New Hope Record Store Specializes in Vintage Stereo Equipment
Music is an elemental part of Shawn Smith’s life.
“Music has always been a part of me, like it’s in my blood,” he said. “You just can’t shake it.”
Nicknamed “Smitty,” he’s the owner of Twin City Smitty’s Vintage Audio in New Hope.
“Tinkering with music and electronics is probably in my genes,” he said. “Music has driven a lot of decisions in my life, especially to open this business.”
His shop is nestled in a small industrial building near Medicine Lake Road and Louisiana Avenue. It’s one of the few that still deals in the high-fidelity world of solid-state stereo receivers.
There’s a room in the shop dedicated to repair, where a technician revamps the old stereo units that may remind you of your grandparent’s house.
Once the stereos are repaired, they sell them in-person and on eBay.
They also repair turntables and speaker cabinets.
With the resurgence of vinyl records, a younger crowd is discovering the appeal of physical media.
“I guess what’s old is new,” Smith said. “So like I said, the baby boomers are getting rid of this really cool gear. Old receivers and cabinet speakers and turntables. And the 20 and 30-year-olds are getting back into it, or getting into it.”
Record crates hold jazz and fusion record at Twin City Smitty’s Vintage Audio in New Hope.
The vintage equipment game makes up about half of his business.
The other half lies in record sales.
That is, vinyl records, CDs, and music-related DVDs.
It’s all spread across several rooms in the store.
The classic rock room “is where most people start when they come to the shop to start to dig through the crates,” Smith said.
He’s got a group of dedicated record collectors that frequent the store.
“Collection-wise, you can tell a lot about a person by their collection,” he said. “So they are coming in, and they’re saying to the world, this is the music that I love, this is my collection, and they have friends over, family, they show off their collection to people.”
For those collectors, the spinning records and vintage speaker cones make the shop a place of refuge and a spot to unwind.
“People will come in, my customers will come in and they’ll just hang out for a half-hour,” Smith said. “And we’ll talk about shows and concerts. It really is like music therapy for a lot of guys.”
