My vinyl adventures started with a Sanyo music centre in my bedroom back in the late 70’s, on which I listened to my tiny LP collection, a few Cassettes and the radios, especially the top 20 on a Sunday evening.
What did I listen to back then, well a bit of Quo, some Queen, Ms Harry and her Parallel Lines, and my favourite Mr Loaf and his unruly bat, and these LP’s really did get a battering, with the exception of some Quo albums which have gone awol I still have those albums.
I kept this set-up with me on my journeys around temporary residencies across the South of England, before a permanent move to the South East allowed me to take on a Rega Planar 3, Marantz Amp and some Wharfdale speakers (and a machine which spun funny silvery discs – but we won’t go into that).
More LP’s were added over the next few years before all the paraphernalia that comes with having kids put paid to having a proper listening room, so up into the loft went hifi, cables and the vinyl.
There were the occasional – ‘oooh let’s get the hifi down and have a listen’, and to the amazement of my growing kids they would see this big black disk go on this funny machine which spun the disk around and then watched as this silly arm was lowered onto the disk and then wow music came out of the speakers. After a few days back into the loft everything would go as it was clear that we just didn’t have room to have the HiFi out.
As the kids grew up the hifi lay abandoned in the loft, untouched and all but forgotten.
Eventually they left home and we had room to get the hifi down and turn a bedroom into a listening room.
Up into the loft we went only to find daylight shining through, there was a gap in the tiles, a leak, and yes when we investigated a tile had broken, gone through the lining and was sat on-top of the Rega, along with a pigeon which shot out of the hole as we pulled ourselves up into the loft.
Clearly an issue for a while, every box was soft and very damp, the gear inside was wrecked, as was the amp and CD player, only the LP’s survived as they weren’t with the hifi.
So after much soul searching a new system was purchased, a modern Rega P3 replacing the old one, new speakers, new amp, in fact new everything, but how did the LP’s fair, well better than expected, we only lost a couple they were so badly warped they just wouldn’t play and looked more like fruit bowls.
Now I have my hifi back, an ever growing vinyl collection, a system that sounds great and provides many hours of enjoyment. I still like a bit of Quo or some Queen but nowadays I am more inclined to listen to some Jazz or Blues, Mr Clapton takes up a fair bit of real estate in the storage units closely followed by Mr Joel and the Eagles.
My purchasing habits have changed over the years, buying vinyl is very much a luxury purchase so I try to buy quality recordings rather than just adding vinyl to the collection, finding the Blue Note and Verve jazz labels has been ear opening as has getting my first MoFi recordings although the top of the line pressings from both Analog Productions and MoFi are still to be experienced.
This is my journey, I hope you found it interesting.
Martin
