Michael Fremer

A few issues ago, Sam Tellig gently mocked me with a comment about mobile record players. For those of you too young to remember, or who thought he was kidding, here's a photo of the late, great Lawrence Welk enjoying "Highway Hi-Fi" in his 1956 DeSoto convertible. The players, made by CBS-Columbia for Chrysler, featured a new 7" format record, the XLP, which provided up to 45 minutes per side thanks to its 16²/₃rpm speed and its pitch of 550 grooves per inch—twice the density of a standard LP. Playback required a special 0.25-mil stylus tracking at 2.5gm—about half a gram less pressure than, say, a $7600 Clearaudio Insider needs to track a regular LP in your living room! A flywheeled motor (there's nothing new under the sun) kept the 'table's speed stable under impossible conditions, and an ingenious arm design supposedly kept the stylus in the groove even around hairpin turns.

In their "Noah's Ark" TV commercial, what DaimlerChrysler seems to consider worth hauling up the Ark's gangplank is a pair of Mercedes Benz E-Class sedans. There's also a guy schlepping an iMac (what else?), and another carrying recorded music—not CDs but a stack of LPs, the top one appearing to be an original of Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool. (Other recent analog sightings: a full-frame Clearaudio Reference turntable in Tomb Raider, and a Rega Planar 2 or 3 'table in Sex and the City.)

All four standard record speeds have now been covered in this column: 16 (2/3)rpm, 33 (1/3)rpm, 45rpm, and this is "Analog Corner" #78(rpm). Seventy-six columns and going strong. Hard to believe, considering that vinyl was declared "dead" a decade ago, and is still so declared by the digital hardcore.

Every fall and spring, Groovy Productions runs a giant record convention at the New Jersey Convention and Expo Center at the Raritan Center in Edison, New Jersey. In 2001, despite September 11 and an unusually warm, sunny day that saw temperatures close to 80°, vinyl fanatics turned out in gratifying numbers. And while attendance was down compared to last year, according to Groovy's organizers, those who came were in a buying mood. I was among them.