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Old 10th Dec 2008, 1:10 am   #61
mark pirate
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Default Re: Your first record player

My first record player was a huge old E.A.R , given to me by a relative when i was seven, (late 60's) sounded brilliant, weighed a ton

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Old 10th Dec 2008, 11:19 am   #62
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Default Re: Your first record player

My first player was a PYE(Can't remember the model no!) Battery operated one-we then lived in a house with no mains electricity-back in the autumn of 1958. Later this was replaced with, oddly enough, one of two EAR units, a single player, then, in 1962, an EAR 'Autobat', with a seperate speaker/amplifier for stereo. Since both the amp. and the player used 6 of what were then called 'U2'('D')cells, it was fairly costly to run!!
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Old 10th Dec 2008, 2:35 pm   #63
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My first record player was given to me when I was a kid, it was second hand, and I think had been rescued by a dustman. It was actually very nice, and surprisingly compact. It was a small case in maroon and cream and when you undid the clasp on the front you opened the hinged lid to reveal a deck which was, if memory serves me correctly 4-speed, and just one knob, for volume, which was on a cloth covered wooden board with a speaker beneath. The case has rounded edges and looked just like a small suitcase. I have no idea of the make, any suggestions? It served me well and I had many happy hours playing my records on it. It wasn't an auto-changer, just a single play deck, I'm guessing probably late 50's perhaps?
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Old 10th Dec 2008, 5:40 pm   #64
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Default Re: Your first record player

We had a portable spring-driven one (make unknown) where my father played his collection of G&S 12-inch 78 album set, and other niceties.

This was sold and a replacement upgraded from a deceased relative - this had a record cabinet and opening doors to regulate the volume!

Then, when I was about ten, we acquired a Regentone table gram - octal valves and Collaro deck. It caught fire a few months later - it all started then, as I asked if I could hang around in the workshop at "Modern Radio" on London Road, Bath, on Saturday mornings, and asking Mr Roseveer silly questions. The Regentone was never completed - the insurance wrote it off, but all this was instrumental in my being on here!

I got a Dansette - BSR UA14 and EL84 (ugh!) for one of my birthdays.
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Old 10th Dec 2008, 11:02 pm   #65
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Default Re: Your first record player

Along with many of my generation, the first record player I could call my own was a Fidelity HF42 (teak version). I've since acquired another for nostalgia reasons and it's still a remarkable little machine, particularly adept at 78s (although my original one was more likely to be found with the Human League on it's plastic platter).

My Dad's record player had a colourful life. It began as a standard Decca Deccalian with that distinctive cream moulded plastic grille. Unfortunately when my newly spliced parents went on honeymoon in July 1969, my dad accidentally left the Decca switched on for a fortnight. I don't know what state it was in when he returned, but he took it in for repair and it came back with a new record deck (an unusual small grey Garrard with a 7 inch turntable) AND a replacement valve amp with a panel that read 'Adastra 3.3' Until I learned about the honeymoon story, I assumed that every Deccalian was like this! I am still surprised that the record player wasn't written off entirely. It's a bit like taking a telly in for repair and having a new tube and chassis! Hardly economic, but I suppose today we are used to living in a more throwaway society. Sadly this unique Decca went to the tip in around 1982, so it remains only a memory.

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Old 11th Dec 2008, 1:17 am   #66
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Default Re: Your first record player

A midi-system rescued from a skip in Liverpool, had a turntable on top which I never used. I don't really regard this as counting though as I had no records then and ignored the record player. It ended up in a Mercedes 508 van, which can/could loosely be described as a camper. Not sure how long any records would have lasted as it bounced around the country.

When I lived on a narrowboat my Dad offered me his wind-up gramaphone (very practical, no drain on the boat's batteries). Sadly it had a broken spring and at that point I had no idea where, how or even if it was possible to fix it or get it fixed, so it went back in Mum and Dad's loft.

However when we moved on to dry land (read "damp South Pennines land") I acquired a lot of 'furniture' from my Mum who was downsizing after my Dad died. Amongst this furniture was a HMV 2351 radiogram with a BSR deck (stereo amp, but currently in mono form ), a plus-o-gram deck intended to plug into the PU socket of a radio and the aforementioned wind-up gramaphone. This wasn't a normal selection of furniture really, but I don't do with normal and this has proved more fun. As all have three have actually been used since then I think of these as my first record players, and they are certainly the first record players I have owned and used.

Although all of them are older than me, the HMV 2351 is only just older, by 2-3 years, and I do remember it being used when I was a kid. The plusogram by this time was just being used as a record cabinet, and I presume the gramaphone was stashed in the loft.

