Gramophones.
Until recently, I had not owned
a gramophone for thirty years. But the old ‘collecting bug’ will come out of
the wall when you least expect it! So about a year ago I obtained one. It was
just an ordinary cheap hornless table-top model from the mid or later 1920s.
This is it:
It plays OK, and although the
sound-box really needs an overhaul, I didn’t bother. Occasionally a 78 was
played on it, and everything seemed perfectly all right. This Sterno gramophone
was also pressed into use to illustrate the mounting of early electric pick-ups
on an acoustic machine, as can be seen on another page of this website. But all
of a sudden, another machine was purchased; a later 1920s HMV model 109, a
‘table grand’ (i.e. a table-top with a lid) albeit a German version. So it is
an Electrola. This was regarded as a temporary aberration, but soon afterwards,
a late 1920s
You will note that three of them
are ‘hornless table-top’ machines. These are very much the ‘Cinderellas’ of the
gramophone world, and no wonder, because they were the budget models of the
time, and were almost always ‘made down to a price’. There isn’t space inside
them for much of a horn, and often this modest horn doesn’t have a top because
the motor is in the way. So the sound that comes from them is not usually very
good. Yet for some reason they are my favourite type of gramophone. As a child
I has been given a
Moreover, it was decided to look these machines over, and do some minor conservation on them. The first three machines had merely been cleaned up a bit, and no mechanical work done on them. The No.4 sound-box of the Electrola 109 desperately needs a new gasket and probably a new diaphragm: the former has shrunk with age and the latter seems suspiciously thin… the sound is weak and ‘whiny’. But we didn’t bother, because the Columbia sounds really good, even though the turntable mat is shredded round the edges. Shabby genteel (I think they call it) is fine with me.
As it had been many years since
I tinkered around inside gramophones, it was decided to start on the simplest
machine first: the black portable. (Comment
added with hindsight: it was actually quite complicated!)
So if you wish to be bored to distraction, click the following link, and you will go to a page in which the dismantled machine is gradually put back together. How I can possibly have written nearly 5,000 words doing so, I have no idea! The page is called ‘Garrard’ because the electric motor was made by them…
The next machine to be looked at was the Zonophone. This was in quite good condition cosmetically. Its previous owner was obviously very good at conserving, indeed restoring, woodwork, and it looks quite smart. The winding handle might not be original, but that is a trivial point. Also, the sound-box – which definitely is original – could do with slight attention, but they usually need that anyway.
To see the work we did on this machine, just click the link below the image:
The
third machine to be dealt with was an anonymous ‘hornless’ table model. This
came in very cheap, so it didn’t matter all that much whether it worked well or
not. However, we have always had a tendency to be ‘the champion of the
under-dog’, if you catch my meaning. So this cheap and delicate single-spring
machine tugged somewhat at our heart-strings in a way the tough, chunky
Zonophone above did not. (The Zono. appealed of course, just because it was ‘tough
and chunky’!) So what have we got here? Click the link below the image to find
out…
Page started 26th September
2009.
Added to, 25th October 2009.