I was rattling on about my favourite turntable . . .
The manufacturer was a short lived HiFi brand called Stathearn. During the 70's, various efforts were made by the UK governnment to try and relieve the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was thought that a major contributor to unrest was economic stagnation. There was little investment and job creation at the time, so the govt provided grants to start up some new industries providing skilled jobs. The policy has some resemblance to the idea that if we could just get the Middle East to adopt our consumer DisneyLand, and provide jobs alongside, all the nasty extremists would run out of support. In Northern Ireland, the Strathearn Audio company was part of a series of several attempts to stifle dissent with prosperity. Later the DeLorean car company was another more notorious attempt, in which the CEO was eventually found to have been of dubious character. In many of these cases, unfortunately, safeguards were not sufficient to ensure fair employment policies and as a result, the established power imbance ensured that most jobs went to Protestants, not Catholics, who were ridiculously disadvantaged at that time. This only fed the anger of the Nationalist community, and thepropaganda og groups like the IRA. Don't get me wrong, I am a lapsed Anglican protestant agnostic. But that doesn't mean I am inured to the injustice sometimes perpetrated by my own people. I have lots of thoughts about religious issues across the board. But here I am talking about my Strathearn turntable and it's genesis, so I'll save all that for another time.
What did for Strathearn as a company was a series of tradgedies and mishaps. They attempted to rush their product out too early due to a premature advertising campaign which promised products in shops by the Christmas. Design teething trouble had not been fully addressed and the items dispatched to HiFi press reviewers did not make a great impression. The one unqualified golden review turned out to have been written by a journalist linked to the company, without actually having seen the finished product. In fact, one of the complaints was imperfect pitch control. I think I heard of a report that the company was affected by a terrorist incident aswell, which added further negative vibes to the situation.
I am a sucker for the underdog. Thus I was smitten with my turntable. I now have a second one for my shed/studio/geek zone, which also required some TLC before it would play well. This was because the previous owner had attached a make-do cartridge to the tone arm in a rather clumsy fashion. I was able to undo his botch job, clean it up and fit a brand new cartridge/needle. It appears to have no pitch issues, but I did add a tiny dash of oil to the bearing for futureproofing. There was a slightly more snazzy model - the STM2 - which featured magnetic pusle drive, touch sensitive start/stop/pitch control. I picked up a very sorry example at a car boot sale. I haven't started tackling it's ailments yet. To start with,the magnetic strip has unglued from the platter, and it is without cartidge or needle. These might be more tricky to find.
A few weeks ago, I cooked up Sunday lunch and had my parents over. Dad spotted the deck and began enthusing about his one. He had disposed of it after pitch problems began to become unignorable. By that point he had embraced the digital age so he hadn't really tried to fix it. He was slightly miffed to think that some bike chain oil might have solved the problem. Mine has now given me months of happy listening, and since I set it up properly, has revealed many delicious secrets encoded in the grooves of my vinyl collection.
My wife was away only last weekend so I took the opportunity to trip out and trawl through my collection a bit. I had approximately 3mg of 2CI-NBOMe that Saturday afternoon followed by a salad, fresh bread and fruit and then created a comfy den on the sofa in the dining room near the hifi. I could look out into the garden and watch the sparrows and blackbirds, pecking at the breadcrums I had spread earlier. Two Blue tits took a bath in the waterbowl outside, unaware of my intent gaze. The spring blossoms beginning to bloom on the trees shimmered while sparrows flitted in and out of the nooks and crannies of the hedgerow. As the evening began to darken, the activity began to decline. I worked through record after record, occasionally strumming my guitar along, or attempting to work out some musical chord pattern or melody on my guitar whilst listening along. I don't usually smoke in the house, but I allowed myself a few nice joints for company, and nibbled on various goodies from the fridge.
