My first system or item really was very similar to this.
I think I was about three when I got it. Anyhow it had no spring or motor, but a handle you turned and a rubber belt with a small metal flywheel. I found it very frustrating because you could not keep constant pitch and had to constantly turn the handle.
Age 4 I got very sick with pneumonia. I was confined to bed for a long time. My father decided to let me have a table model acoustical gramophone. He had bought it in India and brought it back with him. It had been made in India from British parts.
It was similar to this.
I was just about strong enough to wind up the Spring. I had a few 78 records. I remember there was a set of the Beethoven No. 5 Piano concerto which I loved and some Bach organ music of a collection of Chorales. Also a disc of Handel's Messiah excerpts.
Anyway even then I wanted better.
When I was 7 I had for Christmas a 1937 or so vintage HMV radio gram. The big news was I did not have to wind it up and it had a radio. It had one electromagnet energized speaker. It was just like this.
You still had to use steel needles and change it after each disc playing or sharpen fiber needles.
Anyhow I really caught the audio bug after that and it was a continuous drive for upgrade!
At seven I scrounged a tube amp and built a Voight quarter wave pipe. I have never used a commercially built speaker since. In 1959 I was one of the first adopters of the new stereophonic sound. I still have my first stereo LP, which was Dvorak's New World Symphony.
So that pursuit of the "Closest Approach to the Original Sound" as the Quad slogan said, has been a lifetime fascination and pleasure.
