The guitar man

Philip Chua is no ordinary record seller. He’s a walking encyclopedia of music that has been recorded on vinyl. He was among the few brave souls who refused to be swept up by the digital music revolution of the ‘80s.

The compact disc as a music format is in its death throes. Declining sales have led to the shutdown of giant record stores, such as HMV and Record One. On the other hand, sales of vinyl continue to rise, and are giving digital music downloads a stiff competition.

But Philip will have none of this “hogwash” because, to him, music recorded on vinyl is in a league of its own — it has no rival.

His popular essays on music – be they classical, jazz, pop and virtually any genre — and how these are recorded (Records and Recordings on wiredstate.com) must have been read delightedly and reread untiringly by the forum’s more than 7,000 members worldwide. There’s never a dearth of information in his essays. When he writes about how a particular album is recorded, arranged and finally pressed for consumption, one will get to know how the artists, the record and sound engineers, and the backup musicians team up to weave notes into beautiful musical masterpieces. He dwells more on how recorded music is eventually assimilated into the people’s consciousness and empower those who embrace it.

Music is Philip’s first passion, and the remuneration is just secondary. He used to run a family-owned aluminum smelting and fabricating plant, but is now involved with a company that brings in Clarion Car Audio from Japan. His taste for music and high-fidelity recordings is exquisite. For him, it is important to have the right gadget to play these recordings. His search for music nirvana once led him to bring into the Philippines what could possibly be the best cartridge ever made — the Koetsu cart series —only to lose it to a gung-ho dealer who now enjoys the fruits of Philip’s labor. But he doesn’t mind; he is after all just a hobbyist.

He knew instantly that music would have a great impact on his life the moment he touched his first guitar. He was in grade school, and AM radio was his main source of musical enjoyment. He grew up with the music of Cat Stevens and Elton John and two songs – Father and Son and Skyline Pigeon — instantly gave him the needed inspiration. His mother had a vast vinyl collection and portable record players to enjoy her favorite music while doing house chores. He found out later that the guitar was given to him so that his mother could just listen to him play, freeing her from the tedious rituals of playing records. It was love at first pluck, and Philip and his precious guitar became inseparable. From the moment he learned the chord combination of Bread’s If, he was hooked.

This started him on his way to collecting vinyl and stereo magazines. With his very first system   — a pair of Daichi speakers hooked to a portable cassette player and phonograph in place – his life had never been more enjoyable. Before he knew it, he was making the rounds of hangouts of people who shared the same passion. He met and befriended the legendary Lito Gelano, and the latter opened his ears to high fidelity audio. With his ears now trained for quality recordings, he came to realize that some were really just not made to listen to.

Says Philip: “I started hunting for vinyls that were made with high musical standards. That was the beginning of my love affair with the so-called ‘audiophile records,’ or records that were cost-no-object and made with cutting-edge technology.”

When his friends took notice of his uncanny ability to scout for good records, orders started to come in, first in trickles then by bulk. “This formed the backbone of what would be a small venture into record-selling which I have been doing for five years now while I was in transition from my old manufacturing business into a trading company,” he adds.

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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.comor at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com or you can tweet audiofiler at www.twitter.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.