Where did all this start?

A love for music, vinyl and a fruitless search to deal with the elephant in many rooms…

Back in the late ‘80s, I won a scholarship to go to university. It involved money. I spent it all on my first hi-fi system, including a Systemdek turntable. I wasted glorious hours browsing in Spillers Records, became an indie DJ and curated an eclectic vinyl collection which just grew and grew.

Fast-forward three decades and I finally had to confront the elephant in the room. Or should that be many rooms? I’m sure this isn’t unusual, but my collection was spread over five of them. Plus the garage. Records stored in milk crates, cardboard boxes and cheap, flatpack storage cabinets you promised yourself would be temporary! You know the score!

I resolved to bring my collection all together in one place, but I didn’t want static shelving across a wall. While that kind of end-on storage is meant to be ‘space-efficient’, it’s only so if you stack up and use all the space. Doing that then makes it harder to explore and access your collection. It’s okay with a few hundred albums, but not thousands. Which is why so many vinyl lovers leave space to the right and lean their albums over to stop them falling. But then you lose the space efficiency. And, either way, you’re going to damage your vinyl over time.

What I really wanted was end-on storage with an extending shelf that would give you more of a record store browsing experience. I couldn’t find that product anywhere.

So I committed to creating one myself. I started by designing and making all forms of storage – a nerdy curiosity intended to drive some learning. The picture below is one of those experiments – a 30-year-old desk frame I converted into a record drawer sideboard. Only 280 albums in there though!

For the love of vinyl

Our Six ‘F’ Framework guided how we designed Chorus record furniture…

Fidelity – truth to a cause

Fidelity is about faithfulness to something. High Fidelity (Hi-Fi) is about faithfully reproducing recorded sound. If only ;-). Fidelity for us means staying true to our purpose – preserving records and the love for vinyl. We believe we can best do this by making vinyl lovers’ lives that much easier. And that’s principally about…

Function – design to solve specific challenges

LongPlayer’s Chorus vinyl storage is designed from the ground up to care for records and make vinyl lovers’ lives easier. Easier to organise large collections, easier to access or store vinyl… and to transform the album-browsing experience. Chorus will significantly reduce the amount of damage to – and wear on – your vinyl and album covers. It might even make you fall in love with your collection all over again.

Form – design with purpose, timelessness and simplicity

A record is a simply designed, timeless and beautiful thing. It needs no explanation. We think about the design of cabinets in the same way – serving a function in a style that’s straightforward, clean, contemporary and won’t ever go out of fashion.

Fit – design with everlasting build in mind

A vinyl disc will last and last. Traditional flatpack furniture won’t. Which is why Chorus record storage cabinets come fully installed and assembled using a mix of traditional and contemporary build techniques to ensure structural strength and longevity. Our manufacturing tolerances are super tight.

Finish – touch matters

Our premium veneered wood finishes are sanded, oiled and rubbed by hand to create a lovely satin finish that brings out the grain of the wood. Our painted finishes are also satin. There are no ugly laminate tape edges anywhere.

Future – pursue lasting quality, support local manufacturing

LongPlayer’s vinyl storage furniture is built to last and made in Britain. We are anti-disposable everything! All our aluminium components are highly recyclable. We use local suppliers, not the Far East. If we source materials from Europe, we use distributors with existing local distribution networks.