2CI-NBOMe is very agreeable to me. It has simillarities with the conventional 2Cs. There is more force or power to it's conjurings, lending it more prominent visual phenomena, for example. The overall alteration of thoughts and mental dynamics was equivalent to 2Cs but again more clear and pronounced. I did notice a greater tendency to more meaningfull mystical thought than 2C chemicals generally evoke in my experience. That is that concepts of wholeness, unity, love and empathy devloped in what felt like very deep sincerety and purity. I had heard other reports that it was comparable to acid. Of this I am not sure, and I like to initially take each substance on it's own terms, before comparing stats ala Top-Trumps. But, I could see why some might make the comparison. For me, 2CI-NBOMe was like Daddy sized 2CI. I felt the visual phenomena were of the same colours and dynamics as 2CI, but on a larger size scale. 2C's usually have fine grained visual pheneomena that are not massively vivid. 2CI-NBOMe, on the other hand featured grid or point like patterning,shimmering and oscillating on a magnified scale. Like a Tonka compared to a Matchbox toy car, or a poster to a postage stamp. Physically it did not feel uncomfortable. The onset phase was exciting in a euphoric way, always of a positive trajectory. It takes longer to work it's magic, and my first couple of attempts last year undershot slightly. Discretion is the better part of valour. There was consederable debate as the best form of administration. Some struggled to get it into solution, and although I am unsure which salt I have, I didn't have a problem, placing the sligtly bitter drops beneath my tongue to good effect. I noticed a numbness or tingling in the immediate site of application, reminding me of the Japanese delecessey of Puffa Fish. They arehighly toxic, featuring a paralysing nerve venom. A victim cannot coordinate the muscles to breath (or anything else for that matter) and thus rapidly fades to white. The fish is prepared by highly trained chefs who remove the anatomy containing the venom before serving the dish. The taste is accompanied by a slight vicarious tingling on the tongue due to the nerve blocking effects of even the extremely small quantity of venom remaining in the fish. With 2CI-NBOMe, that tingling served as a warning that I should be cautious with my calibrations. It was clearly discernable even on those initial occasions where the overall trip had not been particularly strong. I was intrigued to read on the chatboards the other day that the NBOMe materials might be considered chemical weapons on account of their high poteny by weight. I can see perhaps how this might come to be a problem if some lone lunatic were to try and induce a mass communal spiking incident. These things are now out there, alongside all the other morally ambiguous inventions of mankind (See Nuclear science, GM crops, the wheel etc). Regulated sales might control the supply and demand and take the industry away from shady people who would happily sell a Kilo of such a material to anyone prepared to pay, even if it looked like they were up to no good.
Unfortunately the kind of methods of calibration available to the average consumer ar not sensitive enough to accurately measure single doses of these materials. Some punters won't buy a cheap mg scale, never mind something more expensive and accurate. There is little doubt in my mind that 2CI-NBOMe has much to reccomend it. However, I will not be combining it with anything except marijuana and tea until more reports come through at least. I'm not sure if it needs modulating anyway, although I wouldn't mind trying to vape some DMT with it sometime. Not until next month - tolerance is said to be very rapid. I also prefer not to imdulge in heavy tripping when I am not in possesion of my beloved marijuana. I am just about finished smoking my last crop (White Widdow) which came out splendidly. and gave me three months of unrestrained herbal enlightenment. For the last five years I have been growing increasingly potent Widdow. Each crop, I refine my technique a little, so that now I have got the next one well under way before having smoked all the previous one. I am still a few (4-5) weeks off the next batch. I'm sure it will do me good to ease off a bit.
The manufacturer was a short lived HiFi brand called Stathearn. During the 70's, various efforts were made by the UK governnment to try and relieve the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was thought that a major contributor to unrest was economic stagnation. There was little investment and job creation at the time, so the govt provided grants to start up some new industries providing skilled jobs. The policy has some resemblance to the idea that if we could just get the Middle East to adopt our consumer DisneyLand, and provide jobs alongside, all the nasty extremists would run out of support. In Northern Ireland, the Strathearn Audio company was part of a series of several attempts to stifle dissent with prosperity. Later the DeLorean car company was another more notorious attempt, in which the CEO was eventually found to have been of dubious character. In many of these cases, unfortunately, safeguards were not sufficient to ensure fair employment policies and as a result, the established power imbance ensured that most jobs went to Protestants, not Catholics, who were ridiculously disadvantaged at that time. This only fed the anger of the Nationalist community, and thepropaganda og groups like the IRA. Don't get me wrong, I am a lapsed Anglican protestant agnostic. But that doesn't mean I am inured to the injustice sometimes perpetrated by my own people. I have lots of thoughts about religious issues across the board. But here I am talking about my Strathearn turntable and it's genesis, so I'll save all that for another time.
What did for Strathearn as a company was a series of tradgedies and mishaps. They attempted to rush their product out too early due to a premature advertising campaign which promised products in shops by the Christmas. Design teething trouble had not been fully addressed and the items dispatched to HiFi press reviewers did not make a great impression. The one unqualified golden review turned out to have been written by a journalist linked to the company, without actually having seen the finished product. In fact, one of the complaints was imperfect pitch control. I think I heard of a report that the company was affected by a terrorist incident aswell, which added further negative vibes to the situation.
I am a sucker for the underdog. Thus I was smitten with my turntable. I now have a second one for my shed/studio/geek zone, which also required some TLC before it would play well. This was because the previous owner had attached a make-do cartridge to the tone arm in a rather clumsy fashion. I was able to undo his botch job, clean it up and fit a brand new cartridge/needle. It appears to have no pitch issues, but I did add a tiny dash of oil to the bearing for futureproofing. There was a slightly more snazzy model - the STM2 - which featured magnetic pusle drive, touch sensitive start/stop/pitch control. I picked up a very sorry example at a car boot sale. I haven't started tackling it's ailments yet. To start with,the magnetic strip has unglued from the platter, and it is without cartidge or needle. These might be more tricky to find.
