NewcastleFalcon wrote:dnsey wrote:Nice Clarke & Smith gear. Literally old school!
Lest we forget, here are Clarke and Smith
and a bit of background from
"Ferrograph World"
This was the centre of their empire (Wallington Surrey, also the birthplace of guitarist Jeff Beck, who was mentioned is despatches earlier in the thread)
regards Neil
I had convinced myself that Ferrograph were a Newcastle company, don't know why.
One thing that surprised me (long story, sorry).
Years ago, the bloke I bought my HiFi stuff from was selling a Transcriptor turntable - as featured in "A Clockwork Orange" - the Angel Trumpets bit.
It was staggeringly expensive and stayed in the window for a couple of years.
He moved locations and had a massive sale. The Transcriptor was offered for something like £1400.
I had an old schoolmate visiting - he wandered all over the world and worked for SIDA at the time.
A friend of his at SIDA asked him to get the Transcriptor, so we went and bought it, bunged it on the back seat of the firms Volvo and set of for Västerås.
When we got there we were aghast at the sight of oil on the back seat - leaked out from the Transcriptor - the platter and tone arm floated in separate 'oil wells'
Only a little had been lost but it was years before the guy manged to get the speed accurate
Anyway, I had lived here for years and regularly passed the Vickers armaments factory and see attached to it a large Michell factory without giving it much thought.
Eventually discovered that Michell made the optical sighting and ranging gear for the tanks.
Even later discovered that the MD had used the very fine engineering capabilities to make himself what he considered to be the very finest record deck possible.
His mates saw it and talked him into producing them commercially - hence the Transcriptor.
Now long gone but lives on as the Michell Gyrodeck
