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In my life, I have had four record players.

The two I have described previously, and the current Planar P3 that the Jelltex living room enjoys when our hectic schedule allows us to use. It'll always be there. I suspect this will be the last one I own, as I think it will last a good two decades, and by then I will either be senile or brown bread. So, here to the time I have left!

My third turntable I bought a result of being very stupid. I won't go into the details, but it meant that I had to sell my car in Germany, so had something like two grand burning a hole in my pockets. I bought a copy of What Hi-Fi, and then went to the NAAFI to see what five star rated separates I could get.

Armed with by bulging wallet, I bought a Technics SU 900 mk 2 amp, a Pioneer CD player, a tape deck, and then came the speaker: new range of Warfdale speakers had come out; Valdus. There were 5 sizes, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500. I tried them all, and they got better, but the rich sound of the 500W 500s was the dogs nads. So I got those. And as for the turntable, a colleague at work sold me his old deck, a Revolver with a Linn pick up arm and cartridge.

It was driven from a spindle to the platter via a rubber band. I kid you not, a rubber band.

But with new amp with a moving magnet input it sounded great, as I soon was broadcasting to the entire block once it was assembled.

Not as useful as a car, but I only replaced the turntable two years ago, and got what I paid for it in 1995 what I paid for it. It owed me nothing.

When I got back to the UK, I bought some gold-cored inter-connectors, and a pair of very expensive omni-directional set of speaker cables. It sounded wonderful.

But then I got married. Again. And the hi-fi had to share the living room with my second wife and her son. But I kept it, and my entire record collection.

And that record collection has followed me into the RAF, over to and back from Germany, into three marriages and out of two of them. And here we are at Chez Jelltex, in the huge living room sounding fabulous.

The set up is the same as it was from 21995, except the turntable, and is still going strong. We are thinking about new speakers. Well, Jools is thinking about new speakers. Jelltex isn't. He know five hundred watts per channel of bass power is irreplaceable.

Earlier.....

I got my first radio, a clock radio, sometime in the autumn of 1978, whn the BBC revised its broadcasting frequencies. Back in those days, most stations were on Medium Wave. Radio 1 got to move from 247, to 275 to 285, (the change). I know this as all households got an information pack and stickers, which were on the clock radio until it dies nearly two decades later when I was in the RAF.

Having my own room with the ability to listen to the radio when I wanted, what I wanted was something of a revelation. It sat on a high shelf above my bed, in such a position I could not see the LED display when laying in bed, but I could listen to music, or the footy commentary when I wanted, and atmospheric conditions allowed.

The clock radio got me up for my paper round from 1979 through to the summer of 1982, when I had to stop due to being on the dole. Two hours of paid work a day wan't going to pay rent for a shag pad. It also got me up every morning from 1985 when I started work at the chicken factory, and it came with me when I joined the RAF, and woke up our barrack room through basic training.

I was also the first person in my group of friends who got a walkman.

Not an actual Sony Walkman, a Sonyo knockoff. But something that allowed me to listen to my music as I travelled about.

I can remember travelling down to Kent by coach for a family wedding, sitting and looking out the window looking out whilst listening to Combat Rock, and thinking that life really doesn't get much better than that.

Not sure if the novelty wore off, but three years later I got a car and had a radio cassette fitted, so the faux Walkman wasn't needed again.

That and it chewed tapes. I could not risk the collection of Peel shows being chewed.