At the age of six, Richard Steinfeld began piano lessons. He got carried away and broke the piano, so he fixed it. Emboldened, he took apart his record player and put it together again. He's been riding these three horses ever since.

After conservatory study, he acquired two music degrees. He spent three years as New York's leading harpsichord technician, preparing historic instruments for recordings and occasionally consulting on microphone technique, for every major record company and broadcasting network (it's likely that you've heard his work). Between degrees, he did a stint as a classical music radio announcer/operator in a medium-sized American radio market. He was an audio specialist for a college and a university totalling ten years. He also spent a few years running a "semi-custom" stereo business. Recently, he's worked in the trenches of Silicon Valley turning out technical publications -- explaining things in plain English ("I love teaching."). It's now back to music, with the teaching specialty of technique mastery -- using a method he invented when faced with the urgent need to teach himself the English Horn in a two-week crash course, when asked to replace another musician before going on the road with a touring orchestra.

Richard has had a lifelong interest in performing traditions and trends, as captured in the grooves of LPs ("The introduction of the LP was a revolution in classical music -- it was a blast of liberation for the performer in the recording studio. The LP introduced a forum for modern jazz, too."). He's been fascinated, seemingly forever, with viscous-damped tonearms and non-magnetic cartridges. As an oboe player, as well as having worked with the technologies of other musical instruments, he has developed "intelligent hands" when it comes to "things that vibrate for a living." Because of his rounded background that encompasses the entire audio chain from the instruments through the loudspeakers, he's acutely aware of what's practical -- what can be reasonably attained, as opposed to when the audiophile is barking up the tree ("...often howling incoherent mantras while spraying the forest with money.").

He developed a keen interest, too, in professional phonograph cartridges and styli after experiencing their properties during his short radio career. Because of this experience, his stereo business included Stanton Magnetics; he spent many years studying the company's products and discussing their characteristics with the company's engineers, even visiting the factory. His discussions with them often centred on the requirements and problems of reproducing real-world recordings (as opposed to test records and audiophile pressings); Stanton engineers regarded him as an expert.

Having come into a repair batch of nine Lenco headshells and a few tonearm parts during the mid 1980s, he hoarded these parts, scheming while biding his time, resenting the customers who brought him Lencos for servicing, trying unsuccessfully to trick them out of their machines. He recently acquired his Lenco L-75 and is now struggling to turn it into what he calls "a production turntable." "The headshell collection will allow me to use this single machine to compare different cartridges and styli, which includes the ability to pick a point in time and listen to what we considered normal or excellent back then." He's long enjoyed the Lenco's unique elegance and would like to see people preserve and enjoy these unusual machines, especially taking advantage of the full range of what the machine offers. "I have no idea how good this machine will be when I'm done with it. I'm determined to make an honest woman of her!"

He confesses that he wrote this biography himself near San Francisco, California, alternating between first and third person, Steinfeld laughs, "...as if this were a normal way of writing. One does not usually get an opportunity to write about oneself as if doing an article. I have found myself to be an good subject for an interview. I had no idea that I was so fascinating. I must interview me more often," Steinfeld said.