I started collecting mine around 1970.

I am currently listening to "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull. Bought it off a very young guy at a Sunday Market in Balmain about 6 years ago for $4 in mint condition. He was probably selling off his dead dad's collection and had no idea what it was really worth.

My collection numbers about 100 and includes the following:-

Four disc boxed album "Chicago, Live at Carnegie Hall" with original posters. Bought new in Hong Kong 1972 for about $10

"Concert for Bangla Desh", the very first "Live Aid" concert featureing Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Jim Horn, Don Preston and Bob Dylan. Bought new H.K 1972.

"Woodstock 1 & 2", 5 discs bought new, "Tommy" the first rock opera, by The Who, "The Atlanta Pop Festival, Isle of Wight", "Hair" the original London recording and the original movie sound track, "War Child" Jethro Tull, "Soft Parade" the Doors, "Daddy Cool" recorded when Ross Wilson had long hair and baggy pants, "Cheap Thrills" by Janis Joplin and oficially endorsed by Hell's Angels, Frisco, "Easy Rider" songs as performed for the movie, "Welcome to my Nightmare" Alice Cooper, "Greetings from L.A." Tim Buckley, "Blind Faith" by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech, "Duelling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance, "Stone" original movie sound track featureing Doug Parkinson and "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield from the Excorcist movie.

There is a heap of "Stones" albums in there and some other lesser known music too up to some more contemporary such as Joe Camilleri and The Black Sorrows "Hold on to Me" and "Harley and Rose". He is probably one of the last in Aus to record on vinyl.

I do believe music on vinyl (analogue) is better than that on CD (digital).

Am I having a brag here?? Yes unashamedly so for those who know what I am talking about.

What is mentioned above though is less than half of the collection. My Dear Mammy left me her wonderfull collection of music on vinyl and her taste in music was impeccable.

Many of the discs in her collection were recorded by Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, then the finest classical music recording company in the world.

Amongst that side of (now) my collection are boxed albums with "The Five Piano Concerti" by Beethoven and the "9 Symphonien" performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker. Who needs "heavy metal" when you have Beethoven???

The collection covers Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Greig (one of my most loved), Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Tchaikovsky.

The whole collection occupies the bottom shelf of my book shelves and are stored on edge as they should be and is 1200 mm long.

I would not put a price on it as to me it is priceless. I love to share it though.

If anybody has "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull (mint), I am interested.

cisco said...

I started collecting mine around 1970.

I am currently listening to "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull. Bought it off a very young guy at a Sunday Market in Balmain about 6 years ago for $4 in mint condition. He was probably selling off his dead dad's collection and had no idea what it was really worth.

My collection numbers about 100 and includes the following:-

Four disc boxed album "Chicago, Live at Carnegie Hall" with original posters. Bought new in Hong Kong 1972 for about $10

"Concert for Bangla Desh", the very first "Live Aid" concert featureing Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Jim Horn, Don Preston and Bob Dylan. Bought new H.K 1972.

"Woodstock 1 & 2", 5 discs bought new, "Tommy" the first rock opera, by The Who, "The Atlanta Pop Festival, Isle of Wight", "Hair" the original London recording and the original movie sound track, "War Child" Jethro Tull, "Soft Parade" the Doors, "Daddy Cool" recorded when Ross Wilson had long hair and baggy pants, "Cheap Thrills" by Janis Joplin and oficially endorsed by Hell's Angels, Frisco, "Easy Rider" songs as performed for the movie, "Welcome to my Nightmare" Alice Cooper, "Greetings from L.A." Tim Buckley, "Blind Faith" by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech, "Duelling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance, "Stone" original movie sound track featureing Doug Parkinson and "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield from the Excorcist movie.

There is a heap of "Stones" albums in there and some other lesser known music too up to some more contemporary such as Joe Camilleri and The Black Sorrows "Hold on to Me" and "Harley and Rose". He is probably one of the last in Aus to record on vinyl.

I do believe music on vinyl (analogue) is better than that on CD (digital).

Am I having a brag here?? Yes unashamedly so for those who know what I am talking about.

What is mentioned above though is less than half of the collection. My Dear Mammy left me her wonderfull collection of music on vinyl and her taste in music was impeccable.

Many of the discs in her collection were recorded by Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, then the finest classical music recording company in the world.

Amongst that side of (now) my collection are boxed albums with "The Five Piano Concerti" by Beethoven and the "9 Symphonien" performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker. Who needs "heavy metal" when you have Beethoven???

The collection covers Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Greig (one of my most loved), Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Tchaikovsky.

The whole collection occupies the bottom shelf of my book shelves and are stored on edge as they should be and is 1200 mm long.

I would not put a price on it as to me it is priceless. I love to share it though.

