Welcome to issue #57 of Tape Op.

Recently my friend, and Tape Op writer Steve Silverstein included this thought in an email to me: "I'm having a problem lately with getting too 'good' at recording and losing some of the charm that I used to achieve by accident." I love this thought and hope anyone reading this magazine can take it to heart and understand the implications.Every few years I realize that my intros here have shifted away from the personal into the general. What's up in my life? Hold tight... I recently sold my home in Portland and my girlfriend and I bought an old house in southern Arizona. It's an ancient structure, and it's been in need a ton of work. So much of restoring a house relates, in my mind, to recording. "When do we hire a professional?" "Do I need to buy more tools?" "Can I do this with just a hammer?" Many decisions run parallel to our little world. The one thing I have noticed is that restoring a house is easier than building a studio. We'll be moving Jackpot! to a new location in Portland (yes, I'm still keeping a foot in Portland) this year and the trials and tribulations of that are yet to come. Stay tuned.

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