I collected fiercely in the 1990s, in retrospect the best time possible since everybody was dumping LPs. I'd spend $100 or $200 at Jerry's in Pittsburgh or the various stores in Chicago, DC, the East Village, Vancouver, London, San Francisco ... and I'd come away with more LPs than I could carry. Sometimes I had to find a UPS drop-off before I got back on a plane. (There were no UPS Stores back then.)
The first of two kids arrived in 1999 and they took most of my time, so I've barely bought any vinyl in the last 15 years. But for her 17th birthday last year the older one got an RP-1 she can take to college ("university" for those outside the US), along with 50 or 60 duplicates from my stash. Seriously, nobody should leave home without Blood on the Tracks and Astral Weeks (green label, natch) at the very least. I've bought a few things here and there when I find nice stuff for less than $25 or even less than $20 per disk. (Seriously? $25 for a single LP? WTH?!)
I'm lucky enough to work from home, and we have a semi-finished attic, so the first shot is the view from my desk, and once or twice a day I climb into the chair to listen to one side as a break.
Rock and pop is on the left; jazz, blues, and a small batch of classical live on the right. We old guys have a lot of the gems, like the original Art Pepper on the rack to the left above the 'table. Warms my heart that so many youngsters are keeping vinyl alive.
https://imgur.com/08cq7ZW
https://imgur.com/SCXQ6Kj
https://imgur.com/VmTbgSk
By the way, the plural of vinyl is "vinyl." You no more pick up "vinyl" (with an s) than you pick up "fishes" at the market for dinner. Stop me gnashing my teeth. Please.
Be good, kids. Enjoy what you've got. These are good times for music, if for little else.
If anybody cares: VPI Aries I with Lyra Helikon cartridge, Rowland Capri preamp, Rowland 102 amp (for summer), Mac Mini file server with Schiit Modi Multibit DAC and two hard drives (one a mirror of the other, backed up every day at 4AM), Quicksilver Audio Silver Sixty mono amps with stock EL-34s (for the cool months), Scansonic 2.5 speakers, Sunfire sub, DIY DH Labs cabling throughout. CDs in the background are all ripped to the server now, along with about 2000 live shows by various groups, especially the Grateful Dead. Anybody want the little silver disks?
Finally finsihed my AC/DC Japanese pressing collection when Who Made Who arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, it's not a complete discography since no albums were pressed after Blow Up Your Video. One of the Highway To Hell and Blow Up Your Video dupes are white label promo's.
So I just moved on the 1st and used this opportunity to rearrange my setup. I had previously been using Expedits, but grew tired of having to tilt my neck to find records. I ended up building a couple of those record store style LP bins so that lets me flip through records.
I had a bunch of friends over a couple of days ago, and people couldn't help but flip through records and pull stuff to ask about or listen to. That never ever happened with the Expedits, as it just was too much trouble squinting your eyes to read the spines. Anyway, pretty happy about how they turned out.
EDIT:
In case anyone is interested, I got the plans from this thread: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=337891
Cost me under $50 in materials for each bin (the sheet of plywood being $40 of it). Took a couple of hours screwing everything together. I had the hardware store do the main cuts, and did the smaller cuts at home using a circular saw.
