Here's To Dear Old Dad

I too salute my Dad for introducing me to this hobby when I was a child. Over the course of the years that I was growing up we owned several Dual TTs including a Dual changer that would have several LPs stacked & they would drop as the one playing finished. Don't think I could ever own such a device today - I'd be too jittery stacking my precious vinyl on the to-be-played stack!! ;-)
I remember when he yielded to me when I was a teenager & bought me my 1st amp, floor standing speaker, tape-deck & direct-drive, linear tracking Technics TT (which is still there!).
He also spoke very passionately (& still does) about Western classical music & how is used to revive his mental fatigue when he was going to college & had to study in the wee hours of the night.
I now have most of his vinyl classical collection but a lot of it had to be discarded owing to mold growing on it! Unfortunately , I'm much less into classical music but his collection is of sentimental value to me.

Yep my Dad's love for this hobby when he was younger unknowingly set the stage for my now being into audio. I can distinctly remember my mom and dad throwing wine (and who know's what else!) parties in the living room of our bungalow on the south side of Chicago, and him spiining album after album (Grassroots, Santana, Fifth Dimension, Ramsey Lewis, Jefferson Starship...) on his Garrard turntable. I can still remember looking at his Stromberg-Carlsson amplifier and those beautiful glowing tubes, the inviting green glow display of his Kenwood tuner and that smooth, warm sound of those maple finished Fisher-Scott speakers with their window-paned grills.......

For the record, I am doing my best to pass some of this passion along to my kids. Both boys, ages 9 and 6, know the music and lyrics to about 80% of the Beatles entire song catalog....

Good reply slipknot. Your story brought tears to my eyes. I am now a dad and listen to music just as your father did after you went to bed. My children never say much but I do spend many a night listening after they go to bed. I have never asked them but your comment makes me wonder how my listening is influencing them. They are both very musically inclinded my daughter plays both piano and violin and my son the piano. I also play piano and I know my practice habits have and do influence them. My daughter has a cd player / clock radio in her bedroom and she listens to it quite frequently so I perhaps have answered my own question.

Thanks, Chuck

You Bet!! When I was 14 (1963) My folks built a new home. It had a 28X60 basement that My dad and I spent the first Winter turning into what can only be described as a Night Club. He called it JUNGLE AL'S. it had a Pool table, Ping Pong a FULL BAR and most importantly a JUKE BOX. This thing had some kind of monster amp. (Tube) and 2-15" speakers, It COOKED!! It was stocked with everything from Classical to Nat King Cole to the Beatles. To my ears at that age it was an incredable sound like nothing I had ever heard before. Tons of bass and vocals that sounded like they were live. Needless to say my high school years were spent in that basement listening and dreaming of someday having a killer system of my own. These days My Dad is in his late seventies. He still enjoys music and is always blown away at how technology has changed the way we now reproduce music. That Juke Box cost him $275.00 (used). It cost me upwards of 50 grand and counting as of this writing, and I don't regret a dime of it. I love the gear, I love the music, and I LOVE YOU POP. THANKS T.

A big thanks to my dad for having grown up in Motown. And for getting his life-long dream fulfilled in receiving a Rogers drum set for his 35th birthday. That's when I taught myself how to play the drums, listening to Stevie Wonder and the Temptations and mimicking the drummer on the record. I later played drums professionally for over a decade. Thank you, Dad. I'm still playing the same set today, almost thirty years later.