Philadelphia area audio club?

Hi, Vertewax. Sorry we missed you yesterday. We had a small, but enjoyable, informal gathering of just three of us. Several people who had wanted to come were unable to do so for one reason or another.

If you like, please e-mail me directly through Audiogon with your direct e-mail address, your name and your home telephone number (no cell phones, please), and I'll get more details to you.

As you can tell, nothing formal is established at this point -- we're just in the process of exchanging information amongst each other to find where we may have some common interests to get together. Thanks for your offer to host a meeting. I'm willing to do the same, so I'm sure we will have several of us interested in getting together again sometime in the next few weeks.

Best regards, Rushton

This is a transplant of some of my posts at harmonic discord. My name is Hugh. I got started when a high end impresario named Herb Hamburger walked into the Lafayette Radio Electronics I worked at as a teenager and began talking about Thiel, Symdex, Gale and other little known, at the time, oddities. A bit later in Boston, I spent a good amount of time in the New England Conservatory of Music's great Jordan Hall, and then did a stint at the Apt Corp. in its heyday.

This club could have informal listening sessions in people's homes, orchestrate field trips to the better local dealers by prior appointment, petition these dealers to host manufacturers' dog and pony shows that interest us, or serve as auditioning panels for members who are designing equipment. Trips to unamplified concerts would also seem logical. (This rules out Verizon Hall on some occasions, incidentally.)

Philadelphia Area Audio Group (PAAG) is the current suggestion for a name. I'd like a permission by absence of objection to send a club listing to Stereophile, at least. I'll post suggested copy here for people to comment on. Or go ahead and fashion a statement of your own in the meantime for our perusal.

As noted, "we" had our first meeting recently courtesy of Rushton's hospitality. Let's just say it was tubes and rarefied vinyl, and there were no fist-fights to get the sweet-spot. (Sometimes people don't want exact equipment details published on the net since it is the net....)

If you have any other questions or business which can be answered (or dodged), please keep the dialogue going here.

Hello all, this is a repost of my intro from Harmonic Dischord (I was never able to successfully register there).
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It's cool to find a Philly area audio group... I look forward to participating, learning, helping, and listening.

I am fairly new to the gear part of this whole scene, but have been into music for a while. I'm 35. As a teenager, I was very into the Who, The Clash (long live Joe Strummer), English Beat, REM, Minutemen, etc. While in college in Pittsburgh, I got into the whole "College Music" scene with the likes of Dumptruck, Chameleons UK, Feelies, etc. I was in my first band in college with two friends from art school... we were called the "Stinky Bovines" and we were two guitarists, a bass player, and a drum machine playing at parties and the like... heavily influenced by REM, The Feelies, VU, Camper Van Beethoven, The Jazz Butcher, Lloyd Cole, etc.

When I graduated and moved to NYC, I was very into the brit music scene with the Sundays, Stone Roses, The Jam, etc. Joined my first band as a guitar player in NYC, then called "Feast Of Saints," now called "Scout." Female-led lite goth. Played all the local and some of the east coast venues.

Decided it was more fun to be in a band and spend all that time with close friends, so I started another band with a bunch of my friends from Carnegie-Mellon. We were called "Ms. Lum," and we ended up getting a record contract with Bar-None Records in Hoboken... home of They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo, Freedy Johnston, etc. We did pretty well... of course it didn't last forever. There were some other bands afterwards, but then I had my first child (son) and playing music took a back seat to listening to music. For a while I was making electronic-based music solo at home... Was very into Underworld, Laika, DJ Shadow, etc. Am still very into alternative and indie music... some of my recent favorites: Coldplay, the Doves, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, etc.

My obsession with musical equipment and recording transformed into a mild and cost-constrained (due to the kid) obsession with audio equipment. When we moved from Brooklyn to Philly, I decided I was going to dedicate a room in my new house to 2-channel audio. My system is modest but I think it sounds great. I have done some upgrading since I bought it a few years ago. Now it consists of: Redgum rgi60 integrated amp, Rega Planet cd player, Heybrook TT2/Linn Basik Plus/Grado Platinum feeding a Gram Amp 2 phono preamp. The cables are various: Monster, StraightWire, JPS Labs, the speakers are Linn Keilidh's. The total system cost was around $5000. So you can see my system is modest, but I think it sounds great and I listen to it daily. Still play guitar once in a while, and have a drum kit in my basement that I play once in a blue moon... but listening to great sounding music is my release these days.

