Where Did You Start?

[IslandPink]

Top notch !

[ed]

Top notch !

steady on Mark!. I beleive that style of posting is copyright Mike Holmes.
snigger

[IslandPink]

I encourage the student to look for all instances of 'Top notch' on this forum !

[andrew Ivimey]

Well, obviously, Mr Jeff's has described my entire works and I as such. But then, you'd expect that, n'est ce pas!

[ed]

it wasn't the content I was referring to, more the brevity

[Mike H]

I discovered we could get better sound from it by closing the lid while the records were playing and placing something large and heavy on the lid, experimentation found my baby Sister strategically placed onto the lid got a much better and louder sound so I reckon that was the true beginning of my journey into DIY HiFi.

Ah shutting the lid of the Dansette! Absolutely. I forgot, that predated the Heathkit. Much before that tho, I well remember when I was very young, playing 78's on an ancient, albeit mains powered, 78 record player of my dad's. Eventually sadly the capacitors caught fire and that was that. Melted paraffin wax all over the place. Still not sure what the capacitors actually did, but I now suspect they might have dropped the AC Voltage for the motor. Or maybe motor start? Sole sound output was the mechanical sqawking of the, replaceable, 78 rpm needle, fixed in a small kind of metal diaphragm in the head of the pickup arm (by means of 'amplification'). Nevertheless distant memory informs me that it was surprisingly listenable. At least if you have nothing better to compare it to (besides a similarlty ancient and huge wood cased AM wireless, that was ensconced on a rickety old wickerwork table that always seemed in danger of collapsing under the weight, and not helped by the lower shelf of same being stuffed full with piles of old Readers Digest magazines). There was a little container in the plinth, like an inkwell, for the spare needles, which I believe you could still buy back then. The case was proper old hardwood with a hinged lid, and the platter mat was brown felt. The pick-up arm was huge and Bakelite, of course. VTF was probably measured in pounds.

[Ray P]

...purchased a Sharp RT10H cassette deck, I'd been studying magazines and talking to school mates and it seems most of our circle of music loving chums had small record collections but we worked out that if we all had cassette decks we could copy one anothers record collections and have even more music.

Bah, that's HiFi! When I were a lad I used to record the Radio 1 Sunday evening chart from the radio using a microphone and a mono portable cassette recorder, like this...



My ealiest recollection of playback from media was an old 78 of 'I saw mama kissing Santa Claus' - that would have been on an old Dansette type record player, pretty sure the textured vinyl was two tone grey.

[Dave the bass]

Aaah, you've jogged my memory there Ray, I did have a Prinzsound mono cassette recorder with built in mic and auto level control.

I tried to make it a sound-to-light device by connecting a small light bulb to the earphone out socket and failed to achieve Pink Floyd-esque results somehow.

[andrew Ivimey]

You'd probably connected the light bulb the wrong way round... simples really.

[Dave the bass]

You'd probably connected the light bulb the wrong way round... simples really.

You're right, hence it lighting up black and me not noticing back then.

Live and learn eh.

[IslandPink]

As I remember, John Milton had something to say about that .
Before he invented his fluid.