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Thanks Graham, no rush!

I really should have dusted it before I took photos!

Best / Sean

Sean,

It's great to see the progress you have made with raising the horn!

Garret

When I bought my Rathbone Place, Expert Senior, it had a few pieces of veneer missing on the lid. I don't normally refinish cabinets but the lid recently started showing signs of lifting veneer around the missing pieces.
I removed the lid and discovered it is numbered on the under lip of the hinged side. I've never noticed markings on Experts before. It would be interesting to find out if any others are marked similarly.

Fascinating Chunny and many thanks for the photo. I have re-checked my three Experts (Senior, Junior and Minor) and can confirm that there are no numbers stamped anywhere on the woodwork. I think your number 3 is possibly some kind of assembly number rather than being part of a sequential production series. However, I could be wrong and it would be interesting to hear from other people. I have always found the lack of numbering disappointing but have conjectured that it may have been due to Ginn not wanting to draw attention to the fact that the Expert firm was so young and that production volume was quite small. He always tried to give the impression that he had been in the business for a long time but, of course, never mentioned the fact that this had been under the banner of EMG---by then his implacable enemy !

Just for the record (please excuse the pun), my pedestal Senior has never had a manufacturer's plate (Rathbone Place etc)---or tonearm rest---which has always led me to believe that it is therefore a very early example. In support of this thought is the fact that the number stamped on the underside of the tonearm bearing is 2---see attached photo. Having said this, I am not sure that tonearm numbers have a great relevance to dating but the lower numbers may give some indication of early production ? It would be instructive to know the tonearm number on your Senior Chunny. If it is 3 then we really are getting somewhere !

It is also interesting to note from the photo (something I have never noticed before) that there have been three holes drilled around the flange (120 degrees apart and on the same pcd as the holes that now exist) but subsequently perfectly filled in. To me, this suggests original work but inexperience/experimentation of manufacture of some sort before final processes and settings had been decided upon.

My Expert Junior has the Rathbone Place plate but the Minor is devoid of any label due to the necessity of having to make a replacement deck-board which was entirely missing.

Eternally intriguing .............!

To continue the sleuthing, here is a photo of the tonearm number on my Expert Junior---340, rather carelessly stamped. What is also interesting to note is the patent details stamped on the upper side of the flange. In the case of the Junior it states Pat No. 18771/30. Stamped on the Senior is : Prov Pat 18771. This again points to the Senior being manufactured early in the production process. Additionally, there is no locking ring or grub screw on the Senior bearing set-up, whereas the Junior (obviously a later item) has the locking ring to fix the "nip" on the ball bearings and guard against over-tightening.

The original tonearm on my Minor was missing but Frank James managed to find one for me. Not knowing its source, it is thus of little use in this dating investigation.

Tone arm 113 (from an Expert Minor, Rathbone Place address) had a locking ring and yet another variation on the Provisional Patent number. This was obviously stamped with individual letter and number stamps, so the omission of the v is probably just a 'typo'!
Apologies for the awful repair to the arm joint - done long before I acquired it!

My Minor, which is the example pictured on Chunny's website, has no manufacturer's plate and no tell tale holes to suggest that one was ever fitted.

The tonearm on my Rathbone Place, Expert Senior is marked, Pat No. 18771/30 and the underside is marked 350. Suggesting the tonearms are numbered, whether they were marked when being made or when assembled, is another thing.

I had totally missed the mark on the lid and only noticed it when the lid had been removed.

Oedipus, I've noticed that some Expert tonearms fitted to the Minor have that exact join as the one on your Minor. It may be that these are not cast but welded, seamed tubing.

I think all the EMG and Expert tonearms were made in two parts and joined, either by brazing or silver soldering before nickel plating.

I agree; a cast tone-arm would be noticeably thicker, and in any case, whatever sort of pattern would you need to form the removable core of a cast tube with two bends in it like that? (Mine, incidentally is a Junior, not a Minor).

That tone-arm design was not Ginn's, of course, it was Harry Virtz's, proposed in a letter to the Talking Machine News in 1924. (See attached). It not only made for a longer conduit, it provided a decent off-set even with an'extended' gooseneck (i.e. J-shaped rather than U-shaped, so that the soundbox in the 'rest' position did not require such a deep lid on the case). HMV had patented the idea in 1912, and in so doing caused tracking havoc for the ensuing generation of HMV gramophones until the new models of Autumn 1925.