Leg Trouble and Playing 45s

27 August 2025. I'm still having bother with the legs. One leg itching like mad and the other leg so sore it's driving *me* mad... the wound on my right leg still looks grotty covering most of one side of my lower leg and still oozing a bit. it can be VERY painful.

1 September 2025. Painful visit to the District Nurses today, though I still think the legs are improving. Limping about manfully. I've done this crayon sketch over the last two days. Just one single lonesome page left blank in the A4 sketch book waiting for me to make my mind up whether to do a sketch or whether to add some details of who I am, what I do, why I do it, how sorry I am for doing it and a half-hearted doomed-to-be-broken promise not to do it again... The village shown is a place called Skradin in Croatia, at the end of a boat trip from the Krka National Park.

4 September 2025. The other day on Facebook I mentioned I was looking for a new record player. Yesterday we took a bus ride to Lytham to a place that renovates old players of a certain type. I invited my Facebook friends to guess what I bought - a Dansette was the most common response.

I did used to have a collection of such players, though sadly none of them actually bore the name "Dansette". Pictured here, the small suitcase Handy Gram went to the tip shortly after one of the cats we had at the time jumped on top of Max Bygraves and started spinning at 78 rpm. Max withstood this rather well but the fool cat broke the playing arm completely off... The rather posh Magnavox (top left) was sold after someone made me an offer I couldn't really refuse and the one top right at some point refused to work. I still have a Bush 1970s record player but it sounds somewhat naff and I wanted something with a better sound.

My Facebook friends now became fixated with brand names such as Bush, Ferguson, Bang & Olufsen, Aiwa, Panasonic etc. whilst one suggested that Tony Blackburn might be moving in...

9 September 2025. Well, today I had the legs redressed. 3.30pm but already the bandages are stained and the pain is lancing through my leg, making it impossible to settle for sleep.

The new record playing machine is due to be delivered tomorrow. Fingers are crossed and 275 45rpm records from the 1960s ready to be played. Final clue then: I asked for the type but everyone fixated on brands. So today's clue is designed to make you think of the brand... which may enable you to think of the type!

It was made by the firm responsible for a musical instrument famous for its association with Blackpool Tower. Once it's delivered I'll let the cat out of the bag. I'll be checking to see if anyone comes up with it first...

Well two people eventually got it. One person with a somewhat unrealistic idea of just how big my house is, suggested a Wurlitzer pipe organ... The clue prompted suggestions of a Gibson turntable - er... they make guitars I think! Also my use of the word retro in an earlier post made someone think of a wind-up gramophone... But one or two made the right connections.

10 September 2025. It's here, it's loaded and working and there's BUBBLES! Getting it over the threshold was not the easiest thing. The delivery man was on his own and it took both Fran and myself to help get it in, but in the end we managed.

20 September 2025. Sigh, yesterday it looked like a setback for my left leg which had been doing nicely. Still not sleeping well. I did manage to drop off watching TV today. Trouble was, I had a mug full of coffee in my hand at the time. My bandages are stained again...

23 September 2025. Had legs done again this morning - they have been a bit raw and yowchy (well if Shakespeare can make up words, so can I) but on the whole getting better. Looks like I'll be back in compression on Friday...

27 September 2025. Legs back in compression after yesterday's visit to the District Nurses. Horrendously painful whilst I get used to them again. Gasping and filling the night air with (mild) expletives. Managed a couple of hours sleep in the early hours then heard a crash from the bathroom. Somehow my shaving mirror had fallen off its extendable arm and was in shards on the stone floor. Oh good, like I need another seven years of bad luck...!

Cancer and Leg Ulcers Index

Record Players Index Page

A series of articles about record players from the 78 rpm era to the resurgence of vinyl as a major player in the reproduction of music.

Each article can be accessed by clicking / tapping on the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this page.

Please note that articles relating to jukeboxes can be found on the Coin Slot Machines Index Page

Jukebox Show, 26 April 1998

Currently I've been going through lots of enprint wallets, finding negatives from the 1990s that have either never been scanned before, or sometimes where the prints were scanned before I had a scanner that would do negatives. The enprint wallets themselves will probably make a blog post sooner or later as there are a few different sorts! For now though, this post covers a trip down to Copthorne near Gatwick airport for the Copthorne Jukebox and Collectables Show on 26 April 1998.

Whilst you have a look at the jukes I'll just fill you in on the previous day... We decided to travel down part of the way and stay overnight at a Travel Inn or something. However there was nowhere to be found and we realised too late that it was the London Marathon on the Sunday so tens of thousands of people had descended on London and the surrounding area looking for accommodation. In fact we ended up having to drive all the way down to the south coast and managed to find a guest house in Bognor Regis at 10:00pm that hadn't shut its doors for the night.

