A THOUSAND POUND WIND UP UP

A box of nuts and bolts started John Sleep on a career that's taken over his retirement - bringing. antique gramophones back to life. Jonathan Sale visited his well-stocked Cornish workshop

WHEN Thomas Edison demonstrated his primitive "talking machine" in 1877 at the offices of Scientific American magazine, so many journalists turned up to hear it croak, "How are you?" that the editor had to shoo them away before the floor collapsed. The rest is history - and collecting history.

Record players have moved on since then but to some collectors it is still, if not 1877, at least no later than 1931. Wind-up, spring-powered, steel-needled, big-horned, 78rpm gramophones have been thrown away ever since 1932, when electric models began to turn up the volume. But there are those who say that the tunes they played sound better on the original hand-cranked machines.

John Sleep does; he restores and sells them. Low-fi, it seems, is back.

"It's taking off as a collectable thing - machines, records and ephemera," he declares. His state-of-the-1920s-art models are sold at antique fairs and at his workshop premises next to his house on the tiny Cornish headland of West Pentire near Newquay. For the last two decades I have passed the end of his lane on my regular visits to the magnificent beach. This year I went up it to see his 5,500 old records and assortment of complete and incomplete gramophones.

"I'll show you the machine that started my interest," he says. "We bought it at a Women's Institute sale 15 years ago. All the pieces were loose; it was like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to put it together again."

Once re-assembled, it turned out to be a small 1901 mahogany Apollo portable, more sit-up-and-beg than horizontal, that folds in on itself for carrying. Opened up, it graces its corner of the room. It also plays records, which John then began to acquire, starting with Fats Waller numbers such as "Your Feet's Too Big" which he recalled from his childhood.

It is a "reflex", that is, the sound does not come straight out at the listener but instead is aimed at the rear of the model and bounced out from a wooden reflector: "A little quirky thing, not part of the main development of gramophone history," he explains fondly. Another evolutionary dead end is his Klingsor machine, which he found in a chicken shed, covered in droppings. It features a built-in zither, which is intended to enhance the sound. (He has heard of, but does not own, absolute dodos which somehow utilise compressed air or gas jets to boost the sound.)

Quirky or not, the Apollo prompted him, when he retired from his job as a chemistry teacher, to turn his hobby into his new occupation.

"In the last six years I have handled several hundred gramophones." That includes machines repaired for their owners as well as models he has sold. "They are so simple: it's intermediate technology. You can make anything that's needed," he claims.

"In general, there are five types of gramophone - plus the phonograph," he explains. In the beginning was the phonograph. To British collecting circles, this means the machine produced by Thomas Edison which plays grooved cylinders instead of records. Phonographs flourished between 1897 and 1920, after which they were drowned out by the disc-playing newcomers. "Edison never twigged the potential of the pop music of his day but saw the phonograph as a business dictaphone."

Today's price? "Say, pounds 400 to pounds 1,000. An Opera, the Rolls-Royce of the phonograph world, now costs pounds 3,500 - if you can find one."

Then comes the most familiar image: the "horned gramophone". Think His Master's Voice: this is the model which the dog in the logo has cocked his ear at. The needle is connected to a diaphragm on the small, circular "sound box", to which the horn is attached. "The longer the horn, the louder the sound. Some of the horns are 8ft."

In the HMV picture, the gramophone's horn is on a "travelling arm" - held up by a sort of flying buttress at the front. These models are extremely rare, which is why one expert suggested a price of pounds 3,500. John merely laughs at the idea: "You'll never find one anyway."

The more common horned gramophone is known as "back-supported". Since the full weight of the horn does not rest entirely on the needle, it can be larger and more decorative. There is a wide variation in price from pounds 400 to between pounds 1,000 and pounds 5,000 for an HMV model.

The second branch of the gramophone family tree is known as "hornless". There is in fact a horn - otherwise the record would be inaudible - but it is concealed. Volume control is often by way of two doors (open loud, closed soft) fitted at the point where the sound emerges. "Lidless" is a better description, since the turntable is exposed. A less popular design, it can be picked up for as little as pounds 50 or pounds 60.

"Then you've got the 'table-top'," continues John. This also has an internal horn and a lid so it can be closed and used as a piece of furniture. A likely price would be between pounds 150 and pounds 250.

As its name suggests, the fourth type, "picnic", is a small portable. A poignant example is the 1914 Decca "French" model, a favourite of Western Front troops. Prices range between pounds 50 and pounds 150.

Finally, the "cabinet" variety sits squarely at the other end of the scale. This is a large, free-standing piece of furniture. In an HMV 163, the sound is spilt into two tubes which are then joined in a large chamber. This is not, of course, a stereo device but a way of boosting the volume. That model costs around pounds 400, while a small HMV 145 comes at approximately pounds 150. In general, you should expect to pay pounds 200 and upwards for a decent, working cabinet.

"This is not an expensive hobby," John insists.

