Holland, PA
Quoted from NicoVolta:EM's must be the Spanish Inquisition of pinball because I didn't expect them to take over my collection so completely. Thus far I've given up an Embryon, Flash Gordon, Fire Champagne, two Vectors, Seawitch, Tag-Team, and an Elvira and the Party Monsters for all the EM's in my stable. Not that I disliked any of them (except Vecturd), but simply that EM's give me so much more. There's just something delightfully essential and minimalist and yet magical about them all the same. Heroes of the Analog World! Same reason I adore vacuum tube amps and the ghostly sounds of the Moog synth... they're just "alive" somehow. Especially after giving them the full treatment inside and out... they still have the capacity to awe and delight.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever!
I, too, am fond of vintage audio. My audio setup is all minimalist analog, SET mono block amplifiers, tube preamp and horn speakers. The purified digital sound is too “clinical” and not as natural as was originally heard. Gotta love the hiss, crack and natural flaws of the original recordings. A good television series is presently playing on the Smithsonian channel called “Rock ’N Roll Inventions.” Heard a great analogy last night when they were comparing digital vs. analog sound. Paraphrasing: “Imagine two loaves of bread and one is called digital and the other is called analog. Now carefully slice the digital loaf into many slices. Reassemble the slices and put the loaf back together. Compare to the unsliced analog loaf. The digital loaf is smaller, albeit a little bit, but the crumbs that have fallen out result in a different loaf than the analog.” And it’s those crumbs that are the “soul” of the originality forever lost when modernizing.
And such analogy is apropos for early EMs, or cars, or audio or watches, etc. Indeed, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.
