In the mid-1970s, when I was about 13, the family down the road annoyed me by buying, for £42, a stereo record player. Interestingly, its tone control could be moved all the way in either direction without producing any appreciable change in sound, but that was the only thing it had in common with my own mono player.
The stereo looked beautifully sleek and low-slung, its arm fascinatingly delicate and effeminate, and then there was the space-age exoticism of the twin speakers . . . For the first few months, the family kept these together, immediately on either side of the turntable. This was illogical in auditory terms, but they couldn't risk visitors catching sight of only one of their speakers and assuming they were still listening in mono.
Lack of funds forced me to carry on with my mono player for a few years. Deeply ashamed of it, I have seldom felt such a strong sense of social injustice as when I found out that York library would only let you join the record loans department if you could produce a needle from a reasonably good record player.
By the time I did get a stereo, CDs were being introduced, specifically, as record industry people would brazenly admit, so that everyone would buy all their records all over again. Apparently, women in particular liked the early CD players, because they fitted in with the minimalist chic of the 1980s, while the sight of sprawling gatefold record sleeves became associated with downmarket, sweaty-socked bachelordom. I eventually capitulated over CDs, but always had a snobbish distaste for them. I resented the triumphalism with which early 1980s yuppies would say: "Have you got the Human League . . . on CD?" And I disliked the plasticky clack as you flicked through them in record shops.
Then, about five years ago, I began to notice people using CDs with string threaded through to scare birds in their gardens. The mystique of the format was fading as people returned to vinyl.
I have just bought my second decent-quality, albeit second-hand, record player in as many years. My hi-fi has that retro 1970s look that is so popular in Notting Hill, and suggests that I'm a connoisseur of music, because everyone now admits the sound quality of vinyl is better. I enjoy looking at my friends' CD players and saying, "Can't handle the bass, you know" or "You'll find most professional musicians favour vinyl."
Whereas people do have bad CD players, hardly anybody has a bad record player these days. If you go to the trouble of getting one, you get a pretty good one. Despite this, second-hand vinyl is cheap, pristine records going for a couple of quid. Records are a rare example of something socially prestigious being cheaper than the naff alternative. The only example I can think of, in fact.
