What got you started in the hobby?

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audiophile102
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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by audiophile102 »

My friend Roger Merenkov has a business near my house. He invited me and my wife to his house where I saw his wonderful collection of phonographs. He began collecting many years before I met him and his phonographs are both rare and beautiful. He generously shared his knowledge and enthusiasm about the hobby. Last summer he bought out an entire estate of a large number of phonographs. Roger offered to sell me my choice from this collection and it was not hard for me to choose. I really knew very little about antique phonographs, but I did know that I was seeing something special. I bought a Sonora Invincible and it has been in my living room ever since. You can see it here. http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =2&t=21672 While I found the decision to buy the Sonora very easy, my wife was drawn to a Edison A250 that Roger was selling. We ended up with that one too. There were many others that I passed on that were very nice. I could have filled my house up with them and sometimes I wish I had. Roger shared his passion with me and I will try to do the same if I have a chance. Antique phonographs will be admired and cherished long after we are all gone. To quote Roger, they are time machines.
"You can't take the phonographs nor the money with you, but the contentment the phonographs bring may well make your life better, and happier lives make the world a better place."

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Lucius1958
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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Lucius1958 »

audiophile102 wrote: Antique phonographs will be admired and cherished long after we are all gone. To quote Roger, they are time machines.
In a very literal sense, they are. :)

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Marco Gilardetti
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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Marco Gilardetti »

Lenoirstreetguy wrote:I've told the story of the beat up C250 Diamond Disc so many times that I don't want you guys to laugh, but here I go again.
Well, for some reason it was new to me and I enjoyed reading it! :) I also thought to do the same and post a picture of the two sisters cousin of mine when they were young, but couldn't get a decent illumination over the picture and eventually gave up.

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Marco Gilardetti
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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Marco Gilardetti »

Kirkwood wrote:As a kid, I was interested in "old stuff" in general, and I'm not quite sure where that came from.
This is quite a common sentiment among us. I was also fond of tube radios and record players since my very earliest childhood, and although my family was very stimulating from a literary and scientific point of view, my attraction for tubes or gramophones definitely didn't sprung out from it.

The more I go ahead, the more I get close to thinking that Plato's anamnesis is in touch with reality, in the sense described by him as he depicts Scorates applying his technique in Meno. I believe that we istinctively like a cathegory of objects because they trigger in our minds some thougth patterns that some of us share with other human beings. Sometimes these men are contemporary, sometimes people of the past, perhaps sometimes of the future. We immediately grasp and appreciate what they have conceived and created because we share with them some similar mental pattern, although not necessarily at the same level of ingenuity. Wether we might call this "soul", "DNA" or "previous life" is far from my comprehension.

But, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to explain why so many people liked since their early childhood objects or technologies to which it was completely unaccustomed in the boudary of their family, education and age.

Of course there are also enthusiasts who begun collecting (or digging whatever subject) at a late age. However, in average, I usually don't see in them the same enthusiasm of those that grew with an inner passion, and I frequently see them get bored of the subject and switch to something else at a point; which conversely rarely happens to those who grew with the same interest. With notable exceptions, of course.

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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Orchorsol »

Marco Gilardetti wrote:
Jerry B. wrote:I am so envious of Forum members that have family records or machines. You are all very fortunate. Jerry Blais
For some reason, I have always been very fond of records. My mother took a note: that by the age of 3 I knew how to operate a record player. This happened in the 70s.

When I was about 10 we paid a visit to a pair of very old cousins of my father, two sisters who were widow by then and thus went back living in a same house. Among many other interesting households (like a XVIII century tower clock) they had a black suitcase covered in fabric on the floor. For some reason I instinctively associated it to my family's record player and asked what it was. It turned out it was an off-brand portable gramophone, that the two cousins very generously presented to me, struck by my unusual interest in that object. After all, they were no longer using it since at least a decade, they said.

