A couple of things are distracting me from writing the last few weeks. One of them is an autoimmune health issue. I saw Dr. BigWig last week, gave a gallon of blood, need to have an echocardiogram of my whole upper body. I'm going to stop there with that subject for now because the other MAJOR FUN distraction is
I am on a music binge...

I have been digitizing LP's like a mad woman! I've done about 60 so far. I took a few pictures the last couple nights to share here- I miss writing but I've had such happy busy ears it is OK. I'm on a music vacation in my head. Here are the "post cards"

There are so many LP's in our house. I sort through them and pick what "sounds" interesting for the moment.

Roughly 10 at a time go to the kitchen for a bath.

I wash them with a fresh sponge and a solution of OxyClean. They get rinsed really well, I shake the water off them, and put them in a wooden dish rack to dry...

With a clean soft towel I buff the last couple drops of water off. The records look like they are brand new! OxyClean does the best job of removing the crap from the grooves in my experience.

I have a Technics SL-D2 turntable.

The output from there goes to a stand alone Claricon phono preamp. I found it for a dollar at a thrift store years ago- it is soooo much better sounding than any phono preamp I've ever used.

The next stop for the analog signal is through channels 3 and 4 in my Motu 896. This is where the digitization happens. I monitor the sound as it is changed through an amp and killer Cerwin Vega speakers. If the hubby is sleeping I use headphones...

I capture the digital signal from the Motu via its firewire connection to our music server iMac using Garageband. I slice and dice the tracks on my Powerbook, and add them to our iTunes library.

And then we can listen to the tracks in the modern world! Oh, lots of friends come stock up their iPods here- so the cool records get to be "stars" again and make many other ears happy. What fun!