First released in 2010, Parasound’s JC 3 MM/MC phono preamplifier began as a dual-mono John Curl-designed phono section retro-fit for its JC2 line stage. With vinyl’s popularity on the rise, Parasound ...

Following the advice of Nagaoka engineers, I let the cartridge loosen up over about 50 hours of listening. I heard its sound relax a bit, with the richness of the midrange and the depth of the bass ...

Editor’s note: Mobile Fidelity originally released its 180gm 45rpm 2LP set for Deee-Lite’s World Clique as a numbered, limited edition of 2000 back in May 2026. The MoFi Clique was sourced from the ...

Back in 1984 I was assigned to interview Don Henley, who'd just released Building the Perfect Beast his second solo album. Henley picked me up in his black Porsche 911 and off we went to the Sunset ...

My journey with ultrasonic record cleaning machines (RCMs) started in 2021 with a Vevor ultrasonic vat and a record spinning attachment. It worked well. This was followed by getting my hands on a ...

Ideally, LPs should be played with the pickup stylus remaining tangential (ie, at a 90° angle) to the groove just as the lacquer from which the LP was ultimately stamped was cut in the first place.

Any resemblance between Sumiko’s $899 “Songbird” high output moving coil cartridge and the rest of the Reference line’s “bird” cartridges—the $1249 Blackbird (available in both low and high output ...

Earlier this year, I wrote a four-part series about Yellow Magic Orchestra, the seminal synthpop trio of Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Of course, that’s only the tip of the ...

When I attended my first Blues Masters at the Crossroads event back on October 17 and 18, 2014, at Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas—i.e., inside “The Church” performance space that aligns at the ...

When in the late 1980s Bent Holter started Hegel—named after The Hegel Band, a rock band in which he played, which itself must have been named for the philosopher—designing a phono preamplifier would ...

While we have indeed been focused on featuring more reasonably priced gear here on AP of late, we do still want to recognize some higher-end, high-caliber products as well — besides, we love looking ...

The Eternal Dude: Above, Ian Hunter leans into it. Photo by Ross Halfin. Ian Hunter is a survivor. Not only that, but the veteran British vocalist of Mott the Hoople fame and a lengthy and fruitful ...