Album Information:
Artist: John Coltrane
Album: Giant Steps
Year: 1960
Label: Rhino RI 512581
Equipment:
VPI 16.5 Cleaning Machine
Custom KAB Technics SL-1200 MK2 with the following mods:
- Cardas Tonearm rewire
- KAB Fluid Dampener
- Herbie's Way Excellent II 3.7mm mat
- KAB rubber record clamp w/ bubble level
KAB Ortofon S30 (an Ortofon Concorde DJ cartridge body with an OM30 audiophile stylus)
Cambridge 640P Preamp
Mogami Interconnects
EMU 0202 USB
Cleaning:
1. Light steam / vacuum to collect initial dust layer. Clean VPI pickup tube w/ steam.
2. Apply MoFi Record Wash and scrub w/ MoFi brush for 20 seconds while platter spins. Steam + scrub for another 15 seconds. vacuum.
3. Steam rinse. vacuum. Flip record onto second clean cork mat and repeat process.
4. Clean stylus w/ Mr. Clean magic eraser and dry brush with Audioquest brush prior to needledrop to destatic/final dust removal.
Capture:
1. Capture entire side in 32bit - 96khz with Adobe Audition 3.0, adjust gain levels on EMU 0202 so that peaks are around -3db to -1db range.
2. Fully manual click and pop removal using Adobe Audition (no more ClickRepair necessary).
3. Run fade-in/fade-out routines, cut sides into individual 32 bit WAV tracks.
4. Run IsotopeRX Advanced for dither down from 32/96 to 24/96 (no dither actually applied, only removes 8 bits of float from recording).
About the Music:
It's Giant Steps, one of the most influential and glorious jazz albums ever recorded. Not much else to say.
Technical Notes:
DR11
I did this as an exclusive release for a Private tracker a couple of years ago. I don't think it was ever released into the general channels, so here it goes. I know that aksman also did this album a couple of years ago on his older system, but I didn't see it posted here, so I figured why not. This rip is one of the most unaltered I have ever done, requiring virtually no repairs or processing of any kind. That hiss you hear is the master tape. This is the raw, real, John Coltrane, masterfully presented by Bernie Grundmann in a wonderful 2x 45 RPM release.