Jukeboxes started out in shops and bars in the 1930s and 40s, when records had to be played at 78 revolutions per minute (RPM) and the needles were usually made of steel and fitted into playing heads that were measured in pounds weight rather than fractions of a gram... The records were 10 inches in diameter and the early jukeboxes generally had wooden cabinets. These were the Golden Age jukeboxes.

The Silver Age jukeboxes were those from the late 1950s through to the mid 1960s which played 7 inch 45 rpm vinyl records and had a visible mechanism so that you could watch the records being selected and played. At some point after that some boring moron said "I've got a good idea! Why don't we take away all the windows and just sell a box with a record player inside?"

A chap called Bob Thompson at the time ran a business selling old pinball machines and had a working display of over 20 machines all on free play. The machine shown is Gottlieb's 1969 College Queens, a four-player version of the company's 2-player Airport which had been released a month before College Queens. This was an electro-mechanical game (i.e. before computer chips appeared in games) and had chime bars for sound - a bit like the Avon Calling doorbell.

The Wurlitzer 1015 towards the right is the ultimate collectable jukebox with bubbles running up glass tubes and coloured plastics rotating behind the clear plastic behind the tubes so that they change colour repeatedly. They came out in the 78 rpm record era in 1945 and remained in production through 45 rpm and into the CD era. Reproduction machines can still be bought brand new.

Other collectables were on sale too. Various stands had old telephones and neon signs for sale.

A Silver Age Wurlitzer jukebox.

The jukeboxes holding 78s have a special fascination for me. The price of these though is well out of reach as working examples started at around 4,500 pounds in 1998! Note that I said "working" and not "immaculate"...

This 1950s record player was on the stall run by the chap from whom I bought a number of record players at another jukebox event - Jukebox Madness - one year. Most jukebox events have Dansette and other vintage record players for sale. In 1998 they were quite affordable, but not long after people cottoned onto the fact that they were becoming collectable and the price went up accordingly.

Ami went through a number of partnerships with BAL-AMI and Rowe-Ami being names that can be found on Silver Age and later machines. I have a Rowe-Ami RI-2 jukebox that is currently in need of a little TLC as it tries to select from the space between two records instead of plucking one out of the carousel... It's these little details that can make a big difference...

In the 1950s it became possible to produce curved glass and both car windscreens and jukeboxes were quick to take advantage of this. Here the hinged glass of the Ami jukebox has been swung up to allow access to the turntable.

The standard Wurlitzer jukebox 78 rpm mechanism stored the 78s horizontally. The holder swung out and the turntable rose, lifting the record out of the holder up to the play arm that was up at the top of the cabinet. This meant that only one side of each record could be played. Somewhere is a load of 78s that are knackered but with immaculate B sides...

Diner-style furniture and an Ami Continental jukebox, as seen in the film Ghost on the right. Next to the Wurlitzer 1015, this is the second most collectable jukebox.

The Wurlitzer 45 rpm mechanism was a carousel that stored the records which were played against a vertically spinning small hub turntable. The playing arm has a stylus fitted on both front and back to allow both sides of the record to be selected. On the small blue arm near the playing head is a small brush which brushes the stylus free of any dust or debris between each play.

I'm not sure what this jukebox is - possible a Rock-Ola which was another of the "Big Four" of Wurlitzer, Ami, Seeburg and Rock-Ola.

Another late Silver Age Wurlitzer from the 1960s.

And finally a couple of classic cars which were parked outside the main entrance. This is the first Ford Capri, a 1964 coupe model based on the company's Consul Classic, which was the first British car with double headlamps at the front.

Anyone turning up in an American vehicle could get in free. A nifty way of ensuring that some would turn up for people to look at!

Coin Slot Machines Index

More Dansettes

Another of the Dansette style record players I've had in various states of disrepair!

This example came from the antiques and collectables warehouse, Bygone Times near Chorley in Lancashire.

It looked good but when I tried to move the switches they immediately came away in my hand. They had been broken and "fixed" with a weak glue that was not strong enough to stand the pressure required to turn the switches. I had to replace them with the knobs you see here, being unable to find anything that resembled the originals.

For a while the record player worked quite well though. Eventually however, this didn't last long as the electrics were shot. The amplifier went, then the belt drive and in the end I scrapped it and went looking for another! Which I'm sure will turn up in an entry before all that long!

