I just can’t resist 1960s ‘trannys’, especially the classic PP3-powered 6 transistor models that my generation grew up with, straining our ears to listen to the offshore pirates and later, the nationalised, sanitised and – for me at least – the rather boring BBC Radio 1. Anyway, radios like these generally sold for around a fiver. I’ve guessimated the original price of this one at 79 shillings and sixpence, or just under £4.00 because it is towards the middle to lower end of the quality scale. That’s mainly because it comes with a leather case; really cheapo models usually had fewer than 6 transistors and nasty plastic carry cases, the dearer ones had nicer and often more robust casework though the guts were often the same.

It’s typical of what was coming out of Hong Kong at the time and inside the case there’s a 2.25-inch 8-ohm speaker and the near standard 6-transisitor superhet circuit. These are often generously coated with wax, though this one is relatively wax-free, except for the immediate area around the coil on the ferrite aerial rod. The circuit boards are fantastically crowded; it’s hand built and the reject rate must have been very high. They can be swine’s to repair though like many radios of the era there is a microscopic circuit diagram printed on a label inside the back of the case.

This one is what can only be described as ‘fair’ condition. It has obviously been dropped at some time as one of the corners of the case is cracked. There’s also a fair amount of wear and tear on the shiny front panel and maker’s label, but hey, it only cost me 50 pence at a local Sunday car boot sale, which I consider an absolute bargain. It was sold as dead but it was an easy and very common fault, the battery clip had fallen apart and was quickly and easily fixed with a modern replacement. Sadly there’s not much to hear on Medium Wave these days, but it works, and that’s all that matters and the tinny sound bought memories of the sixties flooding back.

What Happened To It?

Pocket radios never went away, they just got smaller, cheaper and more sophisticated but nothing can match the sound of a genuine 6-transistor Hong Kong tranny. The ever present hiss and whine of slightly mis-tuned IF stages, the muted or rather non-existent bass and crackly volume wheel, pure magic! The good thing about old radios like this is they actually do something, and will continue for as long as there’s broadcasting on the AM band. They’re constantly threatening to shut it down but in my view that’s dependent on DAB taking off, and I don’t see that happening any time soon so I reckon we’ll be playing with our old trannys for years to come. So keep looking, there are still plenty of bargains out there.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1966

Original Price 79/6

Value Today? £1?

Features: AM only 6 transistor superhetrodyne receive, manual volume & tuning, 3.5mm mono earphone socket

Power req. 1 x PP3 9-volt

Weight: 190g (ex case and battery)

Dimensions: 108 x 67 x 32mm (whd)

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Music Man Talking Radio, 1970?

What makes this little novelty radio really unusual is Mr Music Man, the bespectacled character on the top. He’s not just there to look pretty either, his mouth moves in sync with whatever is playing on the radio, and trust me, it’s a truly bizarre sight to see him chatting away in time with the Archers on Radio 4…

The moving mouth mechanism is very simple; the lower lip is on a pivot, attached to a short lever with a small permanent magnet on the tip. This is positioned close to a chunky coil, wired in parallel with the speaker on the base. You can see where this is going, the coil is an electromagnet and the pulsating field it generates moves the magnet, which moves the lever, which opens and closes the mouth. Brilliant stuff!

The word ‘Loyal’, stamped on the inside of the case, is the only clue as to who made this unusual novelty radio, but I have no idea where or when it made, so 1970, and Hong Kong or China is pure guesswork. I’ve based this on the type electronic components inside (all discrete superhet, silicon transistors but no chips, wax coated ferrite antenna etc. etc.), the condition and the fact that the tuner is AM only; FM reception was comparatively rare feature on portable receivers until the mid 1970s. But as always I welcome informed comment and correction.

What Happened To It?

I haven’t been able to find out anything about it but in my investigations I did come across what appeared to be another model, with a ‘talking’ clown’s head. There may have been others but they seem to have come and gone quite quickly. This one was an unexpected ebay bargain; it cost me a fiver and was sold as a non-runner. The radio worked but a pivot on the mouth lever had broken off. It didn’t take too long to fix and it was gabbing away in next to no time. The printed labels are bit faded which tends to confirm my suspictions about the age; otherwise it’s in excellent condition.

