he thought that it was some weddings/cabaret act, so he never returned the call. As fate would have it, it was Rick Laird who turned out to be the perfect fit for the band, although it will always be an interesting thought about what might have happened had Tony been at home during John's telephone call.
Of course Tony Levin went on to fortune and fame with many other ventures perhaps most notably with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, and the Stick Men.
I greatly appreciated Dipl. - Ing. Ulbrich bespoke SUT for two days at Silbatone room, where it was connected to Frank Schroeder’s little idler-wheel turntable with a Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge.
Today I (finally) had a pleasant conversation with Michael - who I knew about 20 years ago and appreciated since his “obsession” for transformers hand wound painstakingly, searching for best performances and clever use of wire/irons/tension - and I left as a believer of his vision and products: the SUT are tailored to customer’s needs and ancillaries and they represent IMHO the peak of these so important and “difficult” accessories.
Prices are up to par with hand-made quality and materials… but performance-wise! Wow, they’re winners and worth every penny 💫💫💫
Congratulations to Michael for his achievement…
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I spent half an hour with Stavros who kindly explained to me some features and building details of his A M A Z I N G turntable…
His efforts and passion made possible to reach performances and technical goals (tolerances, noise and vibes rejection) seldom found everywhere!
The tangential air-bearing arms, here in titanium and aluminum/carbon fiber 3-D printed and hand-polished are simply stunning: I handled them and they are soooo smoooth and freely moving, with technical features and fine-tunings capabilities which you cannot imagine even in you audiophile wettest dream ☺️
Platter, bearing, motor of turntable are all proprietary no-nonsense designed and - as I loudly expressed to Stavros - he didn’t copy-cat others but he walked a new, unique path!
While others ultra-expensive and bulky turntable “simply” went for gigantic redundancy made of über-isolation and weight and bulkiness, Aries Cerat made a statement and created “the” new benchmark 💫
Forgot to say that the cartridge of choice was Darius Valiunas’ DAVA field-coil MC cartridge, one of the very best cartridges on the planet, completing an analog combo of stellar quality.
Our conversation had as soundtrack music played from Pallas loudspeakers and… well: with Silbatone/Western Electric room, I was immersed in “the best sound” at the show, Echelon quality and performance to-par 💫💎💫
Thanks and kudos, Stavros 🍀💫🍀
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