Matt HrodeyBob Paquette maintains a private museum of antique microphones in Walker’s Point.
Bob Paquette has collected antique microphones and sound equipment since 1950, and today maintains a private museum tucked inside the Select Sound Service building at First and National streets, part of which is a room containing some 1,400 microphones (seen here) dating back to an 1876 Bell telephone.
And thanks to Paquette’s repairs, almost all of them still work. Some of his acquisitions are startling – he has both a microphone used by Adolf Hitler at his Kehlsteinhaus (“Eagle’s Nest”) retreat and another that broadcasted updates from a famed Antarctica expedition. Abbey Road Studios in London is said to have a killer microphone collection, but otherwise, the Bob Paquette Microphone Museum has few rivals.