If anybody has "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull (mint), I am interested.

I've got a Jethro Tull album not sure what it's called stashed away in the cupboard along with a heap of other ones,from memory the album cover opens up like a news paper.

go the vinyl, i started collecting about 10 years ago and it became like a drug, as soon as i got paid i'de be straight down the record store spending all me cash.mainly hip hop albums but about 20% older stuff like 80's favourites and jazz greats and country n western and 20% electro/ drum n bass/ garage/ baltimore house and 10% some mixed up stuff i dont know how to classify. i think theres a about 8 or 900 records on the shelf but i havent counted them in a while.listening to the doors right now. and yes, it still is the best way to keep music and yes, CD's suck
i had a friend overseas that had about 25 thousand records in his home. they lined all the walls, floor to ceiling , filled the cupboards. it looked pretty cool but there is no way he would have listened to them all twice in his lifetime!

cisco said...

It might be worth you reading these:-

Hey wow!

From one of those links:

Using today’s digital devices, original studio analog recordings can be cleaned up, re-mastered, and distributed as digital files that sound better than those long playing records (LPs) ever did.

So I guess the best way to get perfect sound is to use one of these:
www.fat-man.co.uk/docs/product_07/Carbon_Trinity_Hybrid_Valve_Amplifier.shtml



All in good fun Cisco, I have a vinyl collection as well

choco said...

I've got a Jethro Tull album not sure what it's called stashed away in the cupboard along with a heap of other ones,from memory the album cover opens up like a news paper.

That one is "Thick as a Brick". It has absolutely classic lyrics. Opening lines:-

"Really don't mind if you sit this one out,
My word is but a whisper, in deafness a shout,"

I knew there would be some vinyl lovers on the forum and here we are coming out of the woodwork.

Nebbs, that is one sexy looking machine you pictured. There are many who believe the old valve radios are still the best.

Vinyl records are obviously still very popular as exampled by the availability of turntables at the likes of Dick Smith's, Aldi and others.

Having built in pre amplifiers is very handy allowing them to be plugged into the latest sound systems many of which do not have a phono in put.

The USB out put is good for those who want to put their discs onto CD so they can have their favourite music in their car or on other mobile devices.

There are a couple of aspects with vinyls though. There is the debate about whether the sound reproduction is truer in analogue or digital format and that IS only a debate. Personal preference rules. Quality of turntables, amplifiers and speakers puts a whole lot of other variables into the formula.

My turntable is the best quality part of my system being a Yamaha TT-400 which outputs to a TEAC RV 210 AM/FM Stereo Reciever/Amplifier which is probably 35 years old but was made in Japan when TEAC was known as a quality brand. My speakers are a pair of Sharps 210w x 150d x 350h that I rescued from the skip bin. All sounds good and that is all that really matters despite my level of industrial deafness and tinitus.

The other aspect of vinyls is the music that was recorded on them, much of which is very difficult to find on CD.

Very funny vid poor rel. Stepping on a vinyl freak's record is gaurenteed to sh1t him off.

I have just played the five Beethoven Piano concerti and I think I will put his ninth symphony on next. Happy listening folks.

i love vinyl, i've been collecting for years and am up to 2000+ albums. i think some music (blues, rock, punk, soul) sounds far better on vinyl, a bit raw and dirty.
plus its good having to listen to an album in the track order it was intended, there's no skipping songs, and the cover artwork and info are so much more detailed than with a CD.

ps; cisco i picked up thick as a brick in mint cond for 60 cents from a record shop a few years back, my mate got a copy for $2 from a different shop recently. i've seen it in good nick at op shops for next to nothing. great album but in no way collectable

Everyone sounds so old on this thread.

Jethro Tull, Chicago - spare me

After reading this lot, I MUST go into tha roof and dig mine out , you all seem to have what I do , OMG ! Yr old like me

oliver said...

Everyone sounds so old on this thread.

Jethro Tull, Chicago - spare me

Beethoven, Mozart.

My eldest son inherited my collection, his uncles collection and spent a fair time in second hand shops to pick up some classics. Apart from the aesthetic appeal of having an actual vinyl disc and some fantastic cardboard jackets I do think vinyl is a bit overrated. All my Stones records are full of irritating clicks cause if you didn't actually cause damage to the record by needle skip from the vibration through the floor from dancing and spilt beer over the turntable then it really wasn't a very good party. [}:)]

I have all Pink Floyd on vinyl sounds great!

tightlines said...


... I recently bought a new system (Yamaha amp, Aaron speakers) and the amp has a phono input...

As an owner of Yamaha amp + Aaron speakers, I say good choice

I have a pair of Technics 1200's to play my 2 metres odd of vinyl.. fun for parties but mp3's definitely get used more!

