So over winter break I was visiting my mom's apartment out in the Dominican Republic, where I used to live before leaving for college. It was a neat experience being "home for the holidays" and all that, but you don't care about that. I'm here to talk about something else.
Well, there's a decent chance you won't care about this either, but you might care about it slightly more.
Back when I was 16 I really really wanted to get into vinyl. For my birthday one day my older sister gifted me one of those shitty suitcase record players with a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruno Mars' 24k Magic, which at the time felt super cool to me. At the time I wasn't really super aware of vinyl culture or what a good setup was or even how big vinyl was becoming again, I just thought my funny outdated spinny discs were cool. So cool, in fact, that I started buying more. On a visit to my dad's place in Connecticut, I went to FYE and got a new vinyl record from my favorite band, Radiohead's then new album A Moon Shaped Pool. I was excited about it. So excited, in fact, that I decided to post on the Radiohead sub on Reddit about my new record, to which I was soon inquired about my setup. I confidently replied that I had received a Rock 'n' Rolla suitcase record player as a gift.
I learned a valuable lesson that day.
It became very clear to me that I was gonna need a better setup than that. My dumb suitcase record player was an embarrassment. A pathetic pile of junk. Why did I ever think it was adequate. I need a real record player. No, a turntable. That's what smart people call them. Turntables. Only calling them that from this point forward.
And so, I begged my parents to get me an Audio-Technica LP60. A pretty solid starter turntable. It served me pretty well, the audio quality being noticeably better and probably not encouraging anybody to bully me online for owning it. However...there was one problem. I was using my headphones on it with no amp. I had no way of adjusting the volume, just dealing with however it sounded by default. I didn't really know anything about amps, and even if I did, was I really gonna beg my parents for vinyl stuff again? Eventually I just accepted that this hobby wasn't gonna work out. It just wasn't worth the effort as a high schooler with no money of his own.
So back to last winter break. I took a look through my old closet, and lo and behold, there sat my old LP60. Times have changed, I have my own apartment, I have a good amount of money, and I can at least say I know what an amplifier is. And so, I took the thing home, purchased a Pro-ject Head Box S2 so that I can plug in my headphones, and restarted my vinyl journey.
For as humble of a setup as it is, I'm really happy with it. The audio quality is surpisingly good and it's just compact enough to sit on my desk next to my laptop so I can listen to my records while I do other stuff. It's not as pretty as the type of ten jillion dollar setups you'll see on r/vinyl, but it works fine for me and that's all that matters. Someday in the future when I have the space and the money I might do something bigger, but for now it more than suffices.
Not to mention, right now I'm living walking distance from my local record store, and I did get one of those Visa gift cards for Christmas that I'm free to use on whatever I want. Sooooooo, it's only right that I took this opportunity to kick off my new record collection with a couple favorites.
So begins my vinyl journey. I'm really excited to start buying some records and upgrading my setup, and I can already tell that this is making me so much more excited about music. So that's the end of my first real blogpost, I'll see yall next time :3