wired magazine and Tom Port

I do my own scrounging for used records ... and even if I could afford Tom's prices I wouldn't pay them, preferring to scrounge on my own.

With that said, a good friend of mine, a total vinyl guru, shops garage sales, estate sales and thrift stores to find great stampers/recordings to sell to Tom Port. I've heard a ton of them through my system before they get to Tom. I've compared them to the copies I own ... with few exceptions, they all surpass my copies in silence, dynamics, sound stage and tonal balance. If a person can afford the price ... I say enjoy them and more power to you.

Oregonpapa, where I live in Twin-Cities there are 12 Goodwills within 10 miles of my condo. I often find classical and jazz records which have been played little if at all at 99 cents.
Best find so far, 10 record set,never opened Japanese RCA pressing, of Rubenstein playing Chopin @ $4.99 !

In the late 80's Tom's apartment and mine were a couple of blocks apart, his very near the corner of Ventura Blvd. (as immortalized by Tom Petty in his song "Free Falling") and Van Nuys Blvd. It was a great neighborhood---locals like Johnny Ramone, Dave Edmunds, and Billy Swan could be seen getting a coffee, bagel, or newspaper on the street. Sherman Oaks has now joined the rest of the Valley in becoming a ghetto.

Both Tom and I moved away, and it looks like he's done pretty well for himself, as his current room is much bigger than his tiny apartment in Sherman Oaks was. Back then his prices had yet to escalate to where they are now; I got a "hot" pressing of the German "Magical Mystery Tour" LP for something not-too-bad, maybe twenty five bucks, I don't remember. Luckily (I guess!), I have more records now than I have hours left in this lifetime to listen to! So Tom will have to get by without more of my money.

His "reference" system uses a Dynavector 17D3? "Tubes make everything sound warm and add distortion" is his reasoning behind using an old solid state amp? The guy is a joke, his absurd prices notwithstanding.

Yeah, weird to see those kind of components in a system used to evaluate the sound of LP's. He's obviously never heard a high performance system. I should have had him over to hear the Quad ESL/ARC/VPI-Rega-Grado rig I had when he was down the street. Looking back at him now, I do seem to recall he struck me as a know-it-all kinda guy. I remember he made very little eye contact, always a sign that something is not quite right with a person. He also never stopped moving, very fidgety, with a lot of nervous energy. Other than that he was cool ;-).