I have an each way bet. I loved buying vinyl and having a huge albulm to lovingly put on a platter. My modus operandi was to play the albulm through once watching the levels. Adjust the record levels, to optimise low noise, on the second listen whilst recording to a good quality cassette. Then the vinyl went back in the cover and the sacrificial tape went everywhere with me.

However vinyl is a very limited medium for a number of reasons.

What is lack-lustre in vinyl is noise, lack of dynamic range, hiss, shtick.. shtick, crackle, pop, static, poorly weighted/aligned stylii etc etc.

What CDs lack is decent artwork and a sense of tangible purchase that needs to be handled with repect, yes even love.

Early CDs and particularly those that were produced by simply bouncing a straight to CD copy from a master tape solely engineered to go onto vinyl sounded awful. The inherent limitations of vinyl (boost to the lacking top end and conservative bottom end so that the cutting press literally didn't jump out/accross the groove) were catered for by super skilled engineeres who knew how to milk the best sound from the medium of vinyl.

Later on, recording labels, in the rush to cash in, simply grabbed the master tapes outta the cupboard and whacked em onto CD as quickly and cheaply as they could maximise profit margins.

I have 1st run CD copies of Led Zep, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Stones etc CDs and they are unmistakenly from master tapes intended for vinyl reproduction. They can be brittle and at times thin sounding. If you compare the 1st issue CDs alongside the albulm version they are like chalk n cheese. Funnily enough tho an LP that has had a dozen or so plays, will already be losing some of it's top end, which vinyl lovers will crow on about as warmth.

I have heard soooo much w@nk about warmth over the years. Warmth is great - we love it. Vinyl is warm. It's also noisy, pizz easy to ruin with scratches, heat, etc.

CD/DVD/Super audio CD etc sound quality can be every bit as warm. It all depends on the taste of the engineer/musos/producers twiddling the knobs leading to the end recording.

For the early years of digital recording, all the knob twiddlers above were fixated on the new found dynamic range and high and low frequency fidelity and (pushed along by the market and marketing) lost sight of the smooth 'round' sounds that had preceded it. Kinda like shoulder pads usurping flairs.

Oh - the big lie with vinyl too is that often the sound attributed to 'vinyl warmth' was actually the sound of the tape.. not the vinyl but the tape that was used right throughout the recording/mastering process.

You get FAR more postive musicality from recording to tape (tape saturation, warmth, transient dampening etc) than you do from cutting any finished results to vinyl. Unfortunately you also get noise but that can be tamed in professional environments, unlike domestic record players.


Fast forward (or push the skip button on a CD player) and after much to-ing and fro-ing the re-issues today are cleaner sounding but great efforts have been made to recapture the smooth 'round' sounds of yesteryear using vintage mics, compressors, and even tape (although it is mega expensive).

The biggest thing still lacking in modern music, IMHO, is not the sound but the SPACE. It is extremely uncommon to hear a track meandre or build, allowing space for each element/player in the band (or dweeb in the bedroom as is often the case these days) to result in a (w@nk term of the week coming up here) musical journey. Even non-single albulm tracks come under A&R pressure to be 'in yo face' from the first beat to the hastily faded last. Sad that an entire generation expects a non-stop throttling from every song. There are exceptions but you certainly don't hear them very often.

That is the biggest diff with classic music from yesteryear. Oh and in the good ol' days you simply didn't get a contract if you couldn't sing. Not true these days for sure.

Now don't get me started on toobs/tubes/valves and the overblown toss that goes with them.

Time for me to hand back the soap box now.

Ba ha ha! So Gorgo, you use digital filtering to minimise the analog problems and too much becomes dull?

There aint too much top-end on vinyl to begin with so if you start knocking it off it's downhill quickly.

There are some very good softwrae solutions out there that can effectively filter out only the noise (almost). They are usually available in editing software packages and essentially 'learn' the noise independant of the music, then subtract it.

Unfortunately to do the original justice you need to invest in an A/D converter that is superior to the standard soundcard inputs to your puter.

Everything in sound is compromise.

No Jethro in my meagre vinyl collection, it's U2's first 5 albulms, SADE, ABC, Police, a few comps and motley stuff that may be as rep damaging as being seen kiting in a helmet and impact vest.

I really started to get into music beyond the main stream when CDs were taking over. Most of those CDs are still playable.

BTW - I like the idea of listening seshs with my lads but haven't bothered to fix up the ol' Onkyo turntable (if I could even get a belt for it) in a decade.

Yep - and they were the one's I was prepared to fess up.

Ha ha - actually the ABC albulms I was gonna keep quiet about but I have no shame. Helmet and vest on!

The Sade 'Diamond life' is still a cracker and great playing on it. All time root'n toot'n record too.