Records of the period do not usually cost more than pounds 2: "You could pay 10p." Dance and swing bands sell well - Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Glen Miller. Music hall, too: George Formby and Max Miller. John deals with a man who collects yodelling records. Other bizarre 78 sounds include a seance complete with actual "spirit" voice.

Concealed in job lots of elderly 45s there might be the odd example of a much more highly prized "Berliner", a seven-inch disc which is played at 78rpm and is named after the inventor of the gramophone. The first released in Britain was an 1898 concertina-piano number unhappily entitled "Happy Darkies". Since his rare machines now cost between pounds 5,000 and pounds 10,000, it is no wonder that Emile Berliner's discs are more expensive than the 10in variety: pounds 10 to pounds 15.

Others collect the paraphernalia of the gramophone. A circular wooden record-duster with a company logo costs pounds 15 to pounds 30 if unused. Needles too have their devotees: tins for storing steel needles, sharpeners for the thorn variety and cutters for the bamboo types. Advertising posters are also collectable, as are phonograph boxes or cases - the equivalent of record sleeves but far more rare.

The most curious of the curios are the minute dancing couples which spin around on a base touching the edge of the turntable; their dance can be adjusted to suit the rhythm of the record: "People's idea of entertainment was very different in those days," John remarks.

Another very scarce artefact is "Nipper", the dog which gave HMV its name. (Until it bought an artist's picture of the attentive fox-terrier, the firm was known as the Gramophone Company and its logo depicted the Recording Angel, no less.) An original papier mache display model would now come at a price-tag that can only be described as barking - in excess of pounds 1,000.

Fortunately John knows where to find pounds 60 copies because he has had them made himself. These are not forgeries but repro versions and are sold as such. In this they differ from what is known in the trade as "crap- ophones", which purport to be genuine HMV gramophones: "Although their brass horns look quite good, they're pretty awful, with short cuts in the manufacture." These ersatz players are knocked up in India and slipped into the antique food chain until they end up in auction houses as "possibly HMV".

The real HMV is one of the names to conjure with; the others in the gramophone Big Three are Decca ("always interesting, quirky") and Columbia ("beautifully made but under-rated because they don't carry the dog!"). "If you are going to collect, it should be a name, so that you can sell it on. Mayfair and Itonia are perfectly respectable.

All the components should be original, since any tinkering lowers the value. "The logo on the sound-box should be the same as on the gramophone's case, although there is the complication that the early sound-boxes were not of a very good quality and so might be upgraded by the original owner. They used cheap materials on the sound-box as they didn't think the machines were going to last 100 years."

Well, they have. Some, at least, of those hand-cranked models have reached their century and many more are just a few years short. Where does the new collector go for a tuneful turntable?

"Not car boot sales," declares John firmly. "You can buy something for 25 or 30 quid but you'd be very lucky if it worked. The only places worth going to are the specialist 'nostalgia' fairs such as the ones held at the NEC in Birmingham, Fairfield Halls in Croydon and Wimbledon Stadium." There are also events held by the City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, which, despite its name, is a mainly international group with a contact address in Scotland. Christie's also holds auctions of antique turntables.

"I would go for something like this," advises John, pointing to a 102 HMV Picnic model. "Very nearly in mint condition. The cloth is not stained or burnt by cigarettes. About pounds 150. I once sold a 102 with records to a lady going to Africa who wasn't sure if there would be electricity."

Yes, people still listen to the old hand-cranked machines. He admits that the very first recording equipment was not enormously sensitive: "The early artistes to be recorded had loud voices or played trumpet." But he invites me to enjoy No No Nannette's "I Want to be Happy Foxtrot", which he plays on a Swiss model with an elegant red horn, scalloped like the shell of a large sea creature. Yet wouldn't it be better if transferred to tape and heard through his modern hi-fi?

"You'd never get that sound," he retorts. "The problem in sound recording is the range of frequency; you can't go higher than a certain note or lower than a certain note. The only thing they recorded was music within their limited range. The music was written and performed in sympathy with the way in which it was to be recorded and reproduced. If you listen to an old record on an old machine, it sounds better than a transcription, ie a modern re-mastering of the original recording. In addition, the sound is better when playing records which are contemporaneous with the machine than when playing later 78s.

"Modern recording has less hiss but a lifeless ambiance. I notice this particularly with Fats Waller. On a car cassette player, it's his music but there is no life. On that old machine over there, it has a quality of its own."

It is a dancing, hissing, spring-powered quality that could well be bouncing off the walls of a living-room near you. And however wide the owner opens the doors of the speaker on a hand-cranked gramophone, the sound is only a fraction of the boom of a modern hi-fi system. So if the neighbours complain about the noise, the 78-ophile merely asks: "Are you winding me up?" John Sleep, West Pentire, Crantock, nr Newquay, Cornwall TR8 5SE (01637 830415). City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, 2 Kirklands Park, Cupar, Fife KY15 4EP (01334 654390). Various gramaphones are included in Christie's (0171 581 7611) 'Lost Street Museum' sale to be held on 16 October and in a sale on 3 December.