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[jereboam]

We had one of these - or something very, very similar





Ours was "Mahogany" finish - i.e. black.  But it was all post-war utility furniture then, and it was basically veneered plywood.  Didn't sound too bad for its day, and the radio part would get Luxembourg.

[albitz]

I think I still have a couple of old radiogram type things in the loft - a Phillips and a Nordmende iirc.

[jerry]

Yes, was similar to that Jereboam-and Id forgotten it had a radio in it too. (or should that be "wireless" )

[Chris_H]

Never had a gramophone but did buy an autochanger deck from Practical Electronics and let it into a shelf I built in the bedroom.  Someone gave me a mono amp on a bare chassis with PX-4s (triodes 6-7 inches tall) as a push-pull output stage, then I had the ubiquitous EMI 13x9 dual-cone drive unit screwed into the top of my bedroom cupboard giving me an enclosure about 10ft square and 2ft deep!  Good bass for those days but only played stuff like Herb Alpert and The Dubliners!!!

My sister bought a second-hand Grundig TK-20 open-reel recorder to study music at school.  I remember we bought an Elgar tape from a catalogue in a local music shop.  The recorder had the famous magic-eye and four DIN inputs/outputs at the back so you could record direct from a wireless!

Those were the days.

[jereboam]

I've remembered something about the Grundig reel-to-reel we used to have. 

I haven't been able to track down the exact model, but I think it was a "TK something Reporter".  As far as I can recall it looked a bit like this:



I managed to find a picture of a Grundig Reporter, but it didn't look anything like the one we had. 

However, the biggest problem with it was that it recorded upside down!  It was a very early model I think, and it must have been before standardisation.  So it recorded on (and played back from) the opposite half of the tape to most other machines. 

There was a very small catalogue of pre-recorded music for these machines, nearly all classical, and hideously expensive.  My Dad lashed out and bought a Joan Sutherland tape, 'cos he was quite fond of opera.  We put it on the machine and he was rather disappointed with the result - didn't sound a bit like the arias he was expecting to hear.  It meant nothing to me at the time.

It was quite a while before we discovered that the machine worked upside down.