I can’t say why it never caught on; it kept me amused for hours… But I’m guessing the mouth mechanism was prone to failure so many of them probably ended up in the bin quite quickly. I suspect this makes it quite rare, I’ve never seen another on ebay, before or since, and it’s definitely going into weird but wonderful section of my old transistor radio collection.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970?

Original Price £5?

Value Today? £5?

Features: AM radio, moving mouth feature

Power req. 4 x AA

Weight: 300g

Dimensions: 130 x 100 x 105mm (whd)

Made in: Unknown but probably Hong Kong or China

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Ingersoll XK505 TV, Radio, Cassette Recorder, 1980?

I vaguely remember this model, or something very much like it coming on to the market in the early 1980s. This was just a couple of years after the first VCRs appeared and quite a few people thought that it was a combined TV/VCR. In fact such a device was developed – made by Funai and marketed by Technicolor -- though I don’t think it was ever launched.

Anyway, back to the Ingersoll XK505, which is one of those what-were-they-thinking sort of products, a combined cassette recorder, AM/FM radio and 4.5-inch monochrome TV, a kind of video boom box, but without the boom. Quite who it was aimed at I was never certain, I suppose it might have appealed to caravanners as it could run off a 12 volt supply, or for a few minutes, from 10 D-cells or an optional rechargeable battery pack, but with just a simple telescopic antenna it would have been unlikely to have got much of a signal anywhere further than 5 miles from a TV transmitter. To be fair you could plug in an external aerial but I can say from personal experience that even if you get a good picture watching TV on a 4.5-inch screen isn’t’ much fun.

It’s a classic piece of 70s/80s design, lots of silvery plastic and the dreaded slider controls for band selection, mode selection and volume, the latter being unusually noisy. The tape deck in the centre is a simple piano-key model with auto-stop function and the radio covers the FM and Medium wave bands, TV and radio tuning is shown by a moving indicator on a vertical dial on the far right, driven by a marvellous collection of wheels and pulleys, which, miraculously still works. In fact everything works, even the tape deck with what appears to be the original drive belts. Other points of interest include a folding carry handle, sockets for headphones, mike, external antenna and power, controls on the backside for vertical hold, brightness and contrast and a folding wire stand on the base.

What Happened To It?

I am fairly sure this model appeared under a variety of different names, Ingersoll were one of a number of companies involved in badge-engineering products sourced from the far East. I suspect that the price – and I’m guessing it would have been in the region of £150 - £200 – and the relatively limited market meant that it only lasted for a few years. Mini TVs really started to take off in late 1980s with the development of LCD screens, and by then the Walkman personal stereo was well established, so there really wasn’t much of a demand for a strange and unwieldy combi product like this. In case you are wondering this one cost me £4.00 at a local car boot sale. The seller assured me was a runner but when I got it home only the radio was working. I’m not sure how I fixed it but after opening it up I used an airline to blow out the dust, tried it again, and this time it worked just fine. I don’t think many will have survived, let alone in working condition, having three such diverse technologies in close proximity to one another was always a recipe for disaster and when one part fails, usually the whole thing ends up being junked, as they are simply uneconomical to repair. If you ever see one grab it quick!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1980?

Original Price £150?

Value Today? £10

Features: 4.5-inch mono CRT TV screen, auto-stop cassette deck, AM/FM radio

Power req. 220-volt AC mains/12 volts DC, 10 x D cells, rechargeable battery pack

Weight: 3.1kg

Dimensions: 320 x 190 x 140mm (whd)

Made in: Taiwan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Pye 114BQ Portable 2-Band Radio, 1960

Normally I steer well clear of valve radios. Unless you have a really good stock of spares and access to old service sheets they can be swines to repair, but this little Pye ‘Jewel Case’ model caught my eye at a recent car boot sale because it was in such good condition. Fully expecting the seller to be asking a silly price I almost didn’t ask, but I did. He said a fiver and I said OK.

The Pye 114BQ is a battery powered portable, but it’s not going to running anytime soon on batteries as they stopped making the 90 volt ‘ high tension’ Every Ready B126 donkey’s years ago. It also needs a now-obsolete 1.5-volt ‘low tension’ battery, to power the valve heaters, but that’s not a problem. I suppose I could find out if it works by hooking it up to ten 9-volt batteries, or run it off a specialist mains supply, but that’s a job for a very rainy day….

