Modern Analog No. 001 — The Listening Station

There's a speaker in my shower. If it were up to me, every wall in my house would have one built into it.

I didn't set out to become someone with more speakers than rooms to put them in. It happened the way most collecting happens, one purchase that seemed reasonable at the time, then another. A few were gifts from great friends. A couple I picked up for my daughter. One that only becomes a speaker once you clamp it onto something metal and let the metal do the work. I own more than ten at this point, and I stopped counting before I finished. That's a longer story for another time.

What all of them had in common was the same thing the shower speaker has: background. Something to fill a room while I did something else. The passion for music has always been there, but this time I took a different approach.

I went looking for gear to build a hi-fi listening station for the opening preview of Branches Vintage House, my wife's store, and found a pair of Advent towers after a lot of digging. I brought them home before I brought them anywhere else. The first record I played on them rearranged how I think about the other ten.

The Advents never made it to the event itself. Rain was coming, and they're delicate, indoor speakers. If we run another edition under a roof, you'll hear them.

What went instead was a pair of Pioneer towers I bought without much information and didn't get to test until the morning of. I had no idea if they'd even qualify as hi-fi. Same week, a guy in Oakland Park sold me a Technics turntable, and that one worked from the first record.

I was genuinely unsure the Pioneers would be enough. They weren't club speakers, and that was never the point. The point was a room where people could stand near the music and still talk to each other, and that's exactly what happened. The mood that afternoon was Italian summer, and the records did the rest.

I'd gone looking for an amplifier and came home with my father-in-law's JVC receiver instead, which turned out to be the better call: two sources, one unit. Anyone who wanted could play the record selection on site. I was producing the event, not running the booth, so the second source stayed on the Atonemo Streamplayer, holding a playlist I've been building with a magic NTS find of Italian library music, and some tunes to build the afternoon. Setup took minutes, and once it's on the network you forget it's even there, which is exactly why it earns its place in the station. It doesn't replace the records or a DJ. It covers the hours when neither one is in the room.

That's the idea behind Modern Analog. Secondhand gear from 30 years ago doing real work in 2026, with one small modern gadget staying out of the way so we can keep the aesthetics and the quality of sound.

For me, analog culture was never about refusing the new stuff. It's about where your attention goes in this fast era: slow down and listen.

THE STATION

Speakers: Pioneer CS-J821Q. 4-way, twin woofer system. Made in Japan.
Turntable: Technics SL-QD35. Quartz direct drive, fully automatic.
Receiver: JVC RX-903V. Dynamic Super-A, Compu Link.
Streaming: Atonemo Streamplayer. Stockholm.
Console: Mid-century credenza, cane doors.