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I took recently of a friend's crapophone.




The logo decal is bogus, and what looks like an elbow joint is frozen and does not move at all. What vertical articulation there is in this arm is due to looseness at its rear!





I don't think this has ever played a record; you'll now see why it never will to conclusion:

Great quality aren't they
Did you notice how well sealed the tonearm is in the back bracket? I could stick my little finger in mine lol. I replaced the tonearm with a goose-neck that actually fitted, and get twice the volume now.
Gotta love the needle bar pivots too...if that's what you'd call them

And if you try to move the tonearm pivot, with a little force, the horn's support bracket will probably snap right in half!

The tonearm, itself, looks like a Swiss made component culled from a circa-1930s portable, but turned upside-down. I've heard from a few collectors that the sound box, if in undamaged condition, doesn't sound too bad on other machines.

"And if you try to move the tonearm pivot, with a little force, the horn's support bracket will probably snap right in half!" - That might be a good idea. And I've got a truck we could back over it.

Nat

Actually the tonearms are brand new & cast in solid brass. You'd think with them going to all that trouble, they would make it to fit the bracket a bit better. They also drill & tap a hole in the arm to insert the support screw- a screw that's about 3" long lol. What a mess!
If I can find which box I've thrown mine in, I'll post a pic in the morning. They're a nice little arm really, but totally wrong for this application.

gramophoneshane wrote:Actually the tonearms are brand new & cast in solid brass. You'd think with them going to all that trouble, they would make it to fit the bracket a bit better. They also drill & tap a hole in the arm to insert the support screw- a screw that's about 3" long lol. What a mess!
If I can find which box I've thrown mine in, I'll post a pic in the morning. They're a nice little arm really, but totally wrong for this application.

Hi Shane:

Many thanks. I was aware that the goose-neck style tonearms, such as the type used on pre-1925 Victor and HMV machines, were being reproduced --

For instance -- CLICK HERE,

but didn't know that they were also reproducing the swan-neck (post 1925) style tonearms for these crapo's.

Ortho_Fan wrote:The tonearm, itself, looks like a Swiss made component culled from a circa-1930s portable, but turned upside-down. I've heard from a few collectors that the sound box, if in undamaged condition, doesn't sound too bad on other machines.

No wonder the arm is over three inches too short in such an application as this, based on where the needle ends up!

Here's more for you: I gently flicked the needle once or twice to listen for rattle. I noticed something bizarre straightaway: the chuck the needle is held within felt loose, with lots of play in it like unto a loose needle in any other sound box. As the thumbscrew holding the needle looked like it was at a strange angle, I felt around on it, and determined that the chuck was threaded into something else to do with the stylus bar pivot. Several clockwise turns of the chuck were required to snug it up, but in doing so, the needle was raised high enough such that it will no longer contact the outer 40% of a 10" record's playing surface! This crapophone was purchased as a decor piece, though, with no pretense to having a machine intended for even informal play.