Elac Miracord 40H

     The Chrysler Imperial of turntables.  Slapping a record on here is like gassing up on a summer morning knowing theres a 440 under the hood. There are many things this turntable does really well. Low-end torque makes for very solid bass. Every other turntable I've ever owned  needs a separate ground wire to eliminate hum; not true here!
 Imaging is great! Vocals at center stage and the stereo image extends beyond the outside edges of the speakers on many recordings; a very good sign. I almost dismissed this turntable, thinking it an outdated relic; albeit a handsome devil despite the clunky headshell.
   Ten Years After "A Space in Time" is a delight with this table- Alvin Lee's vocal is centered and just a little bit recessed, but still in front of the drums- enforcing the impression that his voice is not coming "from" the speakers but is floating between them. The guitar resides just below his voice in the sound-field except for the electric guitar which has a disembodied life of it's own- easy to imagine Alvin running from one side of the stage to the other whilst soloing.  Jeff Beck's "Star Cycle"(I haven't listened to this cut for many years) SLAMS on this table! Tony Hymas staccato basslines are cleanly articulated and Simon Phillips drum kit has a real presence; tom fills skittering across the stereo field.
  This turntable is a sleeper.  If a tired state trooper were to see you floating along at 120 mph in grandpa's '64 Chrysler Imperial, he'd write it off as an hallucination- which is exactly how you want him to see it if you're the driver.  I'm pretty happy to get this kind of performance from ANY turntable. To get it for far less than the price of a Thorens and completely under the radar is just beautiful.

 Equipment used:    Elac Miracord 40H with Shure M55E cartridge.   Marantz 1120 Integrated Amplifier.   ADS L-910 Loudspeakers on factory stands (R2D2 looking bastards).

 In the Halloween spirit, I hired a ghost-writer to post this months segment of HiFiFreq. The copy he/she/it (please, let's not sexualize the spirit world also) turned in was all: "BOO!" and "Woooo - WOOOoooo"; Provocative and windy rubbish filled with ephemeral descriptors bemoaning the current state of High Fidelity. Having established an imaginary rapport by virtue of a common enemy (the cynical ghost) with you the reader, I continue:  Whilst hunting snarks ( a rather convoluted way to convey the mysterious nature of following or seeking something that remains as yet undefined, but whose allure is more than sufficient to justify continued tracking) sometimes a spooky feeling is induced- I imagine mythic tales of the golden hind evoke a similar haunted glade, shadowed in wraiths of fog and vivid musty odor...a sense of being led as a willing participant down into a darkening valley-lured by sirens and a hunch that unseen riches are just over the next rise, and "Hey, it looks like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filmed right over there..."  More plainly put, a Craigslist inquiry led to a day trip foraging the innards of a vintage radio repair shop and it's innumerable treasures; one of which being the vocabulary of the proprieter. I imagine this was quite like what heaven must be: a tinkerer's paradise with a nearly unlimited assortment of transformers, a box of old vacuum tubes, and a nearby field where truckers put hand-held citizens-band mics out to pasture. I skip through these Elysian-fields, a butterfly-net wielding idiot in full sunlight, un-ashamed at the joy I feel hefting a vintage speaker with what is surely a 15lb AlNiCo magnet. I'd love to tell you that I filled the car with vintage treasure and handed the owner a fiver, but that would be misleading provocative windy rubbish filled with ephemeral descriptors glorifying a bygone era, a golden age of audio and broadcast electronics and their concomitant technology. I did buy the cutest little tube amp I've ever seen (okay, the Z-vex Nanowatt MIGHT beat it out by a smidge), and a fixer-upper receiver that shall for now remain anonymous.
And, the owner gifted me a couple of coke-bottle shape 5U4 rectifier tubes for an amp I'm restoring and suggested I come back soon. I've started compiling a list...

P.S. As I finish writing this I hear two owls hooting in the backyard. Perfect! Translated, they tell me that the state of HiFi is exactly as it should be.