This model was first made in 1955. I’m not sure when production stopped but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be much later than 1960, and judging by the condition of this one I suspect it’s a fairly late example. For the technically minded it uses a superhetrodyne tuner, the four valves are three DL96s and one DAF96. You may be able to spot three thick wires disappearing into the lid, behind the cover there’s a ‘frame’ aerial – basically a coil of wire stretched around the inside of the lid.

Back then it was a choice between Medium and Long wave bands, VHF was still mostly used by the military, and FM (frequency modulation) was a pretty advanced technology that wouldn’t make it into consumer radios until the mid 1960s, when the transistor made the circuitry simpler and cheaper to mass produce.

Opening the lid switched the radio on and there are just three controls, volume, band selection and a rotary tuner dial, bearing evocative names like Home (now Radio 4), Third (Radio 3) Light (Radio 2), as well as more far-flung stations, like Luxembourg, Oslo, Brussels, Paris and Motala. (I had to look that last one up, it’s in Switzerland and apparently was a big hit on the Long Wave band).

The case is made of wood, covered in some sort of impregnated cloth material that I’m guessing is supposed to look like snakeskin, very classy, and very 50s retro… Overall the finish is good, and the chrome plating really sparkles when polished.

What Happened to it?

The 114BQ went the way of all valve radios and was killed stone dead by the transistor, Initially they were much dearer than valves but they were smaller, needed a fraction of the power and lasted much longer, so it was no contest. Npowadays valve radios are very collectable, especially really old ones in fancy wooden cases, and really good or rare ones can fetch a handsome price. There are some real classics too, such as the Bakelite ‘frying pan’ models made by the likes of Ekco, but small portables like this one seem to have fallen under the collector’s radar, and looking at the prices on ebay it’s clear there are still plenty of bargains to be had.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1955

Original Price £9, 9s, 6d (£9.48)

Value Today? £10

Features: MW & LW coverage, built in aerial

Power req. Ever Ready B126, 90 volt HT, Ever Ready AD35, 1.5 volt LT

Weight: 2.1kg

Dimensions: 240 x 210 x 95 mm

Made in: England

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Baird Emerson Wondergram, 1960

You could say this was the Walkman or MP3 player of the 1960s, though at fifteen guineas (£15.75) a pop – a very fair sum back then -- I doubt that many were sold. In case you haven’t worked it out yet, the Wondergram, made in England by the Baird Company, is a portable, almost pocket-size record player. Amazingly this device plays both 33.3 and 45rpm records, yet it is not much larger than a couple of VHS cassettes stacked on top of one another.

The design is truly ingenious, open the lid, pop your disc onto the spindle and gently place the needle on the end of the tone arm into the groove and it starts playing. The record is spun by a pair of wheels set into the top of the case, they are spaced so that the innermost one drives 45s, and the out one drives LPs. To stop both wheels trying to drive the disc at the same time the inner one is slightly smaller, so that when you are playing an LP it doesn’t come into contact with the record. The speaker is on the underside, and you would think that the sound will be muffled, but they have that one covered. Three spring–loaded feet raise the player off he ground, allowing the three-transistor amplifier full reign to blast your socks off. Actually it’s not that loud but it’s enough to fill a small room – providing there’s not too much background noise…

What Happened to It?

I can be fairly sure that production started in around 1959 or 1960 but thereafter details get a bit sketchy. My guess is it lasted until the mid 1960s, it was quite expensive, and truth be told, not very good. A proper portable mains powered record player back then, like the ubiquitous Dansette, would have cost around £10, and they didn’t sound half bad. The cassette tape recorder had also started to appear by that time and that would have helped speed its demise.

Quite a few Wondergrams were exported to the US where they sold under the Emerson brand name. That’s where this one came from; I bought it on ebay some time ago for around £20, plus the same again for shipping. They still turn up from time to time but really good examples can fetch £150 or more. This one is in quite reasonable condition but it needs some work before it’ll play reliably, and I need to track down a replacement stylus. I doubt that any original spares are still available but it should be possible to cobble something together using modern parts. A rare and unusual audio collectable and definitely worth keeping an eye out for!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1960

Original Price £15.15 0d (Fifteen guineas £13.75)

Value Today? £60 - £100

Features: 33.3 & 45rpm, transistor amplifier

Power req. 4 x 1.5 volt C cells

Weight: 0.9kg

Dimensions: 220 x 110 x 55 mm

Made in: England

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Aitron Wrist Radio, 1972

A wristwatch-sized radio was the sort of gadget youngsters back in the 60s and 70s would have given their eye-teeth for. Transistors had revolutionised radio design but the idea of having one so tiny that you could strap it to your wrist was pure science fiction. Yet, amazingly, there were several models, including a variant of the infamous Sinclair Micromatic (it came with a wrist strap).

