Ken Bowers has been into audio equipment since he took apart a boom box at age 6. "I wanted to see how it worked," he now explains.
Skipping ahead a few years, Bowers was shopping for parts to fix a turntable when he found his professional calling at Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor.
Bowers went from working part time to full time to managing the retail and online operation that today bills itself as the world's largest source of turntable needles, phono cartridges and turntables.
"We're primarily a mail order company, so we talk to people from all over the world: Japan, Europe, Canada, South America," said Bowers, who has been at Needle Doctor for 15 years now. "All of these people, they love music. They're buying stuff to play music. That's one of the main things that has kept me here, getting to deal with different people that all have a common interest."
Bowers' audio component collection doesn't stop at turntables. He also has a vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder and a far out 8-track tape deck.
Raskin opened his Needle Doctor shop in 1979, focusing on turntables after getting his start selling cassette tapes from his backpack.
The store moved from Minneapolis' Dinkytown to St. Louis Park last year and now features larger inventory and a bigger showroom to encourage walk-in customers. While walk-ins account for only about 10 percent of the store's business — online shoppers make up the bulk of sales — Bowers said employees learn more from the turntables customers bring in for diagnosis.
Needle Doctor is also hip to those shiny, silvery compact discs that have caught on in recent years. The store stocks CD players, speakers, amplifier/receivers, cables and headphones.
