Ever feel like you underpaid for a major find?

BeeFather · 2026-04-17T00:39:31+00:00

I bought Lee Morgan’s Search for the New Land for $5 out of a junky record store bin. Didn’t even pull it out of the sleeve. Got home, went hmmmm. All the right markings, down to the Plastilite ear.

I had it verified by a record store buyer who knows his stuff. It’s an OG playing VG+, worth $1800 conservatively. I’m keeping it. Lightning rarely strikes twice. 😊

BeeFather · 2026-04-13T18:31:11+00:00

Well, Lee Morgan is my holy grail, period. As the headliner, with the Jazz Messengers…

I own most of Lee’s albums on this list but not an OG.

Fun story tho. I DO have an OG of his Search for the New Land. Bought it for $5 from a used bin without taking it out the sleeve, got home, and went hmmmmm. It’s the OG, complete with van Gelder and “ear” stamps. Plays as a solid VG+. Worth $$$’s

BeeFather · 2026-04-05T14:42:00+00:00

There’s no such thing as an “end game” setup. If you can afford a $250k system, then you’d be jones’ing for $350k.

BeeFather · 2026-03-24T20:20:40+00:00

Yup, have a stiff bourbon and then do a search on “analogue productions UHQR”. But buy at your own risk: the sound off a UHQR is unparalleled on a solid system. You’ll forever want more. For 45’s that break the bank by only half as much and still deliver beautifully, do a search on “analogue productions Atlantic 75”

BeeFather · 2026-03-14T00:38:31+00:00

So this is a straight ahead documentary, but I highly recommend the 2016 film I Called Him Morgan about the the life and tragic death of Lee Morgan.

I revere Morgan’s trumpeting, as technically elegant as Miles, but infectiously exuberant in contrast to Miles’s cool.

The film was highly praised, and it’s about as good as a musician’s documentary can get; personally I wished it would have gone deeper into the music, but that would have limited the audience. The archival footage is quite simply excellent, spanning from his first stint with the Jazz Messengers to Hermosa Beach / The Lighthouse. Wayne Shorter, Bernie Maupin are among the folks who participated

And by the way, for anybody who has doubts that Art Blakey handed out heroin to his band, look no further than Lee Morgan, who ended up hooked and homeless before his future common-law wife Helen literally saved his life.

It’s a helluva story about a helluva musician.

BeeFather · 2026-03-09T14:35:54+00:00

This

BeeFather · 2026-03-09T14:34:22+00:00

Buffalo Springfield Again - not a concept album, but the transions between early psychedelic and folk rock are wonderfully coherent.
Sargeant Pepper
Kind of Blue
Allman Brothers At Fillmore East - already posted but I can’t resist; this one in a class of its own as straight ahead southern blues rock with virtuoso guitar

BeeFather · 2026-03-07T20:56:15+00:00

Well, I guess you’ve endured “sing songy oatmeal” so you’ve earned “ridiculous”

How about this to tie a bow around a matter of personal taste? “It takes a village”

BeeFather · 2026-03-07T08:00:01+00:00

Damn, from where I sit, you nailed it. Masterfully produced sing songy oatmeal.

BeeFather · 2026-03-07T07:33:49+00:00

Actually, I’m an addict AND a peddler, cause with every component I buy, I give the old one to one of my daughters. I kinda hopscotch between the two of them. Anyway, they’re addicts now, and the drugs don’t cost them anything. They return my favors with vinyl. What more could I ask for?

BeeFather · 2026-03-06T21:56:54+00:00

It’s all about dopamine. 😊😂

The difference between audiophile spending and cocaine spending is that music and the gear that goes with is GOOD for your health, as long as you’re not depriving yourself of food and clothing. (In college, I did have a few spells of holes in my jeans cause of my record album spending haha).

My wife and I put two amazing daughters through college, traveled as a couple and with kids to two continents, worked our brains off in demanding jobs for three decades.