This one is the Aitron and don’t be misled, it’s quite a lump – that’s a 50 pence coin next to it -- and wearing one provided a good workout for the upper and lower arms. Even so, it is still a remarkable feat of miniaturisation, cramming a 5-transisitor superhet radio and speaker into such a confined space. Some clever circuitry and a very unusual 50mm speaker (high-impedance centre-tapped voice coil, for those who care about such things) means it doesn’t need a final stage audio output transformer, which saves a lot of space, and it is powered by a single AA battery, which again is quite a feat considering the power requirements of the transistors of the day.

There are only two controls, on/off volume and tuning, the third larger ‘knob’ is actually the battery cap. The strap is a surprisingly high quality item, made of leather with a plastic protective backing, and it’s sturdy too, this one cleans up like new.

What Happened to it?

The Aitron brand seems to have disappeared without trace though this design did carry on until the late seventies and I have seen pictures of later models with a built in LED watch display. I imagine they are extremely rare and probably worth a few bob by now. Even so very few examples of this earlier model will have survived. Wrist radios have come and gone over the years and I saw one recently in our local ‘Pound’ shop, though it was only capable of driving an earphone. The concept also survives in wrist and arm bands for devices like the iPod, though again they are geared to personal playback through ear and headphones

This particular example was bought from ebay a while ago for the princely sum of £3.00. It is in excellent condition and works well, though there doesn’t seem to be much to listen to on the medium wave these days. Needless to say it sounds a bit tinny and the volume isn’t much to write home about, but for personal listening, under the bedclothes (it's what we did back then...) it’s great!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1972

Original Price £10-£15

Value Today? £10-£20

Features: On/off volume switch, tuning
Power req. 1 x AA

Weight: 0.12kg

Dimensions: 55 x 75 x 28mm (excluding strap)

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Fidelity HF42 Portable Record Player

Of course the classic 60s and 70s record player has always been the Dansette, though I must say that I don’t recall knowing anyone who actually owned one. Most of my contemporaries either used their parent’s stereograms to play their records, or if they were lucky enough to have a portable record player of their own, the chances are it was cheapo model made by the likes of Pye, Philips, HMV and Fidelity.

The HF42 was a popular choice because they were so cheap and portable. They were available in a number if finishes, including a particularly garish red; this one sports a really tacky mock wood case, but like all models in the range, the case is made of an alarmingly thin plastic that shatters at the slightest touch.

It’s very basic, though unusually for a record player of that time it has four speeds, 16, 33.3, 45 and 78rpm. The controls are simple too, just on/off volume and ‘tone’. The arm is one hundred percent manually operated, there’s no lift, or cut out, but it does have the twin flip over stylus for LP and 78s (the latter being larger and more hard wearing). A nice feature is a captive retractable centre adaptor, so you could play records that had the middle pushed out. These were common fitments on record players but somehow they always seem to get lost.

It is mains powered but at some point Fidelity obviously made a battery-powered model as on the underside there’s what appears to be a fully functional battery compartment for 6 x D-cells. Sadly it’s not an option on this example as it is fitted with a mains synchronous motor. A simple 4-transitor amplifier with a push-pull output powers the 3.5-inch speaker, located behind the grille underneath the stylus. Needless to say it is not very loud, and in glorious mono. To be fair volume wasn’t an issue for most users back then, parents at that time had very sensitive ears and an acute dislike for the music of the day (nothing changes…) but even by today’s standards it sounds pretty good, and surprisingly mellow, as is often the case on old speakers that have been thoroughly ‘run in’ over the years.

What Happened to it?

