It Spins
When I was thirteen years old my uncle taught me how to slowly lower the arm of a record player onto the vinyl record without scratching it. Vinyl records….a very delicate thing. This concept was quite figurative in comparison to threading a sewing machine while it is running. The needle itself that scratched out the audio and transferred it to the speakers was made of nylon I believe and would dull over time. If you didn’t replace it regularly it would widen the grooves in the vinyl disc causing them to sound bad. The alternative though was to buy needles made of graphite commonly called diamond tips. These eventually had to be replaced too but not as often and they didn’t dull, they would just snap over time. When compact discs (or, laser discs) came along we were led to believe that they were virtually indestructible. This was not true. They were compact but, just as delicate as a vinyl record. Through the transition of this genre there was a lot of skepticism throughout ...