What is the Silliest Accessory You Have Ever Seen.

@millercarbon,

"Here's the problem with biased moderators and triggered snowflake virtue-signallers. They think this is just fine: 

dumb, idiotic, profoundly stupid
when used by one of their own. But when turned around and used against them- where it belongs, by the way!- they whine and scream and have it removed."

"This whole thread should be removed."


Good point, there should be fairness but wrong direction. 

Why don't we simply let the readers decide? 

We're all adults aren't we? Capable of thinking for ourselves, aren't we?

I've never been keen on accessories. The equipment should do the job it was created for. Okay, maybe some speaker isolation, a demagnetiser for tape decks and a stylus cleaner.

The only accessory that I used which I would now have doubts about was the the Cecil Watts Dust Bug. This was a plastic arm with a roller on its end which tracked an LP as it played.

It was supposed to clear the path for the stylus but it needed some fluid application on the roller. At the time I didn't consider what residue the fluid might be leaving in the grooves of the LP.

@syntax ,

All Linn LP12 "upgrades"



Err yes.

After almost half a century’s worth of upgrades, it must be getting difficult to think of what next.

We’ve seen numerous sub chassis reinforcements, various arm boards, different (mainly rubbish) motors, and many speed improvements.

The most ridiculous one was the new arm board in the late 80s. A real piece of overpriced crap. So whatever next?

Could I perhaps suggest a direct drive motor?

Don’t thank me Linn, and don’t worry about all the things you’ve said about them previously.

It’s a different market now and most people won’t remember anyway.
Yes, you could introduce it with great fanfare as the final 50th anniversary solution.

Until the next one.

@isochronism , you're not trying to suggest that child friendly Joe, with all his crosstalk issues, is the most silliest accessory you have ever seen?

@gmercer,


'The reviewers have become a big part of the problem!'

Yes, we're certainly seeing a lot of this impartial pushing from reviewers. 

Nauseating sycophantic creeps like Darko have totally renounced any interest in further debate.

They're on the back foot having been exposed as keyboard shills and hence all of this 'let the listener decide' rhetoric that had previously slipped their jaundiced minds.

A small suggestion?

How about a little balance, and a little more honesty?

Let Kelvin from Stereo X review illustrate a good way of keeping it real. Praise and criticism, criticism and praise.

https://youtube.com/channel/UC7kMqpL7_dqLvOnNK6rkJNA

@mahgister,

You and I and many others that contribute to this forum might try to be honest as we can be, but it isn't the way of this world.

The truth in 2021 is now probably only reserved for those interactions between between friends and loved ones.

Certainly seems that no one in the big outside world is too concerned with telling the truth.

Certainly not the tyrannical banks, the litigious lawyers, those puppet politicians, the censorious educational establishment, the apparatchiks in the mainstream media, the farcically propagandist fact checkers, those ravishingly data stealing carnivorous tech giants, the fear-spreading pill-dishing big pharma, and obviously not even your friendly neighborhood hi-fi reviewer.

The likes of the late Peter Aczel are few and far between, alas. 

Any that still remain (Penn Jillette, Derren Brown, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning etc etc) risk being banished and sent to distant concentration camps and gulags to be found on the outer reaches of the cyber universe.

Places where they might find themselves in the company of criminals and the seriously deluded.

Exiled to virtual penal colonies.



"If you go to bed with another woman you will be in the obligation to lie, not because you are a liar, because there is no other way.... Simple..."


Unless you are very lucky and have a very understanding partner..

It's a little risky, but I think personal honesty (ok maybe not quite the confessional Russell Brand type of antics - not everyone is ready for that) can lead to closer more substantial relationships.

@mahgister,

"But dont forget that all ordinary humans are mostly trustful...."


Apparently experiments from the first part of the last century have shown that some 20% of the population are highly suggestible.

These are the kind of folk a hypnotist will usually seek out to join them on stage for the entertainment of everyone else.

More disturbingly it seems to also indicate that at least 1 in 5 of us is constantly ready and willing to believe virtually anything we are told.

Especially  when it's by a person with some conferred authority.

Funnily enough there also seems to some 20% of folk who are not suggestible and unlikely to change their minds in any eventuality. I'm sure most of us have known the odd family member that was like that.

Of course I'd like to see myself as someone that's not so suggestible and only prepared to rely upon reason and data (ie in the middle group of 60%) but I know I'm not.

Not when it comes to audio (and certainly not when it comes to judging people but that's another story).

I've had my fair share of cognitive dissonance when it came to purchasing various bits and bobs over the years.

Every CD player that I bought was progressively more expensive and more worshipped by the audio press than its predecessor, and yet for some reason my mind recently has been going back to that cheap machine my friend borrowed me back in the late 90s when I was in-between decks.

I've WhatsApped him to see if he still has it - he might have as he's a bit of a hoarder.

If so I'd love to hear it again and compare it to my current player (Marantz CD6000ki) just to see how the two compare.

Everything tells me that the Marantz simply must be better and yet....I still remember, some 20 years later, of having being pleasantly surprised every time I'd put that machine on.

I seem to think it was an Aiwa (I hardly paid any attention to it at the time as I was then in the search for something far far better - or so I thought) but hopefully my friend will be able to find it and confirm it.