Home Grown: A new collector in the Dominican Republic

Because every record collection has a story.

Home Grown is our series profiling you lot and your excellent record collections. Taking our cue from the brilliant submissions to the #VFRecordCollections thread on Instagram, we want to share a little of your hard-earned love for vinyl with the world.

Each week, we’ll be profiling a different collector from around the world and finding out what makes them tick. Want in? Send us a pic of your collection and a few words about your collection to social@thevinylfactory.com.

Name: Jan ‘Babeto’ Rodríguez

Location: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Size of collection: approximately 1,200 records

How long have you been collecting for? Since December 2015. Ana, my girlfriend, gave me for christmas 3 albums: Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, The Beatles’ Abbey Road, and Kodaline’s In a Perfect World. The rest, as they say is history. So, I’m kinda new at this.

What part of your set-up are you most proud of?
Since I started this, I focused more in collecting than in the actual setup. After a year, in the next christmas, Ana bought me a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon with Audio Engine speakers. So, apart from my collection, my Pro-Ject with Ortofon – 2M Blue MM Phono Cartridge and 2 Technics Quartz Direct Drive SL-1200M3D I have for mixing personal stuff are probably it.

Which record(s) are you most proud of?

Without trying to sound cliché, the records I’m most proud of are my dad’s albums. He is a recording song writer and has been since the early 80’s. He released 2 albums in vinyl, both released between ’87 and ’89. Apart from my dad’s albums, I guess that my Oasis collection and my Matchbox 20’s Yourself or Someone Like You, first press, are my favorite. Yes, I’m a big fan.

What does your record collection mean to you?

As a music lover I collect every type of genre from any decade. Having a complete collection lets me enjoy music for any type of mood. After I started posting my first pictures online, family members and friends (including my dad) started calling me to tell me that they had boxes of old records lying around and that they would give them to me. What I love about it is exactly that. Apart from the ones I’ve bought, I have a little piece of the people I love with me.