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Old 23rd Jun 2008, 10:30 pm   #21
enquirium
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Default Re: Your first record player

Mine was the ubiquitous DANSETTE record player which were all the rage , bought secondhand in the late 60's so it was probably an early to mid 60's model . Pretty sure it was blue / cream with a BSR autochanger deck and had a 2 valve amp ( EZ80 , ECL82 ? ) . Not stereo , but it has twin speakers and I remember it actually had a very good sound , especially the bass .Replaced in the early 70's with a FERGUSON UNIT STEREO , which although stereo didn't have the nice warm tone of the valve Dansette .

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Old 24th Jun 2008, 8:20 pm   #22
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Default Re: Your first record player

As is usual with us "radionuts" my first experience of record playing was on my parent's Beethoven table radiogram with its Garrard RC110 deck & B7G valves. As a kid I couldn't figure out how Mum's classical 78's would spin so fast yet the music came out slow . It's about the same age as me (54) and I still have it. The first record player of my very own was a 9 guineas (remember those? £1.5p) brown Baird "vanity case" job from Radio Rentals. It had a BSR single play deck and a UY85/UL84 amp with the heaters fed from a 90volt tap on the motor and hardly any other components. I remember being particularly chuffed because I managed to get an ivory-white MK plug to put on it and not one of those nasty "empire made" ones!
Cheers de Pete
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Old 25th Jun 2008, 8:44 am   #23
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My first record player was an old one (Pilot?) that my dad had modified by fitting first a stereo cartridge wired for mono, then a stereo transistor amplifier, and eventually replacing the original BSR autochanger with a Garrard (which couldn't do repeat-play of 45s: when the steadying arm was raised and locked in the "stacking" position, it pushed the sizing arm into the 30cm. position). You had to plug in a separate speaker to hear the right-hand channel; but the back contact on the jack was connected via a pair of resistors to the LH input, so giving you proper mono (not just one channel) if the RH speaker was absent.

Next modification was the addition of two cables with phono plugs to connect up a cassette deck. They behaved as either inputs or outputs, so had to be swapped from one pair of sockets to the other depending on whether you were recording or listening ...... at least there was no possibility of setting up a howlround, though!

I later graduated to a Fidelity UA10, which was pretty awful by comparison.
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Old 25th Jun 2008, 12:58 pm   #24
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Default Re: Your first record player

The first one I recall was a Fidelity which I was given at about 11. Mid 50's with a single play manual BSR (very primitive) deck in a black and cream case and nice red inside. I remember the Fidelity badge in the centre of the lid inside.. Sliver plate with a world? on it. After a quick foray with 25p to the local TV shop for a replacement UL84 it worked well for ages. There was one massive fault with the overall design. The amp lived on the front panel with both valves horizontal. The UL84 can have only been about 1" from the shelf/cover and right below the edge of any lp that was left stationary.. with obvious consequences if you forgot to take the record off the deck. I still have a couple of lp's which show the results of forgetting to take them off though the player itself is long gone.

It was followed by a huge red EKCO 2 x ECL86 push pull with the usual Collaro changer. There is a photo somewhere on the site of one exactly the same, Then the guts from a Regentone radiogram (transformer and chassis just sat on a shelf with the BSR changer wedged up on some bits of table leg and various other bits and pieces.
Luckily (probably not what my father thought, though he never said anything about the growing pile of old tv's and other electronics) I lived near the dump and valve amplifiers of all kinds were my fare.. Once I came home with a huge collaro studio turntable.. heavy monster with a 12" solid cast turntable but no arm. I made one from some old stunt kite fiberglass rod and a Garrard sp25 mk3 headshell, the slide on thing.. it worked really well for many years, only being retired (and taken to the scrap man) when the motor windings spectacularly caught fire..
All in all looking back I had a pretty good early teens experience..Sunday on the tip, the rest of the week in the garage fixing what I had gained. I think I learned my basic valve electronics by rule of thumb and the 1962 mullard valve data book, also from the dump.
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Old 25th Jun 2008, 1:15 pm   #25
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Default Re: Your first record player

When I was very young we had an EAR record player. I remember a 3 speed Collaro autochanger that had a tendency to damage LPs. Eventually I butchered it and made it into a sort of single play deck. I think the amp was ECC83, EL84 and EZ80 driving a fairly decent elliptical speaker. I played loads of records on it, mainly from my dad's collection of 78s and Ps.

