Awww, you shouldn't have (but I'm glad you did)--Phono gifts

[drh]

A couple of recent threads gave me the idea it might be fun to have one for machines received as gifts from our loved ones (related or not). I'll start the ball rolling, and we'll see where it goes from here.

When we were first married, back in the middle 1990s, my wife and I visited an antique store in Falls Church, Virginia, and I expressed my admiration for an Edison A-150 diamond disc machine. I'd liked that "table model on stilts" look ever since I first encountered the breed as a beginning collector looking for his first Edison disc player, although I'd seen it only in the scaled-down A-100 form. Fast forward to my birthday a month or two later. Guess what showed up in a birthday card from my wife? A receipt from the antique store, which was holding the A-150 for me to collect that day.

I spent a good deal of time over the next couple of weeks refinishing the machine (a victim of somebody else's unsuccessful Formby's job)--sorry, I like the look of lacquer, and that's what I applied, three hand-rubbed coats. My wife and I chose the grille cloth together at the old G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland. Since then I've scared up three of the original Edison albums to go with it and filled in the set with Victor boxes, which I hope to replace with more Edisons as I can track some down.

Today, as the smallest Edison disc player I own, it sits in a narrow space in my office, six feet from where I'm typing right now (appropriate social distancing!), where it's my "check out discs for cataloguing or duplicate sorting" machine. Perhaps I'm just hearing the sound of the love that went into it, but to my ear it's actually my best sounding diamond disc machine. To its immediate left are the two heavy office grade file cabinets where I store my diamond discs; to its right, at the moment is a stack of Kodak Carousel trays full of slides that I brought home from Dad's estate some years ago, awaiting transfer to digital. Every time I go to check my e-mail or pay bills or whatnot, it's a nice reminder that somebody really cared about me and wanted to make me happy.

[52089]

I've gotten 2 machines as gifts.

The first was an Outing portable that my sister gave me for my birthday when I was in high school. She found it at a yard sale, didn't have enough cash, and the seller would not take a check. By coincidence, close family friends lived across the street, so my sister told the lady to hold it while she visited our "Aunt Grace" who would certainly cash a small check for her. The seller basically said, "If Grace is your Aunt, your check is good here". I used that machine as my primary disc machine for many years.

The second gift was my first Diamond Disc machine, an H-19 that was a Christmas present from my mother, but I picked it out. Dennis and Patti Valenti still had their retail store in Floral Park, NY at that point, and we paid them $75 for it around 1979-ish. It's still in the house where I grew up and I use it occasionally when I go home to visit.

My sister also gave me a huge box of 45s as a Christmas present once. Must have been 200 of them. Nothing unusual or rare, but tons of fun to go through.

[Jerry B.]

DeeDee put me in charge of my own Christmas gift. I was determined not to disappoint her and the result was this Victor M. I was and am delighted with this gift.

Jerry Blais

[epigramophone]

About ten years ago my wife bought me this 1929 Micro-Perophone Chromogram Model MP23 as a birthday present. We both admired it's elegant appearance and fine cabinet work. It was an eBay purchase and had to be collected from Bristol, about an hour's drive away.

The seller lived in a small terraced house in an unsalubrious area of Bristol. The small front room had a cabinet gramophone in each corner, and in the centre of the room was a motor scooter on which the seller commuted to work. There was nowhere to sit.

Money changed hands and the Chromogram was loaded into my car, which to my great relief still had all four wheels present. The return journey took place in a thunderstorm (it was July) but the rain had stopped by the time I got home.

I rate the Chromogram the best cabinet gramophone most people have never heard of, and it has featured on this forum several times. Until I acquired an E.M.Ginn Expert hand made gramophone the Chromogram was my everyday player, and it is still regularly used.

[Granby]

drh, I am going to take a slightly different approach to this discussion...

This Grafonola appeared in my life when I was a teenager first getting started with my collecting. It was a present from my parents and took quite a bit of slickness on their part hiding it from me in the weeks leading up to my birthday... It went from an antiques store in town (where they knew I would find it) to a local appliance store to be hid in the corner until the big day. FYI, we lived in a small town, everybody knew everybody.

So, yes... I am the owner of an orange Grafonola. It now resides in my collection along side some pretty high end pieces. Can I refinish it or will I... sure, maybe....

I have received some other pretty darn good phonograph related gifts but I thought my orange Grafonola would contribute a unique angle to this discussion. Have a great day everyone! Stay safe.

[Django]

My gift wasn’t a machine. Following a motorcycle accident, my wife gave me our spare bedroom so that I could have a music room where I could play my instruments and phonographs.

[gramophone-georg]

drh, I am going to take a slightly different approach to this discussion...

This Grafonola appeared in my life when I was a teenager first getting started with my collecting. It was a present from my parents and took quite a bit of slickness on their part hiding it from me in the weeks leading up to my birthday... It went from an antiques store in town (where they knew I would find it) to a local appliance store to be hid in the corner until the big day. FYI, we lived in a small town, everybody knew everybody.

So, yes... I am the owner of an orange Grafonola. It now resides in my collection along side some pretty high end pieces. Can I refinish it or will I... sure, maybe....

I have received some other pretty darn good phonograph related gifts but I thought my orange Grafonola would contribute a unique angle to this discussion. Have a great day everyone! Stay safe.

I kind of like it... it's the OG OG!

[JerryVan]

Many years ago, my aunt & uncle had a garage sale. My mother added a few things to the sale and I put an off-brand, lowboy style phonograph in the mix as well. My aunt's neighbor walked over and struck up a conversation about the phonograph. I explained that collected them. About an hour later, the neighbor called me over to his garage, pointed to the Vic III on his workbench, and asked, "Is that the kind of thing you like?" I answered that it definitely was! He said, "well then take it, it's yours!" I offered to pay, but he insisted that it was a gift. The horn was added by later by me. Like a dummy, I never thought to ask about the horn, but I suppose if he had it, it would have come with it. Anyway: Thanks again Don!!

[drh]

drh, I am going to take a slightly different approach to this discussion...

This Grafonola appeared in my life when I was a teenager first getting started with my collecting. It was a present from my parents and took quite a bit of slickness on their part hiding it from me in the weeks leading up to my birthday... It went from an antiques store in town (where they knew I would find it) to a local appliance store to be hid in the corner until the big day. FYI, we lived in a small town, everybody knew everybody.

So, yes... I am the owner of an orange Grafonola. It now resides in my collection along side some pretty high end pieces. Can I refinish it or will I... sure, maybe....

I have received some other pretty darn good phonograph related gifts but I thought my orange Grafonola would contribute a unique angle to this discussion. Have a great day everyone! Stay safe.

Aren't parents great? That's a lovely story, and I wouldn't touch the finish. Besides, being in North Carolina, you're not too far from Knoxville, TN, so you could always take it there for ball games and fit right in with the "Go Big Orange!" crowd.

[Lucius1958]

Four of my machines were gifts.

The first two I got in the early '70s. I had been pestering my parents about phonographs for a while: on my 14th birthday, they showed up at school with an Amberola 30 and some cylinders, from a local antique store. Not long after, my (late) brother was visiting a schoolmate's house, when he saw a Model A Home sitting around. He asked them if he could have it, as he knew I was interested, and they said yes.

The other two gifts were much more recent, from my former therapist (now retired): a BZH, and, a few years later, an ITC Standard B. Both had belonged to his family, and he found them while cleaning out their house.

- Bill