Molland's Community

[keeba]

I was at Target tonight and as I usually do, I took a cursory stroll through the electronics section.  I was surprised to see this:



It's an AM/FM radio/CD/cassette/record player combo unit.  I didn't know you could even buy a vinyl record player any more.  3 speeds too.  I'm assuming that's 33/45/78.  Here's the online shopping link.

What I really wish someone would sell is a record player/CD burner combo unit so you could easily port all your old vinyl to CD.  Of course my old vinyl is very likely unplayable since I left it at my mom's house and she abused it. 

[Kelley B]

Wow!  That's pretty cool. 

When I was visiting my parents at Christmas I pulled out some old records I had gotten from my grandmother several years before.  They were mostly Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw albums and we had so much fun listening to them.  I was surprised how well they sounded considering my grandmother didn't do much to take care of them.  Anyway, listening to them made me miss having my record collection and an actual record player to play them on.  Now I may have to consider something like this

[Mags]

I think I want one.

[Cyberlibrarian]

I've seen similar turntables at other places too, and I definitely want one.  I still have a couple of hundred LPs, but I gave away all my cassettes a few years ago.

[Mandy N]

That is so neat 
I love old time electronic stuff like this.

Second-hand shops would have vinyl records.
Just out of interest, what is the 'vintage era' of this old time record player meant
to be ?

A few Christmases ago, dad gave me a cathedral radio player-
okay, so it's  only a repro. of 1930's  but  high sound clarity.

In an antiques shop, I found one of those 1950s' bakelite phones with a really
piercing ring.

I wouldn't mind a candlestick phone too, even a repro.   

[robin]

Keeba, I think this unit you have a picture of (or a very similar model) does just that; create CDs from your vinyl records and cassette tapes. 
Alternatively, for the price of an $8 cable from Radio Shack, you can save any input from your stereo (LPs, cassettes, radio etc.) to your PC as MP3 files.  My son initiated the project for us (using Audacity - but I think there are many alternative programs.) 

Just for a simple, old fashioned record player, look in the Vermont Country Store. They have one.

[keeba]

I know it's doable with a few extra widgets, but I'd have to buy a record player and I don't know that my record collection is in any state to be played.  To be honest, I'm not sure half of what I listened to in the pre-CD era is worth saving anyway.  I've replaced my Beatles, Clash and Violent Femmes on CD already.  There may be a few obscure titles in there that would be worth keeping, but they are probably heavily warped.  I left my records in a stereo cabinet in my bedroom at my parents' house.  There was a little space above the records so my mom crammed all kinds of crap in there with complete disregard for the weight resting on top of my delicate LPs. 

By the way, I just downloaded Audacity when someone elsewhere pointed out that you can use it to capture the audio off DVDs.  I thought it would be a cool way to record film soundtracks, but of course, there's a lot of other noise on movie soundtracks besides the music.  I started with LAST OF THE MOHICANS because I really love that film score but most of what I captured has clopping horses hooves or cannon fire. 

I had better luck grabbing the PAN'S LABYRINTH soundtrack from the PAN'S LABYRINTH website [you can stream the whole soundtrack there].

I might use Audacity on some of my Bollywood DVDs.  They even have helpful music indexes on the DVDs to take you straight to the music.