Turntabling Tees: Skull Star Crate Digger Shirt

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by Joe Wallace

Yes, I’m in fundraising mode for Turntabling as of late, offering a line of things I’ve hand silkscreened including this Turntabling limited edition tee.

The Skull Star shirt is one of the designs I created a year or so ago, it also appears on the Turntabling crate digger bags I’ve mentioned in other blog posts…now you can wear this design, too! Great for record store hopping, DJ gigs and on-stage lunacy.

And yes, I wear my own designs, so chances are if you’re in the Chicago area and you’ve been record store scoring the same time as me, you’ve spotted this shirt. Shameless? Maybe, but I do genuinely like the look. What can I say, I’ve got a thing for skulls.

The Turntabling Skull Star tee is available for $11 plus shipping in sizes SM through XL.

Shopping Bags For Crate Diggers and Vinyl Junkies

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Lately I’ve been hard at work designing and silkscreening cotton/canvas bags for crate diggers and vinyl junkies. I’ve got several designs now, two of which are currently for sale on Etsy. These bags hold any standard size vinyl records from 12-inch double LPs to seven inch singles. These are GREAT for vinyl shopping and convention-going.

One of my biggest complaints about doing record shows is that carrying around your vinyl finds is a major pain unless you’re toting a backpack. These cotton/canvas vinyl record shopping bags are great for shows whether you’re at a horror movie convention or your local record swap.

The images are linked directly to their respective sales pages on Etsy or you can check out the Skull Star Crate Digger’s Vinyl Record Shopping Bag or my personal favorite, the Aleister Crowley Beast 666 Crate Digger Bag pictured below.

If you find these bags are sold out when you click, please get in touch with me directly (jwallace at turntabling dot net) to make arrangements as I  usually have plenty in stock to sell at conventions and shows. Naturally, the vinyl seen here is NOT INCLUDED, heh. Did I mention these are only $9.50 each with free shipping in the USA?

ION Audio Profile Flash Turntable

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Here’s another consumer-grade turntable you can use to convert vinyl to MP3 portability. The ION Audio Profile turntable has a slot for a USB or flash drive, and the entire process seems as simple as starting the turntable and hitting “record” to get the process moving.

The chief draw for the ION Audio Profile turntable is that you don’t need a computer to record the audio. I haven’t used one of these yet, but in doing my research on this unit I discovered several favorable reviews stating that the audio quality is good for the average user. Some complain about rotation speeds on this unit and others like it being different that “true” 33RPMs, but typical listeners won’t complain, based on what I’ve read.

My main complaint with all these vinyl-to-MP3 recorders is that a degree of babysitting is needed to make them work properly. There’s either no silence sensor to split an entire album side into separate tracks without user intervention, or what is there isn’t really accurate or even able to be calibrated. I’m naturally coming at this from a busy/lazy person’s perspective–most users probably don’t mind the small amount of manual labor needed to break the recordings up into tracks.

All in all, I’ve seen this model get mostly favorable reviews and I’m contemplating a purchase of this simply because it’s got the computer-free recording feature. The built-in preamp lets you connect to most RCA stereo line/aux inputs, and it’s got a handy 1/8in stereo line in for recording from other sources–a nice touch.

What I’m most interested in is a hands-on, top-to-bottom review of this unit and others like it from a hard core vinyl junkie (not necessarily an AUDIOPHILE, mind you). If that’s you and you want to contribute a review of this or any other model turntable, please get in touch as I’d love to have some guest blog posts or even regular contributions from passionate vinyl lovers.

Drop me an e-mail at jwallace (at) turntabling (dot) net.

–Joe Wallace

WTF Album Covers: Christmas At The Devil’s House

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by Joe Wallace

Let’s start with the obvious. This may look, feel, and SMELL like a Creed record, but it’s not. Wait–you mean the guy on the left ISN’T a cartoon rendition of that whiny lead singer with a pair of horns on?

Oh, sorry then.

But if you actually heard this record, you’d SWEAR it was Creed–it’s every bit as wretched and filled with half-baked, warmed over doofus-shite. Some might argue that it’s not a fair comparison to put Creed side by side with Christmas At The Devil’s House, but lest we forget, Creed was responsible for bringing generic guitar twaddle with what sounds like Eddie Vedder’s untalented half-brother at the mic.

And they had a right-wing “family values” type songwriting agenda which makes all their lyrics as suspect as John Travolta’s motives for making “Battlefield Earth”. Whenever you hear “I love you,” lead singer boy is probably talking about Mister God. Yuck.

Christmas At The Devil’s House is every bit as uninspired–it’s that “Let’s play classical music with metal guitar noises” crap that makes people vomit uncontrollably after exactly ten seconds.

The album cover itself is merely goofy–but it promises something the record itself won’t deliver. WHERE ARE THE SATAN-THEMED CHRISTMAS SONGS? It’s almost July at the time of this writing, which means Christmas in July sales and other nonsense to do with Santa wearing a bathing suit.

But there’s no real presence of Satan on this album unless you think a metaloid cover of “Greensleeves” is a secret message from The Dark Overlord commanding us to slaughter our neighbors and make love to the parrot.

This album wouldn’t really make it into the Turntabling WTF gallery of crap record covers except for the fact that you really, really expect the record to have more Satan on it. Instead, you wind up feeling cruelly misled by the crude artwork. And maybe that’s the Devil’s trick; if you were dumb enough to PAY for this you got what you deserved?