This is an old video that I was able to rescue before my now defunct channel was shut down. As you may know, the Telarc recording of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Kunzel has the loudest, boomiest cannons ever recorded, and a properly setup tonearm/cartridge combo is a must to track these grooves properly. This LP has destroyed lots of speakers because of heavy hands on the volume control when playing this. How many records have a note with a warning like this?:

“THIS RECORD TESTS THE LIMITS OF PLAYBACK TECHNOLOGY. ON THE FIRST PLAYING PROCEED WITH CAUTION UNTIL A SAFE PLAYBACK LEVEL CAN BE DETERMINED!”

Sadly, this copy arrived badly warped (I got a proper one later), but it made me think of the ultimate challenge for a tonearm and phono cartridge: If a fine copy of this LP is hard to track, a warped copy must be even harder. I honestly didn’t think my gear would be able to do it, but it did.

Numark TTXUSB turntable – Nagaoka MP-500 phono cartridge – ART DJPRE II phono stage preamp – Vinyl record vinilo LP