Archival Turntables: Califone Promenade

In lieu of going to the gym, I'm hosting an LP recreation hour at home.  My turntable of choice is the portable Califone Promenade.  I was fortunate enough to score mine at a local Boys & Girls Club garage sale.  The Promenande is a tube amp player with speed adjustments for 16, 33, 45 and 78 rpm records.  It also doubles as a low watt PA system in case you need to direct a local pep rally or communicate with your neighbors from a remote location.  The entire unit folds up into its own portable case.  Inspired by Frank Fairfield, I have dreams of carrying my Califone on flights as my only carry on luggage. The Promande is a relatively rare Califone unit.  If you love records and you don't want your LP sound system tethetered to a specific room, sift ebay listings for the more common solid state model.   Here are some photographs of a rare bird Promenade currently on offer via this auction.  But it now!

 

  

 

 

 Califone Tube Amp Turntable via ebay

 Now Playing

From the Archives: ¡Something Festive!

¡Something Festive! is my all time favorite holiday LP. I bring it out right after Thanksgiving (along with Christmas on the Bandstand) and keep it on the turntable well into January.

I own multiples copies of SF for fear that it will be damaged or lost or permanently disappear from the second hand market (a consumer strategy I extend to bag and jacket acquisitions).

Here's the playlist.

¡Something Festive! features most of the top A & M recording artists of the day like Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass and Liza Minnelli (to the relief of some, The Carpenters are missing from this album).

If you spot a copy of ¡Something Festive! in the LP bins at Goodwill, buy it and add it to your archives. But first, examine it closely to make sure a scratch is not running through the album's most brilliant track, B3, Claudine Longet's grim rendition of Snow (sounding like an ancestral version of the theme song to Twin Peaks).

Wishful Shopping - Analog Edition

Here are some analog items that I wish I were buying as gifts (or, in a true Christmas miracle, unwrapping myself).  Since many of these artifacts are out of production or difficult to source,  I  recommend that you print out the images below and create your own wishful tree ornaments.

 

Contax T2 - via ebay 

 Rene Herse - Bicycle Quarterly Press 

 Audiotronics vintage turntable - via ebay

Clairefontaine french ruled notebooks

 

Stowa Flieger Wristwatch 

 

 New York Times - Print Edition

Vintage Pelikan Ballpoint Pens - via ebay