Dave Lindhorst isn’t sure where the turntable on his kitchen table came from.
“It’s definitely a homemade rig,” he said.
There is a small pile of assorted screws on his countertop, a few screwdrivers and a mutt of turntable he believes to be from the 1960s.
Lindhorst runs a small record player repair business. The former army mechanic doesn’t advertise but has customers from all over the Saskatoon area.
The enterprise is a labour of love for Lindhorst. He owns almost 20 turntables — including one he built himself — and has several hundred albums.
He fixes turntables on the kitchen counter because there isn’t space left in the spare bedroom.
His passion began when he was posted in Germany several decades ago.
“I had a really nice, high-end turntable that’s highly sought after. And I thought if something happened to me somebody would get it for pennies on the dollar so I decided to sell it,” he said.
“Immediately after selling it I got seller’s remorse.”
He now spends about eight hours a day fixing turntables.
“I like the customization you can do with vinyl,” he told Global News.
Lindhorst said he spends about three hours a day listening to his own records.
“How you get that much sound off of a little groove in a record off of a cartridge, it’s … I can’t believe that they didn’t invent the CD first and then invent vinyl later.”
He’s also something of a vinyl purist. He said he never listens to the CDs he owns and he encourages others to buy records and turntables — not for his business, but because he loves the medium.
“If you’re just the kind of person that wants to have music as a background or to accompany you when you’re jogging or something like that then go with MP3s,” he said.
“If you want to really listen to the music and see what you can get out of a piece of vinyl then I recommend you go with a record player.”
After about 40 minutes of tinkering, he hooks up the old turntable to an amplifier and plugs in headphones. He places a record on it, lowers the needle and the music crackles to life as the album starts spinning.
Lindhorst said he has no plans to retire.
“My wife would like to get this room back,” he said, but added that he has “no plans at all about giving it up.”