Tape Project Demo Report

[ironbut]

April 21-22 was an event called Headfest 2007. It was the 2nd annual National Head-fi.org meet. I posted info , at a very late date, for anyone in the San Jose Ca area to come and hear a preview of the Tape Project tapes. There is a short blurb on[urlwww.stereophile.com/news/407headfi/[/url] with a photo of the rig I demoed. The demo tape was loaned to me by Paul who I would like to thank again and contains cuts from the upcoming Jacqui Naylor, Dave Alvin and Malcolm Arnold releases. Even on my stock Seduction, sound is simply glorious. The rest of the rig was an Eddie Current Zana Deux headphone ampwww.eddiecurrent.com and Audio Technica AD2000 headphones.
I had 35+ ( I meant to keep count!) listeners. The age span was 16-60 yr.s old. A couple of the younger listeners really caught me off guard with questions like; " What's that?" or " Where's the music coming from?", or my personal favorite; " How does it make sound?". I had my laptop running with the homepage for the Tape Project to help me explain what it was all about, but I wasn't prepared to give a primer on magnetic recording! I had some great talks with "boomers" who had  r-r experiences and machines that no longer work. I think my favorite reaction was from a 20 something that after just a few seconds of listening, took off the headphones and said, " No Way! This has Got to be the best sound at the show!" Several people went on and on searching for words to convey what they were hearing. That was so cool! I really felt like I was sharing something with them that will stick in their minds forever. I Think most of us here have memories like that. Well,.. get ready for some more!
BTW I'll post more pictures from head-fi.org when the really good ones become available. That will save you from searching through the 600+ posts on the meet impressions thread.

[heideana]

Way to go!!!!  I couldn't get the URL to work and I'm looking fwd. to seeing the pics.....

[Romo]

Sounds like a good time Steve. I always love those ah-ha questions...sometimes we forget that that was us once. Well, me at least...still ...full of them too.
We had a recording class come through the studio a few months ago and we were giving a tour. We went into Paul's room and one young student looked over at his amps and said "what are those, the light bulbs?" to which I replied that they were the tubes for his amps. He said that he had heard about tubes but had never seen one before and didn't know what they looked like.
Michael

[ironbut]

Sorry for the delay on the pictures. The Stereophile early report is on the news page of their web site. Unfortunately my computor took a dump moments after I posted the original post above. Cooked the logic board typing the last of that one. I'm at Kinko's at the moment burning a hole in my Visa at the moment but I hope to be back early next week.

[ironbut]

Well, better late than never I guess.
Here's the one from "Enjoy the Music" where they called my Technics an Agfa reel to reel

This one's from Stereophile;

I'm sure Doc will enjoy the Manley Labs tee shirt on the listener;

This DIY amp ( very retro ) was right behind me and was beautiful. The sound was just OK, but was finished just the night before the meet so plenty of tweaking was needed;

That's Wes Phillips from Stereophile who did way more posing for the lens than listening to then cans!
BTW, I've been asked to bring the rig to another meet in August somewhere in the Bay Area. If I go, I'll be sure to post the time and place with more advance notice if any of you guys who are on the fence about the tapes have a chance to come and listen.

[High and Outside]

Yo, Steve,

Nice pictures. Thanks for sharing.