TRACK 1 VintageStereo

Play it again and again

New Antioch Illinois shop tracks vinyl LPs, vintage audio gear

ANTIOCH, Illinois -- There's a rare find of a store for music lovers who cling to their vinyl records.

David Prucha, who owns Track 1 at 348 W. North Ave., sells and repairs vintage stereo equipment just when you think people have all but stopped playing them and consigned them to memory lane.

Not so, according to Prucha. Some music lovers are quite partial to their old records.

"Vinyl records provide richer and warmer sound than CDs," said Prucha, who also carries thousands of long-playing vinyl records.

"I don't think there's a store like ours within 100 miles of Chicago," said Prucha, 50, who started repairing and installing car stereo sets when he was still in high school in Chicago.

A graduate of Carl Schurz High School on the city's North Side, he later worked for Playback, known as the electronic playground, where he said he became thoroughly familiar with hi-fis. For formal training in electronics, he went to DeVry Institute of Technology.

These days, owners of vintage stereo equipment are often at a loss to find a shop that can repair their stereos. One reason is the difficulty in finding the right parts, Prucha said.

"A lot of guys just don't want to do it because the time you have to spend in repairing and the amount you have to charge. It's not worth the trouble," he explained. "I charge by the job, rather than by the hour." He also makes house calls if absolutely necessary.

The store, which opened March 1, brings nostalgia to many older music lovers, but also attracts younger audiophiles who somehow try to catch up with what they missed when LPs were the rage.

He also carries stereo equipment from makers like JBL, Marantz, Pioneer, Yamaha and Technics, along with turntables, receivers, cartridges, speakers, styluses and other accessories. Some are still new; others he has reconditioned.

"What I want to do is provide a place where people can hear and buy equipment the way music was meant to sound," he said.

Prucha said while he buys LPs, he insists that they must be in top condition because records, once damaged, can't be repaired. His collections range from rock to blues, jazz, movie sound tracks, country and old country, to classics.

"They were either taken care of or not taken care of," he said of the records.

Some of the old recordings were never turned into CDs, which makes certain vinyls collectibles, he pointed out. His own favorites, he said, are records by Dan Fogelberg, a folk-rock singer from Peoria. Despite the store's specialty in vinyl records, it also carries used CDs. #