The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

The cabinet is a jewel set oak finished with green and red stones! The motor can power a small car. The turntable is a very heavy casting and over 33cm diameter. The horn is over 65cm in diameter. In other words, this is a BIG machine!

Got the pictures. I will look into my catalogue today evening and let you know.

I had not. Google found it for me on eBay. Google rates eBay very highly. Interesting that people can make money selling photocopies.

If Google rates Ebay very highly and I think you're right about this, I don't rate Google at all! In fact I'm getting a bit sick and tired of doing searches for very specific items only to get in Google searches: "Buy xxxxxx (whatever I typed in) on eBay". A lot of vintage rarities are not for sale on eBay and never will be! Often if you click on those rather tenuous links you get a standard eBay Home page with no relevance to your search whatsoever. Very irritating.

I never said that people were selling photocopies. Roger Thorne produced many copies of things he had owned over the years. Some of his original items have been sold on eBay. What is being uploaded elsewhere are copies or extracts from his files (not necessarily the originals).

I checked my Beka catalogue. No machine is even remotely similar. Tonight, I contacted the owner of the talking machine catalogues, who is known to me, to search for machines with extra large turntable. Even for Lindström standards this is an extraordinary machine.

Thank you, Starkton. I did wonder if it would be found. I trust you will bear it in mind in future if you do happen to come across more catalogues.

Jewel = actually "Paste" Jewel not a real one
Turntable is 35 cm

Parlophone Olympia model 75 from 1909

I hope that you bought it!

I would say that it isn't reasonable to expect machine catalogues to appear with any regularity in collections, and certainly not to see European catalogues in American collections. The USA market was closed to all except Edison, Victor and Columbia, with seriously litigated exceptions until some crucial patents expired around 1915-1918. Even so, most buyers would have been drawn to local stores where they could see & hear a machine, instead of reading about a perfectly unknown thing as the "talking machine" must have been.

My own small collection of catalogues is about 98% records and 2% machines, if that helps to paint the picture.

Thank you very much, Sidewinder! I am thrilled to finally know what it is I bought 3 years ago at auction. Can you reveal your sources, I wonder?

I'd always 'guesstimated' the machine to be 1914-ish - I don't know why. And yes, the turntable does measure 35cm - that's a whopping 14" diameter. Why so big? It hasn't got an arm / soundbox that adjusts to play the bigger size Pathé records so what records was it designed to cope with?

I also wonder where this sat in the range it was from? Was it near to the top or middle?

Thanks again for the information, you've made my day!

Where in the range: above the middle, top of the range models were mahogany with gilt columns

pictured is the top of the range 1909 parlophone (I would show more but I have not re-assembled it since my move)