Welcome to Eric's Vintage Music Shoppe

In 1954 whilst I was still in my last years at school, I by chance discovered the magic medium of radio. A friend of mine suggested that we collect a jar load of grasshoppers and release them in the local Launceston radio station (7LA Launceston, Tasmania) which at the time was running a live children's radio program sponsored by Peters Ice Cream - "The Peters Pals Club." We duly did so, but the last thing that I remember about grasshoppers was that one of them had reached halfway up one of the microphone stands. But by then, I was totally captivated by the proceedings and forgot all about grasshoppers.

What an exciting experience was this live broadcasting! This was a period when radio was still a branch of show business -- not a bunch of talking heads, all trying to air their opinion on every subject under the sun or shouting at us to buy something! .... and of course, the music was played from those delightful 78 rpm records.
For the next few months, my after-school hours were spent doing anything I could do to help the staff with their work, and that included putting thousands of records back on the library shelves.

Ever since those formative days I have had a great love of the warm friendly sound of those 78 records, and I have now a large collection of them which I enjoy sharing with other people. Maybe there is something in this collection that you too would like. It really is amazing what great sounds were transferred to shellac, particularly in the mid 1930s. We just didn't have the equipment at home to faithfully recover it from the discs. But now we do, and we also have the quality of CDs from which to play it.

Eventually, I will be adding to the present small number of CDs of various compilations, but my main task now is to catalogue what I have. You will find a regular update of that catalogue (by title and by artist) and you are welcome to eMail me if there is something in which you are interested. At the moment, the main content of this site is the collection of over five and a half thousand 78s. As well, there is a small selection of recorded bits and pieces, and more of these will from time to time find their way into the Vintage Music Shoppe! - Historic country music radio programmes - Classic Australian Race calls - all sorts!

My policy is to preserve the original sound of the recordings, not to "enhance" by adding echo or "improve" the original in any way - just to remove the blemishes. Discs in my collection have been sourced from all sorts of places, and condition varies from (most) excellent to (some) very poor.

Just for the record, the "Vintage Music Shoppe" is really my hobby in retirement, and not a record shop at all. <grin>

I DO NOT sell the 78 discs themselves. The recordings will be restored for you and transferred to CD. Each side is carefully cleaned, the correct playback equalisation for each disc is used (not the R.I.A.A. curve for LP records which all more modern record players use) and there is a degree of sound restoration undertaken on each song which removes some of the noise and blemishes and leaves the music frequencies untouched.

Feel free to take a look around!

Eric Scott