So, despite my relatively young age, I grew up among 78 rpm records, cranks, needles and all those things. I had a lot of fun as a kid with my portable. And I still own it, and I'm looking forward to pass it to my nephew in the next 3-4 years. But really, Jerry, it is a very humble machine and nothing to write home about! ;) You can rest assured that I'm more envious of the machines that you own right now, than you of my family heritage off-brand portable. :D
Like you Marco, I was fascinated with record players and the music they played above all else from the earliest age. The magical world of the much older gramophone and records at my grandparents' house was even more compelling. More detail here: http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 11&t=11979
BCN thorn needles made to the original 1920s specifications: http://www.burmesecolourneedles.com

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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by mcgravy »

A friend of the family was going to move to the Virgin Islands and was selling almost everything he had here. My grandmother wanted to go to the sale and she took me along. While he was showing us around he took us over to this walnut Columbia Grafonola and played it for us. He played the Thunderer March and I remember his little girl marching around as the music played. I wanted it so bad! I don't remember how much he was asking but he knew I really wanted it and he let my grandmother buy it for me for $25.00. This was in the 60's and I think I was 15 or 16 years old. I can't remember for sure. My grandparents had a collection of 78's and about this same time my grandfather showed me a well worn one that he said was the very first record that he ever heard. It is "Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee" by Ada Jones and Billy Murray. I still have the Columbia and that record and they are both very special to me.
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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by snallast »

I find it quite wonderful when reading your stories how understanding our parents and families were to us when we were children - buying us these phonographs - somehow they must have sympathized, somehow shared our fascinacion for the machines and for the music that they inevitably would have to listen to day in and day out - music that their own parents must have listened to. I remember my father giving me a HMV Lumiere 460 for Christmas when I was 10 or 11, he had found it in an antique shop in Malaga, Spain, where we lived at the time. He thought it the "Rolls" of the gramophones. By no means can it have been easy to afford - my parents were artist. And they kept on helping me with the phonographs, my parents. Incredibly kind people!

As to the question in this thread I was like most of the stories told here, fascinated at an early age and was looking for and buying at 9 or 10. Some of those treasures I found then would be impossible to find today. Hopefully I saved some for posterity! I only have one very simple Decca trench portable from my childhood left (it must simply have been forgotten when all the valuable ones were sold) but I have all the records, never sold them! And that´s nice. There were times when i saw my fascination for these things as something negative that kept me from more important matters on this planet. Those were the periods when the collections went. Oh well, one relaxes with time and as someone said here on the forum if we choose between vices like "wine, women and song" at least we choose song... and that can´t be all bad can it?

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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by orpington »

From a very young age, I have always been interested in old things or antiques, but brass era cars were not practical at age 15 and antique firearms were encouraged because my father had an interest in firearms, but not necessarily antique ones. I became interested in cylinder photographs after watching the movie "From Hell"; this movie has scenes with Jack the Ripper playing a cylinder phonograph.

Once I discovered that cylinder photographs are neither particularly rare nor expensive, I became hooked for life!

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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Marco Gilardetti »

snallast wrote:I find it quite wonderful when reading your stories how understanding our parents and families were to us when we were children
Unfortunately, I really can't second these sentiments, and perhaps the fact that both your parents were artists has to do with it. My enthusiasm for these objects was constantly opposed by my parents, that considered it a fleeting interest that only had the effect to distract me from studying and from other "more adult" matters.

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Re: What got you started in the hobby?

Post by Panatropia »

A plausible theory, Marco. It may well have merit. For my own part, while I'm not certain of anything in this transitory realm, I'm rather fond of the maxim that there is but one, possibly two profoundly pleasurable and awakening experiences in life. And the remainder of our adulthood is an attempt to recapture that feeling.
Of course, one must not discount a natural affinity for fine objects, from a mechanical and aesthetic standpoint. How I marveled over the first seemingly moribund tabletop victor I discovered in my grandfather's carriage barn near his vintage sportscars. How eagerly I wound the phonograph, set a needle and played a Paul Whiteman 78. Then settled down into the spartan, yet comfortably masculine cockpit of his '24 Bentley. All this when I was but 8.

These are the defining memories of my life. I suppose it's no exaggeration to say all my actions have been motivated by this. Which has led to paths many and varied.
At least I have the cars and phonographs while I'm still capable of enjoying them.

Women and friends come and go. But these things are forever.

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