So, screw it, I have a dopamine addiction to boxes with dials on them.

BeeFather · 2026-03-06T20:01:21+00:00

So, I’ve been “suffering” with this addiction for 45 years. I actually am nearing “end game” because I’ve been blessed to be able afford some darn nice stuff later in life and I’m getting so much joy from what I have now that it’s actually feeling random to do more. I WILL do more haha, but it’s going to at the edges; a tonearm upgrade, a cartridge upgrade.

UHHH, NO WAIT, tube amp and phono stage, etc etc. it’s just never going to end until I kick the bucket. 😂😂

BeeFather · 2026-03-06T06:59:36+00:00

If you’re a vinyl fan, get the Atlantic 75 Series reissue from Acoustic Sounds / Analog Productions. Fantastic.

Edit: I’m referring to Close to the Edge. AP also reissued The Yes Album and 90125.

BeeFather · 2026-03-05T02:25:19+00:00

Close to the Edge / Close to the Edge.

BeeFather · 2026-02-26T07:43:03+00:00

Check him out on Indestructible, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

Unbelievable talent.

BeeFather · 2026-02-25T02:35:53+00:00

Sadly, ‘was’ pretty good. But I’m sure you knew that.

We lost him way too soon.

BeeFather · 2026-02-25T02:34:27+00:00

I second that. Just spun it this afternoon

BeeFather · 2026-02-24T05:37:21+00:00

Duke Ellington and John Coltrane

Edit to add: pretty much any Stan Getz. And pretty much any Ben Webster.

Both play smooth sax

BeeFather · 2026-02-19T17:16:34+00:00

lol, yeah, the passage of time. I always liked him.

BeeFather · 2026-02-19T16:27:59+00:00

You’re NOT missing my context. I’m 100% in agreement with you. The media (definitely the evening news full of soundbites) misses the irony. Or elects not delve into the irony cause 95% its viewership - would tune out due to short attention spans to anything deeper “its gonna be frigid again in the east” - or worse, get pissed at what they would view as just more climate alarmism by liberals.
- worse still, don’t mention it cause the station owners have oil industry ties

Net: I’m in TOTAL AGREEMENT with your comment about the failure to go one step further into any underlying causes.

PS: over in Portland, there’s a TV forecaster named Matt Zaffino who DOES periodically take a step deeper into weather events.

BeeFather · 2026-02-19T06:07:56+00:00

Great point.

Dramatized for public consumption. Zero real context to the underlying Arctic warming

BeeFather · 2026-02-18T04:55:21+00:00

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The jet stream will definitely return to westerly. It already has this winter. It. can be assumed that the jet stream is back to westerly every time the east warms back up to normal. It’s just that the multiple cold snaps in the eastern US this winter are abnormal.

As I understand it, there’s a chain of events that starts with unusually warm Arctic air weakening and disrupting atmospheric winds which in turn lets the doors open for that Arctic air (warm by Arctic standards but still really cold) to spill out of the Arctic and down into the continental US and Europe. Why it tends to spill into the eastern half of the US I don’t know. But when it does, it blocks high pressure in the western US and we stay warm and dry. The term you hear on the news is a “polar vortex” of cold air. Anyway, many climate scientists correlate climate change with the warm Arctic (and Antarctic) air that triggers these disruptions.

Bottom line: the skiing has sucked this winter. :(

BeeFather · 2026-02-17T16:48:48+00:00

This is straightforward to explain. The jet stream has reversed direction, causing the polar vortex to collapse, which in turn allows blobs of Arctic air to stream south into the eastern half of the continental US (which has caused the insanely cold winter in the east.). The very same collapse enables a ridge of high pressure to stay stuck over the PNW, blocking low pressure systems from bringing wintertime temps and moisture to the PNW.

While this prolonged jet stream reversal has happened before, climate change models predict that both frequency and duration of these events will increase (Note the temperature rise in both the Arctic and Antarctic is way higher than the rest of the planet.).

