Some Gear around the House

Leslie W2 Vintage Headphones

 

 

One of my great friends Yuri, taught me most of what I know about music and recording. I remember he introduced me to the vintage sound of a Hammond B3 through a Leslie speaker cabinets on the early Deep Purple & Nucleus (highly collectible) records. Yuri has the original pressing, I have a newer 180g vinyl pressing. 

The Doppler swoosh sound was incredible to me as he went through his incredible selection of vinyl. He described how the Allman Brothers Band and others would perform on stage with their Leslies rocking back and forth on the stage to give it a methodical sense of manic timing and sound. So calculated were the echoes of the vibrating Leslies most noticeable on Pink Floyd's "echoes". They were simply put, "the sound of an era". I was in high school listening to the Police and a Flock of Seagulls playing their mini moogs and DX-7's at the time and loved that I had been opened up to this new (old) ear candy. I came across these 1968 vintage Leslie W2's and it brought me back to that time. I recognized the logo and had to grab them. I didn't know that they even produced any audio accessories so these seemed like quite a find and it turns out they were. Ultra rare the W2's truly are vintage open aired units that have great reproduction. If I were to find a flaw it would be a lack of bass as is not unusual in those days without spending some serious money on higher end cans. Great mids and low fatigue,  I find them to be excellent for 40 year old phones. The W4's were the successor to the W2's and were upgraded with a switchable crossover to select genres from Classical to Popular and then to Vocals. Cool! These were only available in black with chrome accents. I will be watching for a pair of these one day.

Yamaha YP-B2 Turntable

Here is a very nice manual belt driven turntable that arrived this week. It has a simple and elegant vintage look with the Brazilian rosewood stocky plinth. A polished S-tonearm is complimented with the original head shell. It sounds like a menu description doesn't it? Ah well these units are like fine foods aren't they? When all the right ingredients are there it truly is delectable!

I replaced the belt and wiped it off and away we went. My wife actually likes cleaning them for me. Quite nice when she comments on the quality of a unit. Once the tracking was set up I found the sound to be surprisingly good as I was skeptical on the Yamaha series although they really did have some gems in the late 70's. All in all this is a solid entry level TT that you really cant go wrong with in both function and design.