A few weeks ago, I cooked up Sunday lunch and had my parents over. Dad spotted the deck and began enthusing about his one. He had disposed of it after pitch problems began to become unignorable. By that point he had embraced the digital age so he hadn't really tried to fix it. He was slightly miffed to think that some bike chain oil might have solved the problem. Mine has now given me months of happy listening, and since I set it up properly, has revealed many delicious secrets encoded in the grooves of my vinyl collection.
My wife was away only last weekend so I took the opportunity to trip out and trawl through my collection a bit. I had approximately 3mg of 2CI-NBOMe that Saturday afternoon followed by a salad, fresh bread and fruit and then created a comfy den on the sofa in the dining room near the hifi. I could look out into the garden and watch the sparrows and blackbirds, pecking at the breadcrums I had spread earlier. Two Blue tits took a bath in the waterbowl outside, unaware of my intent gaze. The spring blossoms beginning to bloom on the trees shimmered while sparrows flitted in and out of the nooks and crannies of the hedgerow. As the evening began to darken, the activity began to decline. I worked through record after record, occasionally strumming my guitar along, or attempting to work out some musical chord pattern or melody on my guitar whilst listening along. I don't usually smoke in the house, but I allowed myself a few nice joints for company, and nibbled on various goodies from the fridge.
2CI-NBOMe is very agreeable to me. It has simillarities with the conventional 2Cs. There is more force or power to it's conjurings, lending it more prominent visual phenomena, for example. The overall alteration of thoughts and mental dynamics was equivalent to 2Cs but again more clear and pronounced. I did notice a greater tendency to more meaningfull mystical thought than 2C chemicals generally evoke in my experience. That is that concepts of wholeness, unity, love and empathy devloped in what felt like very deep sincerety and purity. I had heard other reports that it was comparable to acid. Of this I am not sure, and I like to initially take each substance on it's own terms, before comparing stats ala Top-Trumps. But, I could see why some might make the comparison. For me, 2CI-NBOMe was like Daddy sized 2CI. I felt the visual phenomena were of the same colours and dynamics as 2CI, but on a larger size scale. 2C's usually have fine grained visual pheneomena that are not massively vivid. 2CI-NBOMe, on the other hand featured grid or point like patterning,shimmering and oscillating on a magnified scale. Like a Tonka compared to a Matchbox toy car, or a poster to a postage stamp. Physically it did not feel uncomfortable. The onset phase was exciting in a euphoric way, always of a positive trajectory. It takes longer to work it's magic, and my first couple of attempts last year undershot slightly. Discretion is the better part of valour. There was consederable debate as the best form of administration. Some struggled to get it into solution, and although I am unsure which salt I have, I didn't have a problem, placing the sligtly bitter drops beneath my tongue to good effect. I noticed a numbness or tingling in the immediate site of application, reminding me of the Japanese delecessey of Puffa Fish. They arehighly toxic, featuring a paralysing nerve venom. A victim cannot coordinate the muscles to breath (or anything else for that matter) and thus rapidly fades to white. The fish is prepared by highly trained chefs who remove the anatomy containing the venom before serving the dish. The taste is accompanied by a slight vicarious tingling on the tongue due to the nerve blocking effects of even the extremely small quantity of venom remaining in the fish. With 2CI-NBOMe, that tingling served as a warning that I should be cautious with my calibrations. It was clearly discernable even on those initial occasions where the overall trip had not been particularly strong. I was intrigued to read on the chatboards the other day that the NBOMe materials might be considered chemical weapons on account of their high poteny by weight. I can see perhaps how this might come to be a problem if some lone lunatic were to try and induce a mass communal spiking incident. These things are now out there, alongside all the other morally ambiguous inventions of mankind (See Nuclear science, GM crops, the wheel etc). Regulated sales might control the supply and demand and take the industry away from shady people who would happily sell a Kilo of such a material to anyone prepared to pay, even if it looked like they were up to no good.
Unfortunately the kind of methods of calibration available to the average consumer ar not sensitive enough to accurately measure single doses of these materials. Some punters won't buy a cheap mg scale, never mind something more expensive and accurate. There is little doubt in my mind that 2CI-NBOMe has much to reccomend it. However, I will not be combining it with anything except marijuana and tea until more reports come through at least. I'm not sure if it needs modulating anyway, although I wouldn't mind trying to vape some DMT with it sometime. Not until next month - tolerance is said to be very rapid. I also prefer not to imdulge in heavy tripping when I am not in possesion of my beloved marijuana. I am just about finished smoking my last crop (White Widdow) which came out splendidly. and gave me three months of unrestrained herbal enlightenment. For the last five years I have been growing increasingly potent Widdow. Each crop, I refine my technique a little, so that now I have got the next one well under way before having smoked all the previous one. I am still a few (4-5) weeks off the next batch. I'm sure it will do me good to ease off a bit.