Finding your groove: getting into vinyl with Audio-Technica
I’d like to think that I could’ve been friends with the late Hideo Matsushita, founder of Japanese Hi-Fi powerhouse Audio-Technica. If I could, I’d travel back in time to 1960’s Tokyo, where a young Matsushita curated “vinyl listening sessions” at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts, exposing visitors to the sounds and possibilities of high end audio and the warmth of vinyl records. I imagine sitting with him in a mod coffee shop, listening to the stories of what he witnessed in those sessions, the conversations he had with visitors, and what ultimately motivated him to head back to his small apartment above a ramen restaurant and start an audio company of his own. In the histories I’ve read regarding AT’s humble beginnings, Matsushita’s motives seem clear. Produce high end audio at affordable prices, bringing audio excellence into spaces and to customers that simply didn’t have access to it before. His first two products, the AT-1 and AT-3 phono cartridges did exactly that, and...
Dec 6, 2023
Amp is a Schiit Vali 2 running either a 6SN7 or 6F8G (pictured). This one is a National Union round plate (I've already bought several times as many tubes as I originally thought I would when I got the amp - eBay's almost as dangerous as Massdrop is).
Turntable is my resurrected Technics SL-1300 with a Frankenstein'ed Nagaoka cartridge (MP-110 body, MP-200 stylus). It feeds a Schiit Mani phono pre. This and a DragonFly Black are hooked up to a Yamaha RX-V671 AV receiver, with a line out going to the Vali 2 (so I'm using the receiver as an input switch for the Vali 2 as well as driving speakers).