There’s no need for a rerun of the demise of the vinyl record, we all know CDs virtually wiped them out in the early 80s, though they never completely disappeared and every so often there’s talk of a comeback. Collectors of hi-fi equipment have always prized turntables, but they tend to go for the fancy high-end models, which is why humble little record players like this one are often overlooked and are in danger of becoming quite rare.

There are still plenty of bargains around, though. This one cost me 99 pence on ebay recently, plus a tenner in postage… They’re never going to become seriously valuable but they are a genuinely interesting gadget, and a lot more representative of what the kids in the 60s and 70s actually listened to in their bedrooms.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1972

Original Price £25

Value Today? £10

Features: 4 speeds (16, 33.3, 45 & 78rpm), variable tone, twin stylus pickup (LP/78), 3.5-inch speaker, 4-transistor amplifier, retractable centre, carry handle, detachable lid

Power req. 230 bolts AC mains

Weight: 2kg

Dimensions: 325 x 260 x 100mm

Made in: England

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Hitachi WH-638, 2 Band 6 Transistor Radio 1967

In the same way that personal media players and mobile phones are standard kit for today’s teens, then back in the 60s you were nowhere man unless you had a tranny. Most of us had to put up with fairly basic cheapie pocket size medium wave jobbies but if you had rich parents you might have one of these, a 2-wave MW/LW model. It was a bit like owning a no-nameMP3 player when all of your mates had 4Gb iPods… The thing about long wave reception was that it allowed you to hear Radio Luxembourg a whole lot better than the notoriously unreliable medium wave signal on 208 metres.

Hitachi, along with Sony and Pioneer built their reputation and future global brand on humble transistor radios like these, though they were often outsourced to smaller companies and quite often the same chassis would turn up under a variety of different names. This one is a typical 6-transisitor (germanium type) superhetrodyne design with one densely packed, hand-assembled circuit board crammed full of coils, capacitors and resistors, and drenched with a liberal dollop of wax and varnish, to stop anything moving around. These circuits were so sensitive that any movement of the components would throw the tuning off bonk.

It’s powered by a single 9 volt ‘PP3’ type battery and has just three controls, for on/off volume, tuning and wave selection (on the back). There’s an earphone socket (3.5mm, mono, of course) on the side and it would have come with an earphone and a carry pouch, which fitted, on the leather case carry strap. They were very solidly built, and apart from a crackly volume, this one works fine, with the characteristic tinny sound coming from the 3-inch speaker.

What Happened To It?

Pocket two-band trannies continued well into the 70s then gradually models with higher quality FM reception began to take over. The development of more efficient silicon transistors and then micro chips meant radios could be made smaller, cheaper and more reliable, and by that time cassette tape had become established but the magic of listening to Luxembourg, then the offshore pirates under the bedclothes had disappeared and I guess we all grew up….

This one came to me courtesy of ebay for a couple of quid or around a third of the price of the postage, and as an added bonus it came with it’s original leather case, which is also in very good condition. Technically it’s nothing special, nevertheless, I really do think 60’s radios are a seriously underrated as collectibles and examples in good condition can only increase in value so get in quick, before I buy them all up!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1967

Original Price £10?

Value Today? £5

Features: On/off volume switch, tuning, MW/LW, earphone socket
Power req. 9volt PP3

Weight: 0.3kg

Dimensions: 130 x 77 x 35mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Technicolor 212 Portable VCR, 1981

For a brief period in the early 1980s the Technicolor 212 portable VCR looked as though it could be the future of portable video. This was at a time when the only other portable video systems were huge ‘luggable’ VHS machines that weighed a ton and cost a small fortune.

The 212 used Compact Video Cassettes (CVC) spooled with ordinary quarter inch audio tape, similar in size and shape to a regular audio cassettes. It used a helical scaning system, similar to most VCRs and camcorders, with a linear tape speed of just 1.26 inches/sec (32.1mm/sec). Back then the 212 was regarded as a minor revolution in miniaturisation, though JVC and Sony were poised to launch the Compact VHS (VHS-C) and 8mm formats.

At the time Technicolor was best know for making movie film, so the appearance of this machine was a bit of a surprise. In fact it was jointly developed with the Japanese tape company Funai, who briefly marketed this machine under its own name. A 'combi' version with a built-in TV screen was also made though I don’t think it was ever sold in the UK.