The gramaphone now happily works. The HMV 2351 works aside from the LH amplifier channel. The plus-o-gram is 'in the queue'.

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Old 15th Dec 2008, 1:13 am   #67
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Mine was homemade....

I spotted some cheap, surplus to requirements ready made modern cases at one of the local war surplus radio dealers. It was just the bare box, lid and a removable speaker casing at one end and a fixed speaker at the other end.

I found a three speed, autochanger stereo deck which would fit with a bit of adjustement, then started looking for a stereo amp and speakers. The latter I managed to scrounge and sent off for an amp, which was an early transistor unit I think a Sinclair unit (Z80 or 280 rings a bell). I managed to run the amp on a spare car battery, until I could afford to buy the bits to build a power supply.

Because of the case it looked really impressive professional job, but the inside was a mess.
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Old 16th Dec 2008, 5:30 pm   #68
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During the war, we often used to spend nights sitting huddled on the staircase of Great aunt's shop in Colchester. One of the small selection of records we had to entertain us was called - or had the words, "It's 3o'clock in the morning...." So depressing was this dirge, that the clatter of the incendiary bombs on the roof was more inspiring. Half a lifetime later when I was clearing out the building, I found the record. It had taken me ten weeks to go through 50 odd years of hoarding, and I'd no time for the dregs of the stuff. I stood beside a bin and thought...keep? throw? keep? throw?....Smash, that settled it. Shouldn't have done it. Quite recently, on an antiques roadshow, a guy/chap had two silver metal master discs. The program organizers had the groove read, and the mirror image computer reversed. "Dong! It's 3o'clock in the morning..." couldn't believe my ears. The thing is, the plates with a copy of the record, would I'm told, have been worth far, far more.

It's a by the way, but I've just remembered carrying a monumentally heavy mahogany cased radio into the shop, which was open to sell off the brick-a-brack. The radio had individual Bakelite encased coils, light-bulb sized valves, and all the connections were made with stiff rails to screw down terminals. As I said, I was depleted with the clearing work and when some young fella gave me a cock and bull story of doing up old radios for even older people, I gave him the set. Oh, to be able to wind back the clock.

We inherited a radiogram upon my g-mother's death. I was 8 years old, and recall rushing home from school to see it working for the fist time. The smell of over-heating rubber and the changing of the single play needles...kids these days, don't know what they're missing. Goodness knows how my mother's set of the Nutcracker Suite survived a head that weighed a ton - but it left me with a lifelong love of classical music.

I worked for a Clacton T/V shop for a while...a fairly short while. The had taken the plunge, and invested in a Grundig Gainsborough. Long, modern, Super swish thing with record player in one end and tape in'tother. It was for sale at 200 quid. (A Ferguson? with KT66s was about 70 then.) I was asked to carry a load of smoothing irons, toasters and what have you, to the workshop. Grumble - mumble - moan.

I dropped on of the irons onto the lid of the Gainsborough...right under the nose of the manager. Not long after this, I was unemployed.

Now it happened that about this time I was pals with a chap and his dad that had started a caravan camp. Dance halls, bars and all that new post war cheerfulness. I'd never been in a house before that had carpets that reached the walls. I was sitting on a third floor party room. (this is significant) wasting my unemployed day, chatting to the dad. My former employer's van pulls up on the road waaaaaay down below. Out gets a man I knew, my old manager, and the Gainsborough. During the 40 minutes that it took them to struggle up the stairs with the vast machine, I'd worked up enough mischief to suppress all my natural decency. Yep. "I shouldn't buy that one ****, it's got a dent in the lid." The room went very, very quiet, but nobody said anything and the Grundig was a feature of many good times in the next few years.

The sequel was, that I brought the contents of my pal's house for 500 quid, and ended up owning the old Grundig, dent an all. After cutting out a box full of paper condensers in the vast tone circuits, it still kept giving trouble, so I took a wood saw to it. The ends became my speakers for the very first modular amp and tuner that I owned. Cloth thrown over the cut edges left them looking Okay-ish.
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Old 16th Dec 2008, 9:45 pm   #69
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Default Re: Your first record player

Quote:
Originally Posted by harrym1byt View Post
Mine was homemade...
So was mine. I was hooked on the sight, sound and smell of records and radios from an early age, watching the 78s go round on my parents' Sobell radiogram, and as a kid I made several gramophones from Meccano, with sound boxes and diaphragms and long horns all fashioned from cardboard.

My first 'proper' gramophone was an old Fullotone portable ("Mighty as an Organ!") bought for my 11th birthday for 15 shillings, and later I inherited an HMV cabinet model from an uncle.

