Earlier in January I posted that I’d brought this retro pocket organ from EBay. Stylophone pocket organ It has now arrived and wow, it is in near perfect condition, the seller did not lie when stating it hadn’t been used since 2008. It is almost mint.
Mint condition
Anyway not being a person to disappoint anyone, I did promise that I’d video myself learning to play the unit. I wanted to prove that anyone can play these “Toys” that were hugely popular over the last 40 years. You lucky people. Here’s the video below.
A BRILLIANT RE-pro of an iconic Stylophone Pocket Organ from 1968.
Bought for me as a birthday present back in 2008. I packed it away and placed it in my loft.
I’ve just found it again and have added 3 Duracell Plus AA batteries to test it for the first time. (Included in sale)
All works extremely well.
The unit is as new, the box has very minor wear.
EBay
We will just have to wait for delivery to see just how true this listing is… however I have spoken with the seller today, he’s a lovely chap and my mind is at ease that this is a genuine good purchase.
Unit differs slightly from the 60s oneIn general looks similar All looking good, original packaging
Anyone that pays the slightest bit of interest to my blog will know I love retro electronic equipment, especially if at sometime in my life it has meant something to me. Well, the Stylophone was a very basic synthesiser/toy that popped its head above the parapet originally in the late 60s, but was super popular in the mid 70s and that was when I first got my hands on one. It was a cousins unit, not mine as my parents wouldn’t pay out for toys like that as they were just a fad. (How wrong were they?). So envy struck once again as I was never able to have one…..now fast forward 50 years and I’ve now purchased a good example of one.
The Stylophone is a miniature analog electronic keyboard musical instrument played with a stylus. Invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis, it entered production in 1968, manufactured by Dubreq.
Some three million Stylophones were sold, mostly as children’s toys, but they were occasionally used by professional musicians such as John Lennon, Kraftwerk and David Bowie.
Wikipedia
Back in the day a chap called Rolf Harris was constantly on the TV advertising or playing these units, however the less time talking about this fellah the better, he was a right wrong ‘un.
This particular unit is not an original, I’m still after one of those. This unit was a reissue in 2008 so it’s about 17 years old now. But I’m happy with that. And it works, and for me that’s unusual as I normally only buy broken ones to repair, maybe the original one I’m after will fit the bill, if I can find one that is not completely overpriced. The original unit ran off a single PP9 9v battery, these newer units have improved circuitry and operate off 3x AA type batteries using half the original power. I’ve said before retro electronics are rapidly become the antiques of tomorrow, and people are out of their heads with the prices they are demanding even for something that is completely wrecked. They all need a reality check for the prices they are demanding. The total I have paid for this one is £20:00 GBP and that includes the postage and batteries, so in all I think I’ve got a bargain if it matches the actual listing.
I’m actual going to record a video of learning how to play this unit, just to see how easy or hard it is, and this creation will also be the subject of a later post, Here: You were warned
In the meantime prepare your ears for an assault to the auditory system as someone with no ability to hold a tune tries to play a toy/instrument from the 1970’s, you are truly blessed 😂
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
Playtime. Without venturing back to my childhood days, that have disappeared into the ether of long forgotten days of fun and frivolities, playtime for me takes on a different meaning from what it did back then.
Yes I have a fascination for old retro toys of childhood that I buy, fix and then restore, however the play element has long disappeared to be replaced by fascination of how things have progressed in that relatively short period of time. The play things of my childhood are now being referred to as antiquities and I guess that also means i to, am starting to fall into that category.
The great majority of my life is consumed by work. So for me “Playtime” as such is anything that falls outside of the work category. As I have aged “Playtime” is not the singular activity it was in childhood, it now is an all encompassing activity that involves everything from rest, hobbies, family life, personal time, education and enjoyment.
I don’t “Play” as much as I’d like due to the way my workload pretty much consumes my whole existence, hence I’m looking forward to the time when that “Play” element consumes the workload – retirement. And I’m probably looking towards that occurring in the next 3-5 years, maybe sooner if a small lottery win arises.
Back in March 2023 in the early days of this site I threw some figures out there regarding the amount of cameras on the planet up to and including 2022, you can read that post here: Vintage Camera figures
In this post I’m going show a graph and some figures regarding the decline of DSLR ( Digital Single Lens Reflex ) in the last 12 yrs.
It’s becoming obvious that people are ditching the traditional camera frame for the mobile phone and tablet approach and the figures you see in decline for traditional cameras have probably gone in the total reverse and multiplied many times over for the latter. It hurts the brain to realise the total amount of picture capture devices out there, as well as the waste that this produces as a result of what has become a throwaway society in which we all must share some guilt.
I can honestly state that in the last 12 months I have purchased close to 60 Cameras, 18 radios about 14 portable cd and tape players and not one of them has been disposed of much to my wife’s displeasure. (To be honest she’s very supportive of what I do as it keeps me out of mischief.)
Anyway I’m starting to drift a bit, so in my last post back in 23 I think I stated that there were estimated in 2022 to be something like 45 Billion photo capture devices on the planet, enough for 5.5 units per person that inhabits this Ball floating in space, a phenomenal number. And now there are probably even more.
The traditional camera is being ditched though and as you can see in this graph supplied by Statista It is a seriously declining part of the consumer market.
DSLR decline courtesy of Statista
The number of digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera shipments worldwide has been on a downhill ride since 2012. In 2023, a total of around 1.18 million DSLR cameras were shipped by *CIPA companies all over the world. Despite the decline in shipments, the average price of digital cameras per unit has continued to remain stable.
In eleven years the annual sales of a DSLR has dropped by almost 16 million units in 2012 to a paltry 1.18 million in 2023, as I’ve stated the sales of mobile devices have probably quadrupled and risen in the opposite direction.
The question is, are traditional cameras going to be more of an antiquity in the near future or will there always be a demand? There are so many out there that I can’t see them commanding any good price through rarity as there are just so many out there.
I learnt my trade in photography back in the late 70s early 80s. Back then we did everything by hand from mixing the chemicals, manually printing using enlargers and various types of papers, dryers and drums. Dodging and shading, manually touching up any defects as work was produced. We even made dupe trans, did letrasetting and made the boss man tea. A computer does it all now….apart from the tea but I bet that’s on the horizon.
The chemicals we mixed were in 100 litre batches and were pure poison. E6 Colour developer contained Hydroquinone, and the final bath (Stabiliser) all this chemical was pure formaldehyde, we never had masks or gloves back then and after mixing a batch of these chemicals you were out in the yard for a good half hour coughing your guts up. There were many other chemicals involving ammonia and powdered citric acid and these were just a few of what we used. If you could only imaging the shear hell we went through for you to get your photographs.
Probably why I have such bad Bronchitis and Asthma nearly 45 years on.
What I’m saying is the digital world of today is immense progression and removes all that danger away from the business. It’s killed the business as much as any other big business out there. But it’s probably not as much fun or as much pleasure as doing the whole process by hand using traditional skills. Heck I bet that will kick start a conversation between the traditionalists and modernists.
Whatever way we look at things, time moves on, progression is always going to occur and we must (Even though we don’t always want to) adapt to change. And it’s going to change for everyone big time in the next decade or so.
Even though it’s like saying goodbye for a final time to a dear old friend. I enjoyed my role I played in it.
Supplementary notes
*CIPA stands for “Camera & Imaging Products Association”, which is the trade association of the Japanese photo industry.
The section “digital cameras” includes the following producers: Olympus, Casio, Canon, Kodak, Sanyo Electric, Sigma, Seiko Epson, Sony, Tomy, Nikon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Hoya, Ricoh.
Foxes Den 
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