These record players were first advertised on a full page entry in The Gramophone in 1955 as: ‘Never before had so compact a unit provided this high fidelity reproduction with such a room filling quality of sound. It plays all speeds of record. Automatic changer or single player models’. It was a revolutionary design, which included a loudspeaker built into each side of the cabinet, instead of at the front as was common practice with most other record players produced at this time.

Hi Fi had arrived! It was not a stereo device, but the idea was to place the Black Box at an angle in the corner of a room so that the walls reflected the sound forward and acted as an acoustic enhancement to the sound. There was also a limited edition of this model produced in a black cabinet with gold raised hand painted Chinese willow pattern figures, a very rare and sought after model by collectors today.

Did you know...
Pye Ltd of Cambridge, England, manufactured products ranging from domestic to industrial electronics. Founded at the turn of the 20th century, it was a British pioneer in the manufacture of domestic radios in the early 1920s, televisions in the 1930s, and transistor radios in the 1950s.
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