Late last month, New York City's In Living Stereo underwent two major changes: They made a short move, from a modestly sized storefront to a much larger one—2 Great Jones Street in the East Village—and they went from being a hi-fi shop to being a hi-fi and record shop. On a recent visit to their new digs I was impressed with the latter: While some hi-fi shops limit their music commitment to just a few racks of 200-gram LPs—commendable in and of itself, of course—In Living Stereo has built an entire record loft and filled it with hundreds of well-chosen new and used LPs. (I took it upon myself to lighten their inventory while I was there.)
Proprietor Steve Mishoe has hired some new employees to work just the record side of the business, and the ones I met were unfailingly friendly and well-informed. On the hardware side, In Living Stereo has added Naim to their line-up, and continues to represent Leben, DeVore Fidelity, Rega, Creek, Music Hall, EMT, Dynaudio, Well-Tempered, Prima Luna, Box Furniture, Auditorium 23, and, of course, Shindo Laboratory. (I spent a transcendently happy hour in ILS's enormous main demo room, listening to Charles Mingus on an all-Shindo system: custom loudspeakers modeled after the classic Western Electric 753C monitor, Cortese amplifier, Masseto preamplifier, 301 record player, and "Mr. T" power isolation transformer.) The new In Living Stereo is a short walk from the Astor Place IRT station—not far from where Tower Records used to be—and is open 7 days a week.
The smaller speaker in the title photo is Ken Shindo's recreation of the great Western Electric 753C. In the corners behind these are a pair of Shindo-rebuilt Vitavox horns. In the same photo, the Shindo 301 record player sits atop a Box Furniture D3S rack.
Steve Mishoe, proprietor of In Living Stereo, takes a break in the store's new main listening room.
