dusted off the record player.

saturday, september 7th, 2024.

It's no secret that my wife and I are deeply in love with music. We can't stop thinking about the upcoming IDLES show we'll be attending next weekend.

However, our record player has been in limbo since we moved from my apartment to our current house a few years ago. The den in our house, which we very much enjoy, simply didn't have a good spot for the record turntable and our humble collection of records.

Yesterday, my wife and I had a nice little date day with the kiddo in school and one of the places we stopped at was our local record store, Fresh Produce Records. I inquired whether they had any good Bluetooth audio solutions to throw an audio signal over from our record player in the living room to the nice stereo system in the den. They strongly recommended against that on account of the signal quality of cheap Bluetooth audio dongles. I guess I should've expected that answer, given the Hi-Fi nature of record collectors.

Their recommendation was to find a way to hardwire it. I'm inclined to think a Bluetooth audio pair would be just fine for our needs, but their recommendation did get my mental gears a-turnin'. We wound up picking up a copy of IDLES' Joy as an Act of Resistance and went on our merry way.

My gears a-turnin', we popped by our local Wal-Mart and I snagged a 25-foot twisted-pair RCA audio cable from the automotive section for $12. We also popped into a thrift store and snagged a short 6-foot RCA cable for 50¢, which I cannibalized with some pliers to act as a grounding cable to eliminate the stereo cable's mains hum.

I moved the record player into our dining area adjacent the den, and ran the 25 foot RCA audio cable along the wall to our stereo system. The twisted pair cable and rigged-up grounding cable perform phenomenally and we've got a nice, clean stereo signal running from the turntable to the stereo. Huzzah!

We took the IDLES album for its inaugural spin and— yep! Those Hi-Fi heads at Fresh Produce Records did, in fact, give me a good recommendation. It sounded great.

We ran through a few albums last night, including Durand Jones & The Indications' Private Space and Margaret Glaspy's Emotions and Math, while I changed the inner tube on my bike's front wheel and, later, while we played Civilization VI together. Flipping the records from the A to the B side was a little tiring, but there's something viscerally pleasing about physically handling an LP record that you just don't get when you're letting Spotify's DJ handle the music selection.

So, yeah! Our record player is no longer simply gathering dust. And man! does it ever sound good and make us happy. We're very glad that LPs are still being produced as the physical medium of choice for many of the modern bands we listen to! I doubt I'll make the jump to cassettes, but spending $13 on cabling to get that record turntable back in rotation was well worth it!

Until next time, be well! :)