F or those looking to connect with the past through records and vintage audio equipment, Dave Hunt, owner of Vinylhaven Records/Finest Kind Electronics on Maine Street in Brunswick, is your hookup.
Surrounded by shelves of records — 78s on acetate, and LPs and EPs on vinyl — with “Charlie Brown” by The Coasters playing on a satellite radio, Hunt works with the sounds and electronics from another era.
“I rarely see people who just come in and then close the door and go,” said Hunt. “Most people are interested enough by the looks of the place. There’s bound to be something that’s of interest to someone. You’ve got to have a fairly dull imagination just to come in and say, ‘oh, this isn’t Best Buy’ and turn around and go.”
“Before that, I was around the corner in a little shoebox sized place,” which is now being used as storage for a local jeweler.
Hunt, who moonlights as a singer/guitarist, has decades of experience fixing electrical equipment.
“I’ve been in the gear aspect of it forever, possibly since I was 9 years old,” said Hunt. “My grandfather used to be an engineer for CMP, and he had a basement workshop with old radios, parts and meters and stuff like that. It was a wonderland down there. That’s where the spark started.”
It’s a blend of science and art.
“I’m not really an engineer, but I’m a fix-it guy,” Hunt said.
He also has near-encyclopedic knowledge about the history of records, picked up over the years.
Pill-shaped Beats speakers, ear buds, and streaming digital music services are replacing CDs. Cassettes and eight tracks came and went. Through it all, vinyl, played on a turntable and through an amplifier and stereo speakers, seems to have endured.
“The word is, it’s back. But it’s never really gone away,” said Hunt, referring to vinyl albums. “It’s been in constant production since 1947.”
The sound, produced off of grooves in a record that can be felt on your fingertips, is “a visceral thing,” Hunt said.
“It’s in front of you. In digital medium, it’s like, where is this coming from?” said Hunt.
Much of the work is tedious, said Hunt, consisting of cleaning, pricing, grading and organizing records. But that’s a necessary function of the business, and important for customers looking for something other than a “yard sale approach” to finding records.
Diamond in the rough
Once in a while he’ll come across a diamond in the rough. For example, a collection of 45s in near-mint condition in period boxes.
“There’s some interesting stuff,” said Hunt. “That’s what makes it work, when someone comes in with interesting records, all the way clean. They’ve got the little cloth tape with their name on each one, which devalues it by about 20 percent, but it also indicates that the kidsister or the kid-brother isn’t going to get their grubby mitts on the records. In the end, they wind up being in better shape.”
Because much of what he sells is used, customers can listen to a record before they buy, helpful for those looking for a specific style or sound.
Eventually, the doo-wop might give way to a record that piqued the interest of a repeat customer — a 78 rpm recording of Arnold Frank & His Rogers Cafe Orchestra, a late 1920s-early 1930s dance band.
Arnold Frank, in turn, might give way to the grittier sound of Big Joe Turner’s rendition of “Blues In The Night.”
Hunt said that while he has his preferences, he doesn’t have a large collection, but does have an appreciation for rare and obscure pressings on acetate. Anything of value, though, he said he sells in order to keep the store in business.
Hunt does have some friendly competition a couple of doors down on Maine Street. Maine music chain Bull Moose Music has been selling new and used vinyl, along with CDs, DVDs, books and other media.
“We interact more than we conflict,” Hunt said.
One potential customer on a recent day was Ben Street, originally from Maine and now residing in Brooklyn, a collector of jazz, blues and classical records.
“I’ve always felt I enjoyed my experience with vinyl the most,” Street said.
Street described an evening with friends when they compared vinyl, cassettes, and digital recordings.
“We’re all musicians, and we noticed when the music was in any digital format, we all started analyzing it right away. With the vinyl, we instantly switched into enjoyment mode. It blew everyone’s mind,” Street said.
The length of one side of a vinyl LP is also perfect for his attention span, Street said.
“I get much deeper with the vinyl, where with iTunes, I just find myself skipping around all over the place,” said Street. “The record helps me focus.”
The importance of shops like Vinylhaven to music aficionados is “beyond words,” said Street.
“People love the place,” said Hunt. “I hear that term used on a daily basis. It beats me. It’s a lot of work, but there’s something here that connects with people. There’s the nostalgia ingredient. There’s the guy who lost his record collection, and he wants to get those things back. Those things represent a connection to his or her past. There’s something in us that needs to do that.”
jswinconeck@timesrecord.com
Comments are not available on this story. Read more about why we allow commenting on some stories and not on others.
We believe it's important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers. At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way. It's a form of open discourse that can be useful to our community, public officials, journalists and others.
We do not enable comments on everything — exceptions include most crime stories, and coverage involving personal tragedy or sensitive issues that invite personal attacks instead of thoughtful discussion.
You can read more here about our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is also found on our FAQs.
Show less