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I notice with sadness that Graham Barber - http://www.graham-ophones.co.uk/ - has passed away. I would like to offer my condolences to his family and pay tribute to both his collection website and the sister site which deals with many aspects of restoration.

Oh, wow, that's sad news. I always found Graham's site to be very enlightening for my forays into the world of HMV. RIP, Sir.

bulleid_pacific wrote:I notice with sadness that Graham Barber - http://www.graham-ophones.co.uk/ - has passed away. I would like to offer my condolences to his family and pay tribute to both his collection website and the sister site which deals with many aspects of restoration.

I am ever so sorry to hear this.

I only discovered his web-site over the last few weeks and really appreciated the information etc.

Very sad news indeed.

Grahams' passing was very sad and completely unexpected. He suffered a massive heart attack, and was in an induced coma for a few days. However, attempts to revive him proved to be in vain. If he had come out of the coma, the opinion was that he would have had severe brain damage, which he would not have wanted. He has left many friends, and I'm proud to say I was one of them. He hadn't been a gramophone collector for very long, but as with everything he did, he threw himself into it with gusto, and learned a great deal, which he was happy to share with anyone who asked. Our sincere condolences go to his family.

Barry

Sad news, I was a subscriber of his site, and found his videos very didactic and interesting.

Having just lost my father-in-law, I somehow skipped this message as I didn't have time in the past days to go through all of the posts on TTMF. I'm so sorry to hear this. This forum aside, I was also in contact by e-mail with him, he was one of the few persons interested in collecting quality portable gramophones besides myself, and oh Lord if his collection was made of near-mint machines! Heaven knows where he could find gramophones in such outstanding conditions, mine all look like second choices compared to his!

Although in many cases he didn't have more information than I already had (there is not much information on portables in general), nonetheless he always tried to be helpful and communicative. I appreciate that he took such lovely care in setting up his website - something that I've never found the motivation to do with my gramophones - and for each gramophone he had the ability to sketch the essential details and take beautiful pictures, providing for each machine a quick yet informative page.

I took inspiration from him and - paraphrasing a sentence found in his website - I wanted to own many of the gramophones that are now part of my collection since the first time that I knew about their existence, and about their existence I first learned on his website.

I didn't know his age but I figured he was in his sixties; his sudden death was surely a terrible lost for his family. Should anyone be in contact with his family, please forward to his widow and his children my words of appreciation and my condolences. Should they want to keep alive the web pages that he had written and should they don't know how to do it, I offer to host them on my website. Should they also decide, now or in the future, to sell his late gramophone collection, I respectfully ask to be among the first to be contacted. Thank you.

Having just lost my father-in-law, I somehow skipped this message as I didn't have time in the past days to go through all of the posts on TTMF. I'm so sorry to hear this. This forum aside, I was also in contact by e-mail with him, he was one of the few persons interested in collecting quality portable gramophones besides myself, and oh Lord if his collection was made of near-mint machines! Heaven knows where he could find gramophones in such outstanding conditions, mine all look like second choices compared to his!

Although in many cases he didn't have more information than I already had (there is not much information on portables in general), nonetheless he always tried to be helpful and communicative. I appreciate that he took such lovely care in setting up his website - something that I've never found the motivation to do with my gramophones - and for each gramophone he had the ability to sketch the essential details and take beautiful pictures, providing for each machine a quick yet informative page.

I took inspiration from him and - paraphrasing a sentence found in his website - I wanted to own many of the gramophones that are now part of my collection since the first time that I knew about their existence, and about their existence I first learned on his website.

I didn't know his age but I figured he was in his sixties; his sudden death was surely a terrible lost for his family. Should anyone be in contact with his family, please forward to his widow and his children my words of appreciation and my condolences. Should they want to keep alive the web pages that he had written and should they don't know how to do it, I offer to host them on my website. Should they also decide, now or in the future, to sell his late gramophone collection, I respectfully ask to be among the first to be contacted. Thank you.

Marco - I'm sure everyone joins your condolences - and mine to your family in turn. It looks like Graham's website is being maintained in his memory, which is great news. Barry (Phono48) seems to know the family well.

bulleid_pacific wrote:mine to your family in turn.

Thank you very much.

Media vitae in morte sumus...

Bill

I just noticed that the Restore-A-Gram website says, “The site is maintained in the memory of the author Graham Barber.” I searched and found this forum thread. I’m so very sorry to hear of Graham’s passing.

I emailed him a bit about a year ago. He and his website were extremely helpful to me. I absolutely love portable gramophones and he was the only person that I knew that was really dedicated to them. Were it not for his help and instruction I would never have known the joys of a restored HMV 102. I recently bought my first HMV 101 and I was looking forward to contacting Graham and asking him a few questions about some quirks. I also wanted to tell him that I now thoroughly believe that British portables are, on the whole, of higher-quality than their American counterparts. They’re also much more fun to use. I see why he spent so much time and care on them.

I hope Graham knew how many people he helped in this hobby. I’m glad to see his website still up and I hope that remains so for a long time. It’s a wealth of information and ideas that will continue to be useful for many collectors into the future.