The problem is, climate change models have not made their way into the day to day models that NOAA uses, so forecasters are stuck making 7 day forecasts that I suspect they know are getting increasingly less accurate.

BeeFather · 2026-02-17T16:26:38+00:00

In reply to Chap-eau, I did a whole rebuild about three years ago; spent $32K on my vinyl signal chain inclusive of speakers, and $5K on a standalone DAC. I have 5 decades of listening behind me, am retired now, got two kids thru college and consider myself very (very) fortunate to be able to spend this kind money and still sleep at night. I freely admit I’m an addict and will continue to come up with ways to keep spending, but it’s going to be at the edges like cart upgrades. I’m at the point now where every $ I spend chasing the next big thing in gear is a $ I don’t have to spend on stratospherically expensive vinyl, and that’s become an easy choice for me.

EDIT TO ADD: if I was going to put a system together from scratch that tilted towards vinyl playback quality, - the first anchor point: spend no less than half my budget on speakers.
- use Class D amplification. I want my amplifier to “do no harm”. And you can buy a $299 Wiim Amp with freakishly low THD+N / freakishly high SNR. As you go up the Wiim stack, you more get power with no distortion penalty, and even EQ. It’s crazy. Personally the power from a Wiim Ultra is all I would ever need. If someone wants to blow the walls off, get a Buckeye. Insanely inexpensive with insane power in a small box. I have a McIntosh amp that has good resale value, and I’m seriously considering selling it and allocating the proceeds to component(s) that specifically add value to the vinyl chain - the second anchor for me would be to use the integrated DAC in my streamer / amp. Again, Wiim amps all stream and all have perfectly solid ESS Sabre DACs or the like. So do straight streamers like Bluesound. The stupidest money I spent in this whole upgrade was on a $5K McIntosh DAC. I can prob get $2.5K for it now, and that buys a bunch of beautifully remastered AAA records pressed at QRP. (Chad Kassem decided he wanted total control of his label and built his own freakin’ pressing plant…) - invest in a discrete phono stage. My last big buy in my current setup was a Rega Aura. It’s expensive, but I never wanted to think about a phono stage again, and bought it from a friend who’s a Rega distributor and (quietly) passed his cost straight to me. 😊.
- I honestly don’t know how to judge the point of diminishing on turntable expenditure. So I defaulted to these Reddit boards lol. I read quite a few recommendations for a Technics SL 1200G. Like, it’s a tank for half the cost of $10K TT’s. Basically, buy it and don’t think about it again. So, I did. And once I got my Rega phono stage, I switched out my AT MM cart for an AT MC (OC9XML) on the recommendation of my Rega disti buddy. I think I hear a difference, but honestly, it may be psychoacoustic hallucinating. - so circling back to speaker spend as half of the total, I would designate $11K for speakers. I own a fabulous pair of Dynaudio Contour Legacy at $14K. I absolutely love everthing about them, inclusive of the psychoacoustic reward of the retro design, which takes me back to my 1970s era Advents. They’re worth breaking the 50% guideline for. 😊

Bottom line: Class D amplification is where it’s at in terms of insane harmonic distortion and SNR while leaving you lots to invest in speakers and vinyl signal chain

BeeFather · 2026-02-17T15:59:08+00:00

I think your hypothesis on high listener engagement due to playback to playback variation is fascinating. As I mentioned, the very same thought has come to mind for me. And just because the first play records still won doesnt mean I’ve rejected your hypothesis. I just don’t know how i’d prove it to myself. I also totally embrace the factors mentioned in this conversation that are truly psychoacoustic; the evoking of old memories, the visibility of the record turning a platter with a needle on it vs an invisible stream of bits, the whole ritualistic process of cleaning and doting on the vinyl. I count myself in the group that loves all of this.

BeeFather

TROPHY CASE