Last modified: Sunday, January 21, 2007 12:11 AM EST Ron LHerault listens to a record on one of his antique phonographs at his home in North Attleboro. (Staff photo by KEITH NORDSTROM) Local man loves his phonographs BY SUSAN LaHOUD / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF NORTH ATTLEBORO -- Ron L'Herault's love affair with antique phonographs started at a young age. His first encounter with the machine - a Columbia Grafonola - came as a student in the first grade at St. Mary's School in North Attleboro. It was love at first sight. He and his classmates couldn't resist cranking its handle, at least until it was turned in the wrong direction and it broke off. Years later, he spotted the machine in the corner of his sister's classroom at St. Mary's. "At least then," he said, "I had enough coordination to put it (the crank) back in." L'Herault got the necessary parts and fixed it. He was to encounter the machine, which had an internal horn system, yet again when he was in the eighth grade. He spotted it in the basement while carrying down trash to be burned. He cleared all the appropriate channels and was allowed to have it. "I ran home to get Mom with the Pontiac," he said with a big smile. "I still have it." L'Herault's affair with phonographs has continued over the years. The 59-year-old North Attleboro resident, a longtime lab supervisor at Boston University's division of biomaterials, now has more than 20 phonographs in his collection, and he shares his passion with others like him. Thanks to the Internet, L'Herault has found phonograph collectors across the United States who share his passion for the machines and the music that was once played on them. Saturday evenings have turned into online chat nights between those who admire phonographs, offer parts and repair the machines. Over the past few years, L'Herault and other phonograph aficionados have gathered on New Year's Day to display their old machines, new finds and recordings. "Little did I know that in the 1970s, the Michigan Antique Phonograph Society was formed," L'Herault said. With five or more members of MAPS, folks could form local chapters of the not-for-profit organization, which has a monthly newsletter. The circle of friends and acquaintances decided on New Year's 2006 to form the Massachusetts Old Colony Antique Phonograph Society, or MOCAPS. The group just celebrated its first anniversary when it met at the Little Red Schoolhouse, overseen by the North Attleboro Historical Society, of which L'Herault is a longtime member. The event drew about a dozen people, one from as far away as Nashua, N.H., as well as people from Franklin, Bristol, Holliston, Boston and Attleboro. There were four members from North Attleboro. The group talked and displayed various machines. L'Herault gave a PowerPoint presentation on steel needle production. The attraction to the machines "is different for different people," he said. For him, "definitely I love the old music. I love the old mechanisms, the nostalgia and the flow of technology and how they improved things." Some people like every "open horn" model made. Others just like the orthophonics, phonographs whose motors did not run by electricity and whose records were made through a microphone process, coming about in the mid-1920s. Other members prefer small phonographs because of the space larger horn models or consoles take up. North Attleboro resident Don Houde, a member of MOCAPS along with his father, Albert, says the attraction for him is a sense of family history. Houde owns Audio Concepts in Attleboro Falls; his father had a radio and television repair and sales business, one of the first in the town, his son said. "I've been around audio equipment my whole life, as was my dad," Houde said. For them, it's been the history and progression of technology. Houde likes the unique mechanics of the old machines as well as the historical significance of the inventions in which someone can play an audio recording from 100 years ago that was actually a recording of the person at that exact time. "These are recordings that were done in what we call 'real time,'" he said. "A lot of these recordings were done before electronics, they were acoustical." The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison while he worked on the telegraph and telephone in 1878, and had social and cultural implications. "A talking machine was a status symbol, just like color television when it first came out," Houde noted. "Back then, it was the focal point of people's living rooms." L'Herault's own collection spans the years, models and makers from the late 1800s to 1929. Before records, there were cylinders. A small phonograph owned by L'Herault is an "open works" cylinder machine, dating back to 1898, so called because you can see its parts operate. Giving a tour of his collection at his home, L'Herault set the needle in place on a celluloid record, "Come After Breakfast" by Arthur Collins. One of the first celluloids, it was developed in 1902. "They were wax before," he said. L'Herault also has a 1/4-inch ceresin (processed wax) recording of Edison speaking. He shifts to a large Victrola, winds it up and places the steel needle on a 1929 orthophonic recording of Louis Armstrong. "I think it sounds as good as any CD of Louis's that I have ever heard." There's just something about listening to a recording of the period on a machine of the period, he said. A few feet away, he sets a needle on another machine, an electric recording of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." "There's something about listening to the composer at the piano playing one of his signature tunes shortly after it was written," he says, attuned to the music. L'Herault said many more wind-ups were made as opposed to the later electric models which started being produced around the Depression. "Before electric, they had to do things acoustically." He has a French machine, a Pathe, which has a sapphire ball instead of a steel needle. The ball rides over the hill-and-dale grooved recording. There's a 1928 Brunswick (yes, the same company that produces bowling bowls), and a 1921 Victrola. There's a Victor P1 which was never actually sold. The machine was commonly given to the purchaser of furniture or records and contains a one-spring motor that just makes it through a 10-inch record because most records then were 8 inches, he said. The model, with the horn outside, has a crank handle and dates to the early 1900s. Some of the later designs, with consoles containing the phonograph's working parts and which had flat table-like surfaces, were influenced by women who didn't want to have to dust around the horns or needles and wanted to be able to display items on the furniture, L'Herault said. The creme de la creme, however, is his Victor VI, he said. The open horn machine dates to 1905. He has found parts and restored a number of the machines in his collection, finding them through people who don't want them anymore or at yard sales or antique shops. For L'Herault, who is also a trombone player and enjoys Dixieland music, collecting phonographs is "part treasure hunt and never knowing what you're going to find" in pursuit of a passion, one that combines his love of old music and mechanical tinkering. "It just all kind of meshed." he said, adding "God, they're a lot of fun!" SUSAN LaHOUD can be reached at 508-236-0398 or at slahoud@thesunchronicle.com.