Some years later in my teens I bought my first turntable secondhand, a Goldring GL69, and built a plinth for it. I think there was a Shure M44 cartridge in it. A homemade mono amp (quickly replaced by a fairly horrible Jason amp) and speaker (replaced by a pair of Goodmans Maxims, donated by a kind uncle and lugged back from Brussels in a suitcase) completed the set. The sound quality was a revelation compared to the old EAR.
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Old 25th Jun 2008, 2:08 pm   #26
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Default Re: Your first record player

We didn't have a proper electric record player until I was about 14 (1971) and that that was a rather nasty Murphy mono job. However, I found a couple of reject damaged Fidelity UA5 main panels in a radio shop in Manchester when I was 18, managed to repair them, and used one with a BSR deck, cheap speakers and wood from the cabinet of a scrap TV to build myself a stereo tuner-amp and record player which I used during my student days. Performance-wise, pretty awful, but my Mum has still got it!

Cheers,
Neil
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Old 26th Jun 2008, 12:24 am   #27
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Default Re: Your first record player

Quote:
Originally Posted by Baggrus View Post
Once I came home with a huge collaro studio turntable.. heavy monster with a 12" solid cast turntable but no arm. I made one from some old stunt kite fiberglass rod and a Garrard sp25 mk3 headshell, the slide on thing.. it worked really well for many years, only being retired (and taken to the scrap man) when the motor windings spectacularly caught fire..
One of these a 4T200 complete with arm and cartridge sold on a well known auction site for over £200
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 10:26 pm   #28
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Default Re: Your first record player

Some pictures of the Murphy with the Collaro Conquest deck.
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Old 28th Jun 2008, 10:11 am   #29
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Default Re: Your first record player

I assembled my first record player about 1942. It was contained in a leather-covered box about 16 inches square which I was told had earlier housed a portable radio. The working parts were a Garrard AC4 turntable, 78 rpm only, with an autostop lever sticking up at the back where it was actuated by arm of the pickup – a massive Columbia comprising a tubular metal arm with a big box at the business end and a counterweight at the back. This plugged into my dad’s Aerodyne table radio but because that had the AC/Pen output vale fed directly from the double diode detector (a dinky little valve) I made up a preamp fed from the set’s power supplies using the triode section of a double diode triode I had handy. This served well until LPs came along.
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Old 28th Jun 2008, 11:08 pm   #30
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Default Re: Your first record player

This is a great thread! My first record player was a small plastic battery operated one, it was red and cream and played small 78 records. It had no amplifier, it used steel gramophone needles and the sound was "amplified" by the case, I seem to remember it sounded pretty dreadful! The records it played were plastic but played ok on the steel needle, yet a normal record when tried produced spirals of plastic from the needle... great fun when you are 9.
After an appeal to Santa I was presented with a Philips Disc jockey junior (which would have been a few years old by then ) I was delighted with it and still have it to this day, its a bit battered but it still works, the only repacement parts being the idler wheel and the pickup head.
As a teenager my shed was equipped with a 30s radiogram amp chassis under the bench,and a deck on the end of the bench in a homemade plinth. This fed various switchable speakers in the house and garden, there was even one in the outside loo! I was always tempted to get a copy of the national anthem over the years this was fed from various autochangers. at one time I had three rigged up to it all wired up with gpo relays so when one ran out of records and stopped it started the next, just the job for teenage partys.. more snoggin time! Rich.
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 8:25 am   #31
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Default Re: Your first record player

