The otaku, the passionate obsessive, the information age's embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data than of objects, seems a natural crossover figure in today's interface of British and Japanese cultures. I see it in the eyes of the Portobello dealers, and in the eyes of the Japanese collectors: a perfectly calm train-spotter frenzy, murderous and sublime. Understanding otaku -hood, I think, is one of the keys to understanding the culture of the web. There is something profoundly post-national about it, extra-geographic. We are all curators, in the post-modern world, whether we want to be or not.
William Gibson
Article in The Observer: Modern boys and mobile girls (April 2001)
Our story starts when I bought a NOS matched quad RCA 811A upon the recommendation of ambel/Erik and my amp's manufacturer, Dejan Nikic. As luck would have it, one of the tubes was DOA. I got in touch with the eBay seller who said he'll ship a replacement but in the meantime, impatience a curse in this hobby, thought that I should reconnect with a local tube guru whom I haven't seen for some 10 years.
Richard Matthews, the owner of Leeds Electronics, runs his business from a warehouse in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Leeds Electronics was originally located at the famous "Radio Row" section of Lower Manhattan before it was redeveloped to site the World Trade Center. Richard bought the business from its original owner in 1994 after it had relocated to Williamsburg. I'd first visited Leeds around 2001, back when the area was mostly industrial, pre-hipster. I believe I was looking for some 6SN7s and it was a shock to see Richard sift through what appeared to be a burlap sack full of old RCAs and Sylvanias.
Click picture below to read an interview with Richard on the Culture Push blog.
Well, how to begin? Let's start with what greets you as soon as you step inside Leeds, aisle upon aisle upon aisle of... stuff! Pre-digital age stuff. The stuff you probably won't recognize if you listen to MP3s on your iPod. Richard immediately warns me not to post pictures on the web, he doesn't want Leeds to be another stop on one of those guided walking tours around Williamsburg. I reassured him I'll only be posting pictures on private fora but nevertheless, please don't get the impression that Leeds is a museum even if, in a lot of ways, it could very well be one.
Here's one of those aisles. I told the missus to go ahead and shoot while I caught up with Richard. The wife and I brought three cameras, I had my Olympus EP2, the missus had her Panny GF-1 with the 1.7 pancake I got her for Christmas and a Canon 40D she didn't get to use. Being very much into photography himself, Richard and Yelena also talked shop, at one point comparing digital scans of film vs supposedly higher resolution digital images on Richard's computer. Later, on the way home, Yelena says she was a bit afraid to run loose she might've broken something.
But, boy-o, there's just so much cool stuff. Like this metal filing cabinet, man, I'd love to store a stash of tubes in one of these! Richard and I did get to talk about tubes and audio. He's an OTL guy, still has his Futterman OTL-1s for some 20+ years. I'm a huge OTL fan as well, but my experience was owning Atmasphere MA-1s which gave off so much heat I couldn't run them during the summer. Properly mated with the right speakers, I agree with Richard, there's nothing like OTLs, it does combine the best of solid-state (speed, extensions) and tubes (liquidity). "Mainlining music" is perhaps the best way to put it.
Leeds also stocks a wide assortment of vintage parts, in one wall we have shelves of measurement devices, transformers, radio parts. Chances are if something serves an electrical function and was used in analog electronics before 1980, you'll probably find it here.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of these types of parts in assortment. I probably could name a few after only after closer inspection could determine its function. In comparison, our otaku host definitely knows each and every piece, its history and usage. The mindmap required for this arcana is huge. And tubes are just a small part of it.
But speaking of tubes, before long we were wrapping up our business. Richard, below, testing my 811As.
And here's that radio that's mentioned in that Culture Push interview that used to belong to Radio Free Europe. Don't even think of making an offer on it
We would've loved to hang more but another customer had arrived and each of us gets Richard's full attention. We had to say goodbye.
Epilogue
For lunch, we headed to Fette Sau, which was a short drive away. Now, I dunno about you, but tube shopping at Leeds followed by Fette Sau BBQ is an absolute treat in my book. I only need to flimsiest of excuses to feast on pork belly, ribs, brisket and some crispy pork skin in the first place.
Inventing an amuse-bouche, pork belly on a "canoe" of crispy pork skin.
I'm listening to the NAT Audio Generators as I'm writing this, sonically, the NOS RCAs have a lower noise floor, keeps its composure when pushed (unlike the Cetron and Sino I've used before) and sounds positively glorious. If you ever find yourself in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on a tube hunt, just step through the door.
Thanks for reading!