The craze for vinyl albums has prompted a Canberra collector to open what he says will be the city's ''only real record store''.
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Phil Place hopes to cash in on the surge in popularity of vinyl, which is back in vogue.
Dynomite Records at Kambah Village will head firmly down the nostalgia road, with thousands of second-hand LPs for sale and the walls covered with posters of album covers from the '70s.
Looking at the posters, Mr Place zeroes in on his favourite.
''I've always been a big fan of David Bowie and here I've got a poster of the cover of the album, Aladdin Sane, which I think looks fantastic, very '70s,'' he said.
''Most generic music stores these days are full of CDs and T-shirts and other things but this store is basically 95 per cent records and 5 per cent CDs, nothing else. It's going to be Canberra's only real record store.''
Mr Place sources hard-to-get albums from the United States as well as buying local collections when Canberra residents downsize.
Like other independent music stores in Canberra, he is pitching the venture on the renewed interest in second-hand vinyl records among younger people.
He's registered their strong interest while running a stall at the Kingston markets over the past 18 months.
''Forty per cent of my clients would be around 30 years of age,'' he said.
''They've never really known records in any shape or form but they're discovering them through word of mouth.''
Mr Place said while vinyl records have a distinctive sound, their attraction included intricate artwork on the covers. ''They certainly appeal to people who are collectors by nature,'' he said.
''You have the pride of ownership, whereas nobody invites anyone over to come and have a look at their MP3 collection. I have a lot of regular customers who listen to CDs in the car but when they're at home and they want to sit down and listen to music, they listen to records.
''The attraction is the sound and the whole process, cleaning the record, putting it on the turntable, sitting down and listening to it and then having to get up to change sides.''
Mr Place says he does not ''have a musical bone'' in his body but is inviting local musicians to make use of the shop for gigs.
''I want to make the shop into an occasional acoustic live venue - one person and a guitar don't take up a huge amount of space,'' he said.
''It could be people singing Neil Young, Bob Dylan, that sort of music, just to give it a bit of a difference to the mass-market stores in the malls.''
Mr Place has been driving taxis while building up his collection of albums. ''I've got about 5000 LPs,'' he said. ''I started off as a collector and, it's the age-old story of a hobby that grew into a business.''