My B&O by Andy T.

Unlike other members of Beoworld who have contributed to this "My B&O" thread, I was not exposed to B&O as a toddler and spent my whole life yearning after it. In fact, it wasn´t untill I was in my thirties that I had even come across the name Bang and Olufsen! I find it dificult to tell you about my B&O without telling you a bit about myself, so brace yourself!

You see, I was born into a lower working-class family, middle child in a family of eleven. We lived in a council estate and were very poor, we didn´t even have a television untill I was eleven. All my clothes were hand-me-downs, including my underwear. My first new item of clothing sticks vividly in my mind, I was sixteen. (Try not to drip tears into your keyboard, it wrecks them)

I had passed an exam to go to Grammar School at eleven but alas, it meant buying a uniform and so I ended up at a comprehensive school, and left school aged fifteen and a half with virtually no qualifications. Yes, I was destined to raise the next Tulloch generation in the same manner I was raised, poor. I had a job working on market stalls and later got a proper job in the mill. I was called a battery filler, which involved putting bobbins of thread in looms for the weaver. This was about the lowest job in the mill and gave me a take home pay of £36 per week.

Aged sixteen, two things happened which turned my whole life up-side-down.I had always had an interest in the Shetland Islands, as this is where my adoptive father´s family had originated, indeed the surname "Tulloch"; was as common in Shetland as the name "Smith" is in England! The first of the two life changing things to happen, was the discovery of North Sea Oil off the coast of Shetland. Rumour had it that jobs paying over 100 Pounds were in plentiful supply. All you had to do was go there.

The second milestone in my life was meeting Mavis. It was love at first sight. Mavis was middle class (posh) and eleven years my senior.
She was in a loveless marriage but was way out of my reach, in my Duffel coat and cycle clips! Somebody up stairs must have been smiling down on me, as I managed to woo her. We decided to elope to Shetland as both our families turned their backs on us. I would go first to get somewhere to live and a job.
And so it was, on May the first 1979, I set off thumbing a lift up the M6 to Aberdeen where I would catch the all-night ferry to Shetland.
I had the clothes on my back, a suitcase, my fiddle and £20 in my pocket. I hadn´t a clue what was in store for me, nor where
I would sleep the following night.
As it turned out, in order to get a job in the oil industry, you had to apply to a firm in Glasgow or be a resident of Shetland for at least six months, and neither of these options applied to me. Fortunately, I managed to get a job in a hotel and accomodation was provided.
Six months later, I had saved £300 and managed to get a loan from the bank for £1200. I bought a forty foot static caravan for £1500, and went down to England to get Mavis. We started life together with virtually nothing, we even had to borrow clothes-pegs from a friendly neighbor! Our audio-video equipment at that time was a second-hand, black and white TV( like those you see on a cartoon, with four screw-in legs, one on each corner!), a portable cassette recorder and a tranny radio. I got a job as a labourer on an oil rig supply base and then started, at last, to earn some money. Every day, on the way to work, I had to walk past a HiFi shop. In the window was a fantastic HiFi system which I really yearned after. It had twin cassettes, a record player with a strobe light and millions of buttons and lights! It was a Ferguson System 25 HiFi and cost £500. Mavis and I had already decided we would always try to buy the best of everything, so we wouldn´t have to buy twice.
We bought an onyx coffee table first which I still have, but eventually, I managed to talk her into letting me get the HiFi. At first, it was all I dreamed it would be, but gradually it started failing. First one cassette then the other. The foam speaker covers rotted and the record deck stopped working until eventually it became just a big radio. Still it came with us back to England ten years later when the oil money dried up.

In 1993, back in Clitheroe I decided to get a record deck to attatch to the Ferguson. Looking around for the best, it was narrowed down to either a Pink Triangle deck or this weird and wonderful deck with two arms! It was a second hand Beogram 4500 in the window of Cryers of Blackburn. That was it, I was smitten!
Within a month of buying the Beogram, we knew we wanted to go completely B&O. I took out my first credit card and we went down to
Cryers main shop in Rawtenstall. We spent nearly a years salary in one afternoon! This is what we came out with.Full Beosystem 7000 minus the deck we already had, a pair of Beolab Pentas, an LX 4500 with built in Beosat LM, a VX 5000 video recorder, two LC1s, a Beolink 1000, a motorised satellite dish and a Panasonic camcorder for our impending trip to Florida! I still have all of these except the VX 5000 and the satellite dish. I can honestly say that 1993 was the best year in my life.

Nothing much to report over the next few years, as we had all we wanted and it all worked perfectly. Sunday mornings were spent searching the skies for new satellites, foreign channels and english news feeds. Everyone who visited couldn´t help but be impressed as I showed off my B&O to it´s best.Gradually, as analogue satellite began to disappear and Sky began to monopolise the airwaves and also, more and more, surround sound was becoming popular, we realised we would have to update and in 2004 we bought a second hand Avant 32", and a new Beo4.
It was shortly after this that I came across Beoworld. I needed to tune a new radio channel on my 7000 but only had a Beo4. Peter immediately offered to loan me a Beolink 1000. I couldn´t believe that a complete stranger would be so kind, and since that day I have been a great fan of Beoworld. Mavis said that there was no way we were having two satellite dishes, so the motorised one came down and we got Sky. We also got a Beocom 6000 setup and a Beotalk 1200 answerphone.
Unfortunately, in 1999, Mavis was taken ill with a rare, uncurable disease (Pseudomyxoma Peritonii) and after six years and various operations, I lost her on Friday 13th of January 2006. We had spent thirty years together and were approaching our Sivler Wedding anniversary. In the months before she died we had agreed that the two things we would get in 2006 would be a pair of Beolab 8000s for surround sound, and a flat monitor for the PC. I got the former, but not the latter.....yet.

In 2007, feeling very low and alone, I went to Struer with tweny-odd other members of Beoworld where I met Lee and have remained good friends since. Later that year, after the launch of the all new Beoworld, I won first prize in one of the monthly prize draws, an all white 7000 system. I went to Eastbourne to collect it and rekindle the friendship I had developed with Lee.

Now I was alone, I could easily have gone off the rails and turned to the bottle but instead, threw myself into Beoworld where I have made many good friends and annoyed you all since! This is also where I came across the concept of trawling eBay for older B&O equipment and
I started buying, refurbishing and re-selling Beo4s, Beolink 1000s and Beocom 6000s. The money I make from this goes towards my increasing number of older B&O items.
Once you start collecting, you can´t stop and at present have added to my collection a gorgeous late sixties/early seventies 5000 system including Massive Beovox 5000s and their little cousins, the sought after Beovox 2500 cubes. I also have a Beogram 1102 running through it.
I have just repaired a Beomaster 4000 from fellow member Craig and shortly will have a go at repairing a Beomaster 900K.I have some S120s which I have refoamed myself connected to the 7000, and two pairs of S30s, a pair of Redlines,a pair of Beovox 1000s, a Beomaster 2400, a Beomaster1700, Beomaster 1500, Beogram 1500, a Beolink 7000, a Beo5, Beolink 5000 and various Beocord cassete decks. I also have a Stereomaster Reel to reel and a Beocord 2400 reel to reel.

Being 49 years old, ugly and skint, I guess I am likely to spend the rest of my life alone, so will likely continue acquiring B&O and annoying everyone on Beoworld for many years to come.

Andy T.