My first electric record player was given to me at age 12 or so by a neighbour, and was in two parts, a 33-45 rpm single play deck plus an ECL82 amplifier in a wooden box. I had fun making home-built speaker cabinets, and it sounded OK at the time! I later dismantled the amplifier and rebuilt it into the chassis of my home-made one-valve receiver. But that's another story.

Great thread, this!
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Old 17th Dec 2008, 11:19 am   #70
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Mine was the family RGD radiogram.c1956.model unknown.. LMS, a Collaro 3speed 10X autochanger. Huge thing with a damper controlled lid which used to close very slowly for a while,until the damper failed and it would crash shut.
I played my Rolling Stones albums on it whilst doing my school home work (early 60s)
Radio Luxembourg was a regular and the first day of Radio Caroline is an abiding memory.
I remember dad playing "I'll keep off the grass no more" by Bobby Comber (comedian) an 8" 78 which used to confuse the auto changer! Happy days.
Still got the 10" speaker from it but the rest went years ago.
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Old 17th Dec 2008, 7:13 pm   #71
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Default Re: Your first record player

Three off topic posts deleted.

Please keep to the topic - or you know what will happen next.
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 10:38 am   #72
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When I was about 7 my friend's parents had a huge radiogram that only played 78s. I was fascinated by the smell and sound of it. We didn't have a record player at the time other than the Chad Valley type mentioned earlier in this thread and I often went round to my friend's just to play the large collection of 1930s records.

I nagged and nagged away and was eventually promised a record player of my own for my 8th birthday. We went all the way from Lancaster to Manchester on the train (steam) to buy one from a shop that sold new and second hand radios etc and records. After trying several different examples my parents eventually decided upon a Decca in pale grey vinyl. It was deemed to be a "good" one because it had a tone control (this never actually did much). It had a BSR deck with a TC8 cartridge and a little "Decca" sign on the front that lit up when you turned it on. Of course we had no records so we bought new Beetles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Andy Stewart EPs together with a few second hand ones.

I later discovered a pile of 78s at school that had been brought in to convert into flower pots! I begged these and was told I could have them if my father supplied a letter saying it was Ok to play them on our record player. This he duly did and I started my own collection of 1930s records.

I used the Decca for years and it was eventually replaced for another birthday present by a Bush that was wired for stereo but needed a separate amp. Originally I used the Decca amp, but this was put in the bin when the cat was discovered nosing about inside it.

My parents gave the Bush and its "stereo" add on amp to the removal men when they moved house. I never quite forgave them for that, but I suppose I shouldn't have left it behind when I got married!!

I have never actually seen another Decca like the one I had.

Paul
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 11:59 am   #73
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Default Re: Your first record player

Despite an earlier warning from another Moderator, yet another OT post has had to be deleted.

Any further such instances will result in the death of this thread.

Telling us about your first record-players shouldn't be that difficult to do without straying, so please toe the line folks.
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 12:11 pm   #74
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My first was a console wind up inherited from my parents. It only played shellac records and had a moderate sized horn in the cabinet and doors to control the sound level. I can not remember the maker, possibly Gilbert but I think the model was Big Ben.

It must have been quite old, - before 78 became the standard speed - as the speed control was centred at 80 with fast and slow either side. Sound level could also be controlled by different needles but " loud tone" was the main one I remember. At that time subtleties in music were outside my ken. The motor was double spring and would certainly cope with one side of a 12" record and I think two sides of a 10".
It eventually had a few modifications such as adding a crystal pickup but I can't remember doing anything in the early days that prevented the use as an acoustic player.

Sound quality was not marvelous even to someone not very sophisticated in these things and I had concluded that acoustic playback was really only OK for portables. This prejudice was shattered a few years ago when I heard an acoustic gramophone with a very large horn being played at the NVCF. I can only imagine that when introduced it was in the same league as modern, genuine Hi Fi. Certainly it put many record players available now to shame ( and it was playing 78s )

It did not seem to matter very much how accurately the pointer was set as long as it was close to the 80. 78s didn't sound odd to me at this speed and as they were now the standard I gave the matter little thought until the mid 50s.. I was in a cafe with a very accomplished musician friend, in a back room someone was playing a record of a very well known piano concerto on a radiogram and my friend was puzzled by it and thought it was something he had not heard before. He did consider it was being played in the wrong key but reckoned that could not be so. Eventually we decided it was an old recording at 80 rpm being played at 78. He must have had a sense of absolute pitch and was completely confounded by this "new" composition. Perhaps some people can actually detect very subtle differences in reproduction, n doubt they get so used to doing the transpositions automatically that they don't bother to comment.