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Cack-Handed Record Player

Every now and then (when I'm fed up enough) I go through my photos to see whether I was doing anything this day 5, 10, 15 whatever years ago. In 1998 I'd gone to the antiques warehouse GB Antiques in Lancaster.

We came across this rather strange record player, though quite admirably I resisted buying it! The casing is a bit weird in that the lid seems to cover the entire thing rather than sitting on a bottom half. Then a closer look at the record deck itself made me wrinkle the noble brow in surprise. The pickup arm rests at 90 degrees to the usual resting place. It looks almost back to front! Unfortunately it didn't have a maker's or model name, so unless someone can identify it and leave a comment then it will have to remain a mystery for another ten years or so...

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Toy Record Player

We had a short run out to Bygone Times, an old mill converted to an antiques centre with three warehouses filled with assorted old stuff of all sizes. Bygone Times, in bygone times, was bigger and probably better.

A lot of the fun stuff, that they knew would never sell but was there to bring people in, has disappeared and it is now just like any other antiques warehouse. If you like antiques though it's still a great place to go but I used to enjoy all the huge model aircraft, the old pinball machines totally beyond any attempts at restoration and the old architectural antiques - bar fittings, dentist chairs and so on, that used to litter the place to great effect!

We were walking around and Fran said "Oh there's a record player for you there!" It was a "toy" 78rpm record player and whilst I resisted purchasing it did make me reflect that ever since CD players came out there has been no such thing as a toy record player or any other sort of music playing equipment. There were toy cassette players that were aimed at children but these days with iPods and MP3 players which are so small anyway, there's no point in producing them just for kids.

I think there was a Barbie recently with an MP3 player built in but all kids have a mobile phone these days and they can play music now. It's not the same is it? What's the last kid's song you can remember? They are few and far between now aren't they? Vic Reeve's Shaun the Sheep theme tune may have been the latest but before that? Where's Max Bygraves when you need him?

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Magnavox Dansette Deluxe!

I lost an Ebay auction for a Garrard record deck earlier today so thought to cheer myself up by crawling up into the attic and finding one of my record players out to play with.

The Magnavox is a deluxe type of Dansette, with a second speaker in the detachable lid and a stereo cartridge. Unfortunately it refused to play at either 33.3 or 45rpm but the 78rpm speed is working ok so at a guess either a belt has snapped or is slipping.

Anyway I dug out a few rock and roll 78s and spent a few minutes chasing the Ebay blues away!

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Dansette Destroyed by Cat

It is with sadness that I have to report the demise of this wonderful Regentone HandyGram record player.

It lived in a small suitcase-like container and played both 78s and 45s with equal wobble. This was due to wear on the bearing upon which the turntable rested and so it was possible to tilt the playing surface a little bit and just about impossible to get it to sit exactly flat. Anyway all that is of little moment now as in mid-record (Max Bygraves' Tulips From Amsterdam in case you're interested) one of the cats thought it would be a good idea to jump on top of the record.

Interestingly the motor coped with this quite well, however in turn this meant that the cat suddenly started to spin at 78rpm and he had a mild panic, crashing into the playing arm and managing to snap it completely off by breaking the Bakelite plastic. Max seemed to escape with relatively little damage other than a little excitement at being played in four separate grooves at once by curved claws... (Yes I know there's only one groove...) Ho hum, Dansette much missed, consigned to the tip...

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My Main Record Deck

In response to a couple of emailed questions, the record deck I use most of the time is this one.

It's a Pro-Ject with a built-in speed box for push button speed changing from 33⅓ to 45rpm. On most Pro-Ject decks this required lifting the platter - the turntable and moving the belt from one pulley to another.

I still need to do that to play 78rpm records and they also require a special stylus as the grooves are so much wider than on the more modern records. Finally, it has a built-in pre-amp so that I can plug the player into either modern amplifiers that do not have phono inputs or straight into the line-in socket on my PC. A deck like this will not play on its own - it needs to be plugged into a separate amplifier and speakers, but your PC will stand in quite happily in this regard. Cost will be around £250 sterling.

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Record Player or Steel Cutter

The early record players were almost as brutish as the old-fashioned wind-up gramaphones.

Just look at the playing head of this record player. Put the needle on your finger and you have to be brave to let go with your other hand on the playing head! These players wore out records in no time.

They turn up fairly regularly and almost every antiques shop will have one. The problem for collectors is that these, like the first radios, are not so much a piece of sound equipment as a piece of furniture!

You would have to have a mansion to house a collection of these. I'll stick to Dansettes!

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