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Sakuma-san at Restaurant Concord in Tateyama - "À la recherche du temps perdu"
Sakuma-san has been running Restaurant Concorde in Tateyama city on the southern tip of Chiba prefecture for over 40 years; his restaurant is a 2 hour train ride mostly through Japanese countryside starting at Tokyo station in the metropolitan heart of Tokyo city. Concord is a place where you can relax and enjoy a coffee or a beer while listening to the golden sounds of music from a bygone era. Sakuma-san’s hi-fi equipment is set-up mostly for monaural playback; for vinyl reproduction he uses a Denon DL-102 cartridge with a Gray 12 inch transcription tonearm mounted on a Garrard 401 in a custom cabinet. He was one of the first people to 'rediscover' the Garrard 301 and 401 range of turntables, back in the 70s at at time when they were deemed to be valueless by conventional thinking and ‘modern’ hi-fi views.
As the readers here may already know, Sakuma-san makes his own tube amplifiers, according to his own circuit designs which are based loosely on the circuits for amplifiers that were used to drive the speakers popular in cinemas during the 1930s. He prefers the sound of full range speakers, particularly Lowthers which he says are the best choice for instrumental music.
I was impressed by how real the early mono recordings which he played sounded. One of his favourite classical records is a recording of Pablo Casals playing the Bach cello suites, from the 1930s; I had never heard this recording before because I tend to avoid early records that might require too much of a compromise in the area of sound quality, but shortly after the cueing the record, the early mono 1936 sound was quickly forgotten, as the music filled the cafe.
The cafe is especially popular with Japanese jazz enthusiasts, I had time to listen to just a single Coltrane disc: the music sounded so present and warm, it felt as though I had been transported back in time to a Jazz cafe of the 1950s.
The picture above shows Sakuma-san beside one of his many handmade tube amps (the one in the picture is used for listening to Jazz CDs). And the picture below shows Sakuma-san enjoying the music!
Relaxed and Enjoying the Music at ConcordMore info at the link below.
BK
Edits: 05/06/08
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Topic - Restaurant Concord in Tateyama (with pictures) - B.K. 22:51:49 05/05/08 (5)
- thnx, great post .. /nt - J.D. 10:46:51 05/09/08 (0)
- there was an article on that place a few years back... - triode 17:39:17 05/06/08 (0)
- Nice guy too - castironandtubes 08:37:48 05/06/08 (0)
- RE: Restaurant Concord in Tateyama (with pictures) - AudioSoul 07:29:08 05/06/08 (0)
- I saw the youtube - OMalley 06:13:21 05/06/08 (0)
- RE: Restaurant Concord in Tateyama (with pictures) - garrod 04:48:02 05/06/08 (0)