Furutech demagnetizer

[Masterlu]

I believe it's your shot nsgarch...

[jdandy]

And the score is:

[PHC1]

"In a conversation with Michael Hobson, head of Classic records, at a New York audio show two years ago, we were talking about sound quality of vinyl, pressing plant and quality control issues and various other LP related subjects. During our discussion, he happen to mention that he had been doing research into different vinyl formulations to determine which had the best sound quality. He discovered that the best formula was one in which no pigment was used which renders the LP colorless or clear. He explained that black is added to the vinyl recipe to make the grooves and spaces between cuts easier to see and thus cue. The problem is that the black pigment has magnetic properties that adversely affects vinyl playback. I asked him if he thought he might ever produce LP’s without the added black color and he said probably not because it would make them too difficult due. I told him I thought that people who bought Classic Records were more concerned with the utmost in sound quality and that most people play LP’s from the beginning all the way through, so cueing up individual cuts is not that much of a factor.

It appears Michael eventually agreed, so here we have their first LP pressed with no black pigment. Do they really sound better? Mike Peshkin takes a look…and listen. James L. Darby - publisher"

The rest of the article is here: http://www.stereomojo.com/Stereomojo...eviewsLPs2.htm

[-E-]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

I believe it's your shot nsgarch...

What'd I'd give to have the job of shaving those legs...

[jdandy]

Originally Posted by Vesuvius

What'd I'd give to have the job of shaving those legs...

Vesuvius.......Why stop there?

[jdandy]

What were we originally talking about? Whatever it was, it wasn't this.

[-E-]

The defibrullator thingie...

[nsgarch]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

I believe it's your shot nsgarch...

Well, I guess there will always be a market for audio placebos and Emperor's new clothes. If I were sufficiently cynical and had money to match, perhaps I'd start a Museum of Audio Idiocy. Most of the time however, I just chuckle quietly to myself.

So if someone wants to buy a record de-magnetizer, and $1800 later believes they hear an improvement, I just want to inform them that they'd have got the same improvement by getting rid of the static charge using a less expensive Zero-stat or the really less expensive (and the original) Decca 2+2 carbon fiber record brush. What Furutech did (in order to give all the audio obsessives a woody) is introduce the "mag" word. But just read this description (my comments in red type):

"Furutech tells us the carbon used to color vinyl attracts a magnetic charge. . . . . .
OK, let's stop right there: it's a STATIC ELECTRICAL charge (there's no such thing as a "magnetic charge".) And, it's the PVC that attracts the static charge, NOT the carbon-black coloring; carbon is magnetically inert but electrically conductive, and will drain off a static charge if it can find a ground (therefore making the use of a CARBON fiber record brush so very effective )
. . . . . and this charge affects the magnetic fields in your cartridge creating distortion.
Oh really!? And did they take the record/TT/TA/cart to the local particle accelerator lab where they actually have the instrumentation necessary for MEASURING such tiny forces?!
After you demagnetize your records on the Demag, you will not believe the difference!"
. . . . . . and of course it comes with a no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee?

Indeed, there can sometimes be impurities in poor quality carbon-black. Maybe Mr. Hobson got stuck with a bad batch. But even if ferrous, and highly magnetized, these microscopic impurities would be too far away from the coils of a MC cartridge to be audible as they went by. And they would have no effect on MM cartridges.

I don't discount, as PCH1 unfairly suggests, that there are things our senses perceive that science can't predict or explain. What pisses me off, is when science CAN tell us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something CAN'T POSSIBLY be so, and yet there is some guy pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining!

Of course, I have yet to see a ghost, actually levitate, or be abducted by aliens. So perhaps the vote's still out on certain things Nevertheless, as a product of (perhaps) the most respected technical institution in the world (MIT) where standards of scientific proof and intellectual rigor are unbelievably stringent, you'll just have to forgive me when I roll my eyes at the stuff that sometimes comes out of the mouths and laptops of audio's better known loud-speakers

[Masterlu]

The Furutech Demagnetizer.

[PHC1]

Anyways..... I'll have to try one of these things sometime in the near future. I'll let you know what the results were.