Do you still have your first phonograph?

[AmberolaAndy]

*bump*

Yes, I still have my first phono. A portable with a brand name I think nobody has ever heard of. A “Northome”. I bought it along with my first 78s in the fall of 2008 at an antique mall that is now long gone. It had a damaged reproducer that sounded awful. But hey! I was just happy I could get a wind up phonograph that I could afford at the time. From time to time I will stick a No. 2 soundbox on it and play it. It sounds ok. But doesn’t compare to my VV-50. (Horn is too small.) And the case is a complete wreck.

[marcapra]

My first antique phonograph was purchased in 2003. I bought it off Ebay and it was an early style 1925 Victrola Consolette. It worked well, but had cabinet issues, especially the dinged up feet. I sold it for $150 as I had no sentimental connection with it. But I was 53 when I got it. I replaced it with a Victrola Credenza. Marc.

[budsta]

Mine was an upright Aeolian Vocalion bought in c1991. It didn't even have the gradulola which most I've come across in Australia seem to. The shelving was made out of the packing crate it came in which was a bit unique. I still have that, however the machine is long gone.
I was quite efficient with my purchases for a long time and wrote down what I paid and where it came from. I've gotten a bit slack in the last few years, but having said that.
The machine I have owned the longest is 15th on the list which is a Gramophone & Typewriter Baby Monarch ( like the Victor 1 ) It is an early example as it has a side brake and a Black and brass witch hat horn. The motor board is not hinged and is accessed from underneath. I bought this in c1994 and I still love. I like its small proportions compared to other horn machines.

Stephen

[Kirkwood]

But of course. In 1964 I was 9 years old, and spied this Victrola 1-1 in a barn up the street from our house in Rushville, NY (in the Finger Lakes region). This had been out there for years, in a leaky area upstairs, so the water damage was considerable. My parents impressed on me the lesson that old barns aren't necessarily "abandoned" and the contents aren't just up for grabs. I asked the absentee owner when he came in from "the city" (Rochester) and he laughed and was glad to let me have it and take it home to work on. Dad helped a lot, we were both surprised when it actually played (with some tinkering). I learned a lot from this little thing, but then it got shoved into a box when other phonographs took over my attention. Some years later, I found another Victrola 1-1 in rough shape, but it was solid, and so I was able to make one good machine from the two. This one bears the serial number plate from my first machine.

My Dad worked at Sarah Coventry Inc. back then, you may remember they gave away costume jewelry on game shows back in the 1960s & 70s. They had a jewelry finishing and plating operation in Newark where we lived from about 1965 onward. I had sanded the bejeezus out of the tone arm and other metal parts, the guys in the plating shop did what they could to give me a nice plated finish. This isn't nickel, though----it's rhodium. They were using that on jobs to replicate platinum for jewelry, I suppose. It's not "right" but this poor little machine has suffered enough----I'll leave it.

[Uaisgood]

My first was a battery powered little thing made to look like a horned gramophone lol.

[Wolfe]

Yes. A suitcase portable that I've never identified the make of. Had it since I was a kid, spinning my earliest acquired 78's. Destroyed 78's too, because I re-used the steel needles that were already with the machine. I didn't know where to get new ones. It was the mid-1980's.

The machine's been put away for years. The nickel now has some corrosion, and the (red) rubber lining the throat of the reproducer is hard and cracked. Gaskets are probably the same.

It's case is covered in a kind of dimpled green material, about the shade of cooked spinach. It's speed controller is marked presto (to) lento. It would only play one record side per wind.

[Lucius1958]

Yep: the Amberola 30 my parents gave me as a birthday present. It was my guinea pig for restoration techniques for some time, and is now close enough to 'original' for me to leave it alone.

Bill

[Retrograde]

Yes. 1917 mahogany VV-XIV, bought in 1993 from Rick Wilkins.

[jmad7474]

My very first phonograph (outside of the Califone 1430K my school let me borrow) was a GE V631M portable record player from the early 1970s that a neighbor gave to me at least 15 years ago. Everything on it was plastic (except the changer overarm and the turntable, oddly) but it played quite well - the only issue I recall having with it was that the 16 rpm speed setting wasn't very stable due to probably a burr on the idler mechanism. I had that for about five years, and then a friend of my family gave me their (then) recently-deceased great-aunt's Decca WWII-era windup portable. I LOVED playing that, it had great sound and was in pretty good shape considering it was stored in a damp basement for about 50 years before I got it! Unfortunately, I do not have either player now as I was forced to donate them when our family moved in 2011 and we did not have any extra space I could allocate to them in the new house.

I have definitely upgraded to better units I like even more since those days, but I do wonder sometimes if the GE and Decca are bringing the same amount of musical joy and wonder to someone somewhere else - wherever they went off to, I hope they are being enjoyed!

[A Ford 1]

The first phonograph I can recall came to our house when my Mother's father died it was a very large victor floor model but then I was about 7 years old. I recall my sister, (she was 10 years my senior), and her friends playing playing her records of dance music and having a good time. My parents got rid of it but my mother retained my grandfather's records. I was interested in old phonographs and eventually my mother allowed me to buy an old smaller floor model Victrola and records. The Victor had belonged to my long dead grandmothers newspaperman who lived with his sister or the other way round. When he died Mrs. Deszore I am not sure of the spelling went to live with her daughter and sold me the Victor and records for $7.50 in about 1950.
My grandfather came to the U.S. in the late eighteen-eighties his records were light classical and German pop music of the early 1900's whereas Mrs. Deszore's were broken English/German comical records. 1900's song and dance, WWI songs etc. I sill have the Victor and records. The Victor and a Reginaphone are in the basement surrounded by other stuff. I play my Edison C-19, Standard, Amberola I-A and the three reproducing pianos these days.
Allen