At around £650 the 212 was quite expensive – remember this was over a quarter of a century ago… -- and you still needed a camera. In the UK it was supplied with a Hitachi model, which bumped the price up by another £550. Blank tapes cost around £6.00. It came with a companion mains power supply and RF adaptor, and an optional TV tuner/timer was also available (model No 5112), however, since only 30 minutes tapes were available (45 minute tapes did appear briefly), it wasn’t much use for serious time-shifting

It’s a lovely looking piece of kit with it’s clunky ‘piano-key’ controls, all of the sockets are mounted on the side; the large one is for the video camera connection, which draws its power form the VCRs internal rechargeable battery. As I recall picture quality was surprisingly good, though obviously not a patch on today’s portable video systems, however, much depended on the quality of the tape and dropouts – causing streaks and flashes on the picture – were quite common.

What Happened To it?

As soon as the technically superior VHS-C and 8mm formats appeared on the scene, backed by the world’s biggest electronic companies, it was curtains for Technicolour and CVC and the 212 quietly disappeared from view. Remaining stocks were sold off in shops in London’s Edgware Road for the giveaway price of only £75. A sad end to a brave attempt to take on the big boys, and who knows, if it had been launched a couple of years earlier things might have turned out differently.

Technicolor 212s still turn up on ebay from time to time, usually faulty and selling for a few pounds. I first reviewed the machine in early 1982 and I still have a small stock of CVC tapes in my collection, including one unopened one, which must be incredibly rare, all I need now is a working 212…

My thanks to fellow journalist and gadget collector Martin Pipe for his help with this one.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1981

Original Price £650 (camera £550, tapes £6.00)

Value Today? £50

Features: Tape speed: 1.26 ips (32.1 mm/sec), Video Resolution: 240 lines, Audio S/N: 40 dB, Audio Frequency Response: 100Hz to 8 kHz, audio dub, still frame, 40 minutes recording time on rechargeable battery pack,
Power req. 1 x AA cell

Weight: 3.2kg

Dimensions: 246 x 76 x 259 mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 8

Sanyo G2001 Music Centre 1980 (manual)

The Music Centre was a classic piece of seventies technology. It was a complete home hi-fi system in a single box, well, three boxes, if you count the separate speakers. It was the natural successor to radiograms of the fifties and sixties, which were more often than not large unwieldy wooden boxes, usually designed more as a piece of furniture than hi-fi equipment.

The Music Centre broke free of the radiogram’s fuddy-duddy image and didn’t try to disguise its purpose behind wooden doors and lids. The turntable, tape deck and tuner were on display and protected by a smoked acrylic cover that more often than not would be cracked or broken within six months. Manufacturers found it hard to give up their old ways and most 70s and early 80s models had mockwood panels, and laminated chipboard speaker boxes but by the mid 80s these had given way to flashier designs.

The G2001 is one of dozens of models aimed at middle-aged buyers, who back then were the ones with the money. It’s conservatively styled, not too many controls or winky lights and still capable of playing 78rpm records. The cassette deck was one of the first to sport the ‘new’ Dolby noise reduction system, for de-hissing tapes and it had the slightly controversial ability to record directly from records. This example has survived intact, the lid is uncracked, everything still works and it actually sounds pretty good.

What Happened To It?

One box audio systems are still with us but the bulky music centre was killed off by the rise and rise of Compact Disc throughout the 1980s. As turntables started to disappear from audio systems they were replaced by CD decks, which allowed manufacturers to shrink the sizes of their boxes. Music centres gradually morphed into one-piece tower systems, then mini towers and micro systems. Nowadays you can pack 10,000 tunes in a box that fits in your pocket, and if you want to listen to your music through speakers you plug it into a docking system.

There’s still plenty of early music centres on ebay, often selling for less than the cost of shipping. If you’ve still got a collection of LPs or tapes in the loft it’s a great way of reviving those old sounds. Shortlist models from the better-known manufacturers as these tended to be built to a higher standard. Spares, like replacement styli and drive belts are also usually still obtainable and a good working example should still have a few years life left in it.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1980

Original Price £125

Value Today? £20

Features: Turntable (33/45/78rpm), cassette deck with Dolby Noise Reduction, FM/MW/LW receiver, twin speakers, 6W channel stereo amplifier

Power req. mains

Weight: 4.5kg

Dimensions: 525 x 174 x 379 mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 4

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