ANALOG CORNER
25 years and counting
I was planning to ignore the big three oh oh—my 300th Analog Corner column—and go about my normal business of covering an assortment of new analog gear and accessories. There’s an abundance of those today, 25 years after the publication of my first column.1 Back then, there was far less to write about: Vinyl was on life support and headed for the obsolete-music-format trash heap atop a pile of Elcasets and 8-track tapes.
As I commenced writing that more conventional column, second thoughts took hold. Three hundred is just a number, but it’s a big one: one column per month for a quarter-century. This is, I decided, an opportune time to pause, look back, reflect, and consider the way forward.
If you find this self-indulgent, I promise to do it only once every 300 columns or so.
My first thought as I write is that I can still do this while my friend, the late Art Dudley, cannot. Every Stereophile writer shares it, I’m sure. I think that same thought now every time I put on a record.
I thought the same thing when our friends and fellow writers Bob Reina, Wes Phillips, and Rick Rosen passed away, and also when founder J. Gordon Holt and ’s Harry Pearson died. Not to be morbid, but over the past quarter-century, many industry leaders have left us: A.J. Conti of Basis Audio and Alastair Robertson-Aickmann of SME; Albert Von Schweikert; Joe Grado; Norman Pickering; Irving M. Fried; Bill Johnson; Franco Serblin; Dave Wilson; and many others.
