Do you still have your first phonograph?

[rockisland1913]

Yes I have it, early 1921 VV-50 oak case, it has nine more to keep it company today.

[Lucius1958]

Yes, I bought an Edison long case Model A Home from Dennis Valente in 1976 and walked it back home, balancing it on the crossbar of my bicycle! I still have it and it still runs quite well nearly 40 years later.

I brought mine home in 1975 riding about 6 miles on the Schwinn Typhoon that I used to deliver newspapers. It sat in the basket in the front.

The antique dealer wanted $75 for it. I was making $10 per week delivering papers and I had saved up $73.50 and tried to buy it for that much. The guy would not budge one cent! I had to wait for the next week's profit to get the machine.

Looking back, I think I overpaid for a machine with no horn or reproducer and with a frozen mandrel shaft bearing. It was the first one I had ever seen though outside of the local museum and I thought they were rare!
Dave

Sorry, but I can't help imagining this as a Python sketch:

"Werl, I 'ad to lug a Triumph wi' a Music Master 'orn 25 miles through a blizzard on roller skates! Both me arms were full o' cylinders, so I 'ad to 'old the lid 'andle in me teeth!

Ye tell the young people today that, they won't believe ye... "

Bill

[Phonofreak]

My first machine was an oak Victrola VI, a late one with the nice feet on the bottom. In 1988,I bought it at an antique store in Lemon Grove, CA, near San Diego. I just came back from deployment to the Gulf. I had that machine aboard ship until I transferred. I had that machine shipped to me when I was stationed in Bremerton, WA. I still have that machine.
Harvey Kravitz

[winsleydale]

Considering I have only had the H-19 since June, I still have it. My only thoughts of parting ways with it come when I think about replacing it with a C-250 or, even better, an elusive Edisonic. I would love one of those...

At any rate, I would probably end up keeping the H-19 around to put in another room, say, a guest room or something. Especially if Shawn Borri makes good on those new-run Diamond Discs... I could get some modern tunes for guests to entertain themselves with if I ever had anybody over for like a fortnight or something.

[SydneyAde]

This is a pic (not my pic) but it's the model my parents gave me for Christmas 1962 when I was
8 years old. It is a Lumar child's toy mechanical gramophone. I still have the records, but unfortunately
I don't know what happened to that machine. I subsequently purchased another from the UK recently.

Ade

[FellowCollector]

I will never forget purchasing my first phonograph. And, yes, I still have it in the collection. It is a humble (but at the time incredibly exciting to me!) Edison Diamond Disc model S-19.

Many years ago my wife and I had visited George "Doug" Anderson, a long time phonograph collector who had a very nice collection of phonographs in a restored one room schoolhouse on his property. Having a love of music I was immediately smitten and set out to buy one of these fantastic early machines. A few weeks later we were walking around a field at an antique show and I saw a nice Edison Home Phonograph that I fell in love with. The price at the time was much higher than Doug Anderson had told me to pay for one, so with a great deal of disappointment on my part and a lot of encouragement from my wife to keep searching, we left the show with nothing but some good exercise.

A few weeks later we decided to stop in to an antique shop (no longer there) in Kirkland NY. My wife and the boys went one way and I went another inside the shop. Several minutes later one of my boys hurriedly found me and said "we found something you're gonna like!". I followed him and there in the shop was a nice floor model phonograph. I lifted the lid and immediately noticed "Edison" on the inside of the lid. I knew that I must have it. The paper tag hanging off the crank indicated "Edison Phonograph $135". Being a real newbie I had no idea how to test it out with that crazy handle in front so I asked the shop owner and she found a customer that she knew well that happened to be walking around the shop to come and help us! He did and we bought it! It came with 10 Edison records and I still remember how stunned I was at seeing their thickness. And I can remember all of the record titles (which I still have as well). In spite of adding hundreds of phonographs and many thousands of Edison Diamond Disc and cylinder records to the collection since that day, that first phonograph and those first few records will always be very special to me.

Doug

[De Soto Frank]

I guess it could be considered "my" first talking machine...


When I was about four years old (1971), my parents and older brother dragged me along to an estate-sale at a huge old Ante-Bellum homestead somehere around Savage / Laurel, MD.

The house looked like something out of "Gone with the wind".

They pulled all the furniture and contents outdoors, arranged it, divided into lots, and the crowd and auctioneer went around and around.

There were several talking machines there, all uprights I think, can't remember many details - it was August, hot & humid, and I was four years old and very bored.

Mom, Dad, and brother came home with a truckload of stuff: a HUGE Victorian bedroom suite ( Lincoln-esque ! ), and among other things a red mahogany Victrola IX from 1913 ( "feet", and "Crescent" speed control ), with a "matching" record cabinet, and a bunch of records.

My brother was starting college, and took the cabinet with him, using it for a sheet=music cabinet, but the IX stayed at home.

I was not allowed to touch the delicate LPs or the hi-fi, but the adults let me play around with the Victrola as much as I wanted.

So, as a grade-schooler in the 1970's, I grew-up listening to John McCormack, Billy Murray, et al on a Victrola.




Still have the IX, at Mom's, and a BUNCH more...

[Henry]

I was not allowed to touch the delicate LPs or the hi-fi, but the adults let me play around with the Victrola as much as I wanted.

So, as a grade-schooler in the 1970's, I grew-up listening to John McCormack, Billy Murray, et al on a Victrola.




Still have the IX, at Mom's, and a BUNCH more...

Ruined forever! What a tragedy. But I can relate: I grew up listening to the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Jack Benny, et al., on my little Motorola table radio. Music and the Vic came later, and I still have them, but radio as we knew (and loved) it is gone, alas!

[JerryVan]

Yup, still got it. It's a Victrola XI, floor model that I inherited from my grandmother when I was 7. I believe a great uncle bought it new, then grandma got it later. Visits to grandma's could be boring for a little kid, so my cousin and I would go downstairs, play old records and she & I would dance around like idiots till it was time to go. When grandma passed, my mom was going to throw it away. With enough whining she let me keep it.

Thanks Dave, good topic!

[tinovanderzwan]

i bought my first when i was 13 and in the times after i totally trashed the machine it was a off brand portable
and.. if you wonder,.. it was a good thing i learned a lot from that poor phono i did all the wrong things to it
like.. open the motor under tension, breaking the spring by over winding, and lots more that i would not do today
eventually i had to throw it away it had been miss treated too much
my 2nd was a lindstrom hornles with a Pathé concert reproducer and yes i still have that one and thanks to phono 1 nothing nasty ever hapened to it and i'm still very much in love with it
infact i'm getting a twin brother of this phono very soon this one is fitted with a arm for normal records this find made me very very happy

tino