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So today I saw the workmen remodeling the hotel on Main Street in the town where I live. Up on the second floor in a luxurious suite, there used to be an old console gramophone for decoration, and I stopped the Phonomobile and went in to ask about it.

Yes, it was still there. No, they were keeping it...wait, what do you do for a hobby? You fix those things? Well, what is it worth?

I don't know actually--

Let's go upstairs and look.

After a nervewracking three-minute appraisal I figured it was worth very little (being a console model with very poor sound quality and a too-long crank handle) and we decided it was worth about $75.

And then the fellow offered it to me and I am now putting it in the queue to restore. After all, who am I to diss a free?


The machine isn't mint. The finish is nice, and will be conserved, (GORGEOUS oak grain) but the mechanism is giving me questions. It is apparently the split metal "stereo" horn of a 1929 Viva Tonal Columbia Grafonola--and the tonearm is a plano reflex model fitted with a No. 9 Columbia Viva Tonal reproducer. Brake levers and speed controls are all built into a chrome motorboard which was dropped in a la Brunswick--but it is too shiny for Brunswick. Probably a Columbia product. It does happen to run like a Garrard.

But the turntable deck doesn't want to come out of the cabinet. There are PHILLIPS SCREWS in the substratum of the machine, a large piece of green velvet nailed over a grille I don't even know if it's authentic. A side door is nailed shut and the record cabinet off to the side is possibly converted to a top-loader. I can see the records through the lid but don't know if this is normal.


The case looks like it could be a Gilbert, or perhaps a Columbia I never saw before. Pictures to follow.

Is there any documentation on British made Columbia Grafonolas, or is this a wild goose chase?


(The plan is at least to fix it up where it plays and looks nice, and then listen to my 1940s classical albums through that big old horn.)

The plated motor board and controls are almost certainly by Garrard, but as their biggest customer Columbia usually had their own name stamped on the motors.

Pictures should help to identify the model, and whether or not the cabinet is the original.

I have seen photos of a British Columbia console which sounds similar to your description. That one, however, had a decal on the inside of the lid. I can't remember the model number. I received information about it from the seller in a PM on the old OTVMMB before that board bit the dust and all board info was destroyed.

Please post photos.

Here she is in all her questionable Brittanic majesty.

More pictures. Yes, I am going to fix the typewriter, and now I know where my shoe polish is on the desk.4

I am starting to wonder if someone took a Gilbert cabinet and put the Columbia movement, motorboard, and horn into the empty case. The left door has been converted to be closed. I don't like what they did to damage an original gramophone but I do think the little homebrewed mess is worth preserving because it's someone's conversion project.

The plan is to remove the remains of the original bifurcated steel horn (not shown because the remains might scare folks here on the Forum) and craft a fiber horn similar to what went in 1930s portables, then rebuild the soundbox, oil up the motor, and listen to my enormous hoard of worthless classical albums on this worthless machine.

Who says junk can't be classy?

(Now if this is an original let me know before I get too carried away...)

Show us the horn! Don’t destroy it until you can find out what you have.

This thread shows what a 153a should look like. Your machine is what we in the UK call a "Marriage", but it is still worth saving.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... f=2&t=8447

PeterF wrote:Show us the horn! Don’t destroy it until you can find out what you have.

Here is one currently languishing on my workshop floor. Columbia described it as the "Improved bifurcated curvilinear stereoscopic horn". Technobabble is nothing new!

That's a nice horn--the 1929 Columbia 153A had one of those in it, but it got the chop to fit into this apparently Gilbert or Geisha brand cabinet.

Thanks for posting pics of teh 153a. That explains the long crank--it's original to the motor but is disproportiately long in the donor cabinet.

Here's what is left of my horn.

This isn't a marriage- more like a cohabitation.