Kanazawa Phonograph Museum

This guide to the Kanazawa Phonograph Museum follows Hiroshi Yokaichiya, who ran a phonograph shop here before the second world war and, once electric turntables arrived and customers began throwing the old wind-up machines out, could not stand to see them scrapped. Through the 1970s he pulled broken phonographs out of junk piles and taught himself to fix cracked horns, seized springs and worn needles, building a collection he eventually donated to the city. It follows how these machines make sound with no electricity at all, a needle riding a groove, a diaphragm, a coiled horn, and how his son Noriyuki still keeps them playing. Three times a day staff drop the needle so you can compare an early Edison cylinder against a 1925 Victor Credenza.