Why vinyl? (How it all started!)

Why vinyl?

I guess this blog entry touches on things that I've already mentioned, with some elaboration. When I think back on my passion for vinyl, sadly my memory of the precise chronology is starting to fade but I have clear recollections going back to a very young age. I remember 'raiding' our local dumps and finding old 'record players' and old 45's. In my childish state of 'non-knowledge' I remember placing a pin on a spinning record and hearing (acoustic) sound. I seem to recall that one of the 45's was of Engelbert Humperdinck singing 'The Last Waltz'!

I was rather amazed and scared by our family's PYE stereogram. It seemed so complicated as I watched the operation of the BSR 'record changer' mechanism work. I would have been younger than ten years old at the time. I wanted to learn how it worked, but nobody could explain how that made any sense to me!. Around that time, radio or the 'wireless' (different to today's meaning of the word) was another area of interest to me. I remember asking my father how a TV antenna worked and how you could send a picture 'through the air? I knew that much anyway!

Throughout my primary and high school days, I desperately tried to 'get a handle' on the subject of electricity and electronics without much success. In fact, this curiosity about electricity nearly claimed my life more than once! I remember trying to get an incandescent light bulb to light up when I striped back my fathers electric razor 'plug in' power cord and I wrapped the bared wires around the base of the light bulb, whilst I held the wires in place with my fingers and I switched the 240 volt switch on. I recall hearing a loud 'bang' from the nearby fuse box but honestly I didn't feel a thing, although my parents 'gave' me something painful as a result of that incident! I didn't know what I did wrong. I just wanted to investigate!

I think it was the late 1970's when I started building simple radio receivers of the 'crystal set' variety (I'm still dong it, actually) http://sound.westhost.com/articles/am-radio.htm and I began my first kit building efforts around that time too. I commenced 'work' in 1981 as an apprentice telecommunications technician, and apart from work related stuff I learned a lot more about electronics generally as a result! I bought my first second hand turntable around this time (the Akai AP002 that I still have and operational), and began the first tentative steps towards assembling a 'stereo' system. I had a lot to learn, and looking back now I'm amazed that anything worked at all! I now understand how 'newbies' must feel when all this stuff is new. Unfortunately, I still frequently forget!

During the reasonably stable mid 1980's things were going along quite well until I was seriously injured in a fall whilst working on a roof top Ham Radio antenna in early 1988. They were pretty dark times actually, as I laid in a hospital bed for three months and I wondered if I'd ever walk again! Now, more than twenty years later my spinal cord injury is permanent but I am 'mostly' functional and things could be a lot worse! I returned to work in late 1988 (too early actually) and struggled on as a telecommunications technician until worsening functional mobility 'issues' forced me to leave work in early 2000. A very uncertain and generally difficult period followed, but out of the adversity good things happened! My general electronics expertise and radio knowledge expanded and I joined the ranks of those using the internet during 2001. That has led to many interesting things in the Ham Radio and the general electronics area with things like forums, email, Elliott Sound Products, and this wonderful website. I feel strongly about trying to pass on the knowledgeable that I've learned about the many aspects of vinyl playback to others, but the 'learning' itself never stops, and that's a good thing actually! More to come! Felix.