After setting up the system I fell in love with simple jazz. Named my second child (daughter) Ella, after the lady herself! Am really into small group jazz from the late 50's and early 60's... Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, etc. Have a couple dozen jazz cd's and building a nice collection of Jazz vinyl... my latest and favorite hobby.

Anyway, being a dad of two, it's hard to get to concerts, but my favorite dates are nights out with the wife or friends to Ortlieb's Jazz House in the Northern Liberties... my favorite part of Philly!

Currently I work as a Design Director for a small interactive software and website design firm here in Philly. I am willing to do any design work: newsletters, logos, website, etc. that this group would be looking for. I would love to hear many other systems and see about the best ways to improve mine. Of course looking to meet like-minded music and gear fanatics. Thanks for reading.

-Sandy Greene
Vertewax on Audiogon

I’m glad to find some other people in the Philadelphia area who share my interest in good audio reproduction. And I look forward to the opportunity to get together to share some music, sound systems and experiences.

A little bit about me: I've been on the "lunatic fringe" of our shared passion for 30 years. My system is geared to vinyl playback, and I'm addicted to tube electronics because good tube gear always sounds to me most natural and true to the harmonic overtones of acoustic music. Did I say I prefer acoustic music? Yes, 98% of my listening is to acoustic music -- primarily classical (from ancient music to contemporary), with a good dose of folk, blues and Celtic. But I do also enjoy a sojourn with rock, even if my musical awareness may be somewhat dated and represented by Pink Floyd, Queen, Janis Joplin, Moody Blues, Rough Trade, Dire Straits, et al. My dedication to vinyl for my personal listening is evident by the record collection... With over 4,000 LPs and less than 50 CDs, I think you might get the picture. Also, I'm committed to the school of "high quality, minimal conveniences" in my equipment -- no remote control, no linestage, no tone controls or signal processing -- turntable direct-in to dual mono phonostage, direct to mono amps.

Did I say I like tube equipment? Hmmm, tube phonostage, all tube power supplies, all tube amplifiers. Does it sound warm, rich, sweet?? Nope, not a bit. The wonderful old Marantz 9 tube amps I lived with and loved for many many years sounded warm and sweetly euphonic. But contemporary high quality tube equipment has none of that classic euphonic signature -- just incredibly quick with wonderful ability to recreate the full shadings of harmonic overtones that, for me, the best solid-state gear just never manages to match. But, of course, system synergy is ultimately what counts -- its never just the individual components, it's all about the interaction and balancing of those components to create a system.

So, these are my biases based on my years of enjoying this shared passion of ours. We all have our own based on our musical and listening priorities. I look forward to getting to know some of you who live in or near the Philadelphia area and who share my love of well reproduced music.

Invitation - Choose a date...

Once again I offer an invitation to my house for those in the Philadelphia area who have an interest in getting together to share some music, listen to some different equipment and get to know one another. I am getting my record collection unpacked, so the vinyl selection here will be significantly more extensive this visit. Also, I encourage anyone coming to bring some of their favorite music to share.

I thought the best way to do this would be to propose some alternative dates and allow thread participants to express their preferences. So, please post your preference for a date or time from among the following alternatives, or contact me directly off-thread, and I will try to determine what the consensus appears to be and post the final date.

Saturday, January 25, either morning or afternoon
Sunday, January 26, either morning or afternoon
Saturday, February 1, either morning or afternoon
Sunday, February 2, either morning or afternoon
Saturday, February 8, either morning or afternoon
Sunday, February 9, either morning or afternoon
(Regrettably, weeknights do not work well for me.)

Please DO NOT post your phone number or address in this public area.

Best regards, Rushton