What happened to it is lost in the mists of time, I have a memory of converting it into a radiogram but still with the wind-up motor. It no longer exists so at some stage it must have been scrapped.

Last edited by wireful3; 18th Dec 2008 at 12:18 pm.
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 12:25 pm   #75
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Default Re: Your first record player

I can remember my parents having a console wind-up gramophone, with an internal plywood horn, back in the 1950s. It, too, had the variable speed control, which went from about 65-85rpm, and a double spring motor. It's long gone now, and I don't remember the make, either. It probably dated from the 1930s, having originally belonged to an Aunt who had owned it from new. I don't count it as 'my' first record player, since the Pye battery operated one I mentioned in post#62 above was bought by me in 1958.
(in closing, I am wondering how you can fit a crystal pickup to a wind-up gramophone without having to also add an amplifier & speaker?!)
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 1:07 pm   #76
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Cheated! I used the gram input on the radio'
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Old 18th Dec 2008, 1:26 pm   #77
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My first was a 1954 Pye Black Box, bought for me in 1976 (when I was about 3) by my parents from friends of the family who'd recently upgraded to stereo. I still have it

Then in about 1982/3 came a couple of Bush SRP31s from the school jumble sale (£1 each). One needed a new stylus, the other a new speaker as the original was o/c.

Next, I had an early 1970s Portadyne stereo record player, with BSR autochanger, Mullard amp modules and Fane speakers. I was very excited to have a "proper" stereo set-up and can remember my dad letting me play library records on it, but frankly, it sounded terrible. It cost £4 from the scouts jumble sale as it looked like new and worked. I can still remember carrying it home through deep snow and my arms acheing for literally days afterwards. That would have been c. 1984.

Then, I changed school. No jumble sales, but a very posh "Chrismas Fayre" but I eventually found the bric-a-brac stall and bought a very sad looking Garrard 2025TC record deck with Sonotone 9TAHC cartridge hanging by its wires, a tiny Tandy/ Realistic 2 x 1W stereo amp, and two plasticy Fidelity speakers. All for £1. After a lot of hard work and with some different Ferguson speakers, I had a system that sounded truely excellent.

After that came a Goodmans Module 80 tuner-amp with inbuilt Goldring GL75 turntable and Shure M75EJII cartridge plus some no-name 2-way speakers, again from the Scouts jumble sale for £5. It sounded very nice, and much more powerful.

By 1989ish, I had my first decent separates system, based around a Leak Delta 70 amp that had originally belonged to Dolby Laboratories in Stockwell (now with Cre8anet) and a 1970s JVC turntable. Bought from Oxfam in the days when they sold electrical gear.

There were at least 4 or 5 more along the way, but I won't bore you all with the details

Nick.

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Old 18th Dec 2008, 1:59 pm   #78
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We had a wind up gramophone, which I recall came from my grandparents, back in the early 60s. There was a pile of 78s which my brother and I used to play. One of our favourites was the Teddy Bears Picnic, (we were very young then) One day we discovered that the 78s broke when dropped. Shortly afterwards we had no records to play. The gramophone got broken up not long after that.

Christmas 1964 my parents bought an Ekco record player, single EL84 and crystal cartridge plus a few Beatles singles and LPs. These got played every day. I changed the cartridge to a stereo compliant one in 67 or 68 having heard that the new stereo records could be damaged by a mono only cartridge. That record player lasted my parents until 1978 when they got a cheap and cheerful Fidelity radio & record player. The Ekco was consigned to the loft until a couple of years ago when I rescued it, reformed the electrolytics and got it going again.

I bought an SP25 with a Shure cartridge in 1972, buiit an amplifier based on the Plessey SL403 ICs which lasted until I built some speakers when the amp promptly expired. I build a version of the PW Texan which I used for several years until I started upgrading the system. The SP25 was replaced in 1977 with a Pioneer PL112D and Shure cartridge. Over the next few years I bought a Quad 405 pairing it with my version of the Hi Fi News Linsley Hood pre-amp and a pair of Monitor Audio R252 speakers. The pre amp was replaced by a Quad 44 paired with an FM4 in 1987. I still have the PL112D but it gets very little use as most listening is from the CD player, a Marantz CD63.

Occasionally when the family are out I'll fire it up and bask in the nostalgia of the few albums I have on vinyl that are not available on CD and having to get up and turn the record over to hear side 2

Keith
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Old 19th Dec 2008, 7:09 am   #79
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Default Re: Your first record player

I have just removed another Off Topic post from this thread.

That makes five on this page alone, despite two warnings from moderators in the last couple of days.

This thread is now closed.
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