Mine must have been quite old when I was given it in the 70's. It was a red and white cased record player, the case being covered in some kind of early plastic, it was not an autochanger, it only played one record at a time, it was a valve amp, as the cloth speaker cover on the motor board used to get quite warm. It's was a small compact unit and it worked extremely well. I think it had a wite handle for carrying it. I'd guess it was probably 50's, goodness knows where it came from. I then remember a neighbour giving me a very chunky autochanger Dansette-type record player, I can't remember the make now, but it was very dark in colour and the autochanger fascinated me. After that I then collected record players from skips, jumble sales, charity shops and just about everywhere else that had them available, bu the 80's they were almost being given away.
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 12:38 pm   #32
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Curious if anyone can identify my first one, which I ended up taking apart. It must have dated from the fifties, a conventional possibly green and beige box with two cream coloured knobs horizontally to the right and a five inch round brass grill with a horizontal and vertical straight brass inlay across the front. The deck must have been a BSR autochanger. Two valves and a blue speaker with no name.

No longer have it or any of the parts

Geof
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 3:03 pm   #33
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Default Re: Your first record player

I got my first record player a month ago, free from a charity shop my nan works at (they can't sell electrical goods). It is a stereo ALBA thing, with 33/45RPM table and two cassete decks. It took an hour of wire tracing to find the dry joint that stopped the deck turning, and it has worked fine since.

It is playing 'The Jam - Going Underground' as I type. With singles to be had for 30 pence and LPs for a £1, I think it will earn its keep.
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 11:04 pm   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geofy View Post
Curious if anyone can identify my first one, which I ended up taking apart. It must have dated from the fifties, a conventional possibly green and beige box with two cream coloured knobs horizontally to the right and a five inch round brass grill with a horizontal and vertical straight brass inlay across the front. The deck must have been a BSR autochanger. Two valves and a blue speaker with no name.

No longer have it or any of the parts

Geof

Sounds like an EKCO to me.................forget the model no. though...........ianj
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 11:06 pm   #35
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Anyway, talking of our first record players, we mustnt forget that universal first "adjustment " either............................a new penny stuck on the tonearm head so it would play jumping records!!!!!!!!!! ianj
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 2:53 am   #36
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Mine must have been quite old when I was given it in the 70's. It was a red and white cased record player, the case being covered in some kind of early plastic,
almost certainly a fidelity, my cousin had one. was it housed in a sort of 'vanity case' affair?
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 12:38 pm   #37
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Sounds like an EKCO to me.................forget the model no. though...........ianj
Thanks Ianj, It could have been, but I have never seen a similar model since. Don't even know what become of the parts but I was only around fourteen at the time. The other set in the house was a Regentone Multi99 table radiogram which gave good service for many years.

Now have the Bush SRP51 bought new in the sixties, probably to replace the one I took apart

Geof
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 5:10 pm   #38
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Default Re: Your first record player

My very first record player (apart from the Fisher Price one which was a wind up musical box with coloured "records") was an Alba stereo with BSR deck and separate speakers which had been relegated to my bedroom from downstairs for some reason. This didn't last long before breaking down and at that point I had a brief flirtation with cassettes before receiving a Fidelity H.F. 42 for Christmas. This is a smart little briefcase type player with built in speaker which sounds surprisingly good even now - yes I do still have it!

I remember wondering what the 78 speed was for (clearly not just for making other records sound comically fast. . .) and was presented, one day, with a 78 rpm disc by my father. I therefore hold him responsible for the several hundred 78's I have since amassed!

Neil.
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 6:59 pm   #39
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Default Re: Your first record player

Harvestgold - you made me think - my first record player was a red Marx Toys record player with Kiddietunes records lol.

Eamonn
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 7:24 pm   #40
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....my first record player was a red Marx Toys record player with Kiddietunes records lol..
I'd forgotten I had a little red record player (possibly Chad Valley?) that played small plastic 78s. No trace of either the player or the records now.
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