Record Player

A few years ago, as I was beginning to fall in love with collecting physical media, my dad gifted me something that had been sitting in the garage for decades: his grandfather’s old Hitachi record player. It was pretty beaten up, and of course it didn’t work at all, but I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to get it fixed. He also had stashed the original speakers that my great grandfather used, and while the cords were unusable, the speakers still worked wonderfully. After a trip to a small vintage electronics repair shop in Seattle and a little bit of patience, I brought home this now-functional beautiful piece of history and vintage technology. The final thing that my father gave me along with the record player and speakers was a small collection of vinyl records. Some of them were from my dad as he grew up (Beastie Boys), some of them were from my grandfather (The Animals), and some were from my great grandfather Bill and great grandmother Fern. There was one record, Ramblin’ Rose by Nat King Cole, which Fern had written her name on in blue pen. I love jazz, and I love Nat King Cole, but I had never listened to this album. I played it, and hearing it through the warm and full sound of the old speakers made me feel connected to my great grandparents in a way I never had before.

This project was modeled using Autodesk Maya, textured using Substance Painter and Substance Designer, and lit and rendered in Unreal Engine.