sound practices reading club /13

Yes, we are on a bit of Joe Roberts type of publishing schedule all of a sudden. I’ll do my best to keep it weekly, however. Closing off our ‘big picture’ topic is Herb Reichert’s Casual Reactions from sound practices issue 11: Uchida: The Japanese Homeboy. In one way it tells the story of Uchida—with some Komuro and the Fi store mixed in. In another way it also shows Japanese style ultra-fi mania, complete with exotic tubes. Then there is the ‘shameless advertising and promotion’ (Herb’s words, not mine), with Japanese cult books and exotic iron.

teaser quote: ‘During the Sid and Nancy days of the late 70’s, a most unusual trio of Japanese friends arrived in New York City. […] Expatriating an ancient culture, they arrived for the Second Centennial celebration looking for work in the music business. Sung Hee did vocals, Uchida played lead, and Komuro played bass. Komuro got a job as an electrician while Uchida washed dishes and Sung Hee waited tables.’

a gift from Joe Roberts, SP editor: from the sound practices CD, here is the original article.

my take

‘Don’t take this article too literal (especially if you felt yourself somehow disagreeing with it).’

In the same period (SP10 and SP12) that interstage transformers came back in vogue, something else happened, as illustrated here: the return of super-quality transformers. As always, this was an old concept from times when quality was the only way to get things done properly. These had been forgotten about on a consumer products level during the dark years of hi-fi, say the 70s up to the 90s. Transformers cores were made of steel of various grades and that was it. These days, a higher level of transformer connoisseurship exists among artisan builders. A nice selection of nickel, cobalt and amorphous core transformers available, straight from the internet.

I have the two Asano books that are discussed and have spent an afternoon with the Shishido book—I really wanted to own it for years, because he is a big source of inspiration to me. All the information is there to build their amps: the schematic, the parts clearly labelled, the plans for cutting the chassis and for the wiring. No previous knowledge of Japanese required. I realised however that all of this tells me exactly nothing. The things I really want to know—why the design decisions were taken like that, what is the attitude and spirit that shapes the design—are in the text…

That’s it for our ‘big picture’ topic. Next week we will start with a topic that cannot be separated from that of (low) power amps: speakers.

Now go and read the article, see you next week.