Show us Your 1920's/'30's Record Changer(s)

[melvind]

I thought the thread about the Daily Automatic Phonograph should probably be referenced here too. A very interesting changer indeed.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =2&t=34486

[gemering]

Note to posters:

Please add a link to the changer in operation, if possible.
I know it can be time consuming, but non-collectors of these machines get a kick out of seeing them in operation.
Easy for me to say- I've been out of work for six of the last seven school days (I'm a high school vice-principal) due to snow and downed trees that are causing wide spread power outages.
Thank God we have a few crank-ups (no electricity necessary) here too.

Abe? Earl?

Waiting for your posts (lol)

Gene

[PeterF]

Of course there are tons of such videos on YouTube already, and so it might be convenient to gather links to the best of those and add them to this thread.

So if you have a favorite changer video, please share it here.

[startgroove]

Lori and I acquired this one last year with the help of a fellow forum member. What got us enthusiastic about this set is the way it changes records. On the left side of the compartment, up to 14 records can be stacked. To start out, there must be one record on the turntable. After play through, the needle reaches the reject groove, and an arm on the left side swings back a little in order to engage the center hole of the record at the top of the left stack. The arm then swings anti-clockwise and slides the engaged record across the bakelite guides until it reaches the spot above the turntable. Once the center hole of the record is aligned with the turntable spindle, the record drops into place. During the last part of the swing and just before the record drops onto the spindle, the record engages a post on the pick-up and pushes the pick-up into the start position, where it touches down on the start groove a moment later. When the last record has played, the left arm swings through its range one last time (without a record) and as it passes over the center of its swing, it engages a switch which shuts the turntable power down. That arm then returns to its rest position at the beginning of the cycle and stops the cycle.

Here is a video showing it in operation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqe2JD1xUF0

[melvind]

Here is a video showing it in operation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqe2JD1xUF0

Wow, what an interesting machine. It looks as though it would be kind of hard on the records as they scrape across the machine. But, it is really wonderful and fun to watch. I love these machines! I need a Stromberg Carlson!

[gemering]

We'll, I guess I grossly overestimated the interest in these machines by the membership here.
I personally find them fascinating and extremely collectable.
At least one other member (Thanks Russie) responded with photos and several other members left comments.

Russie, If you ever go on an extended vacation and need a house sitter, please let me know.
Just leave the 78 record cabinets unlocked.
I'll be fine.

Maybe my next thread should be, "Show Us Your Uncle Josh Cylinders" lol.

Gene

[fran604g]

We'll, I guess I grossly overestimated the interest in these machines by the membership here.
I personally find them fascinating and extremely collectable.
At least one other member (Thanks Russie) responded with photos and several other members left comments.

Russie, If you ever go on an extended vacation and need a house sitter, please let me know.
Just leave the 78 record cabinets unlocked.
I'll be fine.

Maybe my next thread should be, "Show Us Your Uncle Josh Cylinders" lol.

Gene

Don't be discouraged, Gene. Sometimes it takes a while for folks to chime in.

If I had one of these wonderful machines, I probably would've posted so many images that I would've been sent packing...

Best,
Fran

[gramophone-georg]

We'll, I guess I grossly overestimated the interest in these machines by the membership here.
I personally find them fascinating and extremely collectable.
At least one other member (Thanks Russie) responded with photos and several other members left comments.

Russie, If you ever go on an extended vacation and need a house sitter, please let me know.
Just leave the 78 record cabinets unlocked.
I'll be fine.

Maybe my next thread should be, "Show Us Your Uncle Josh Cylinders" lol.

Gene

It's a good topic. One of these days when the weather calms down a VW Squareback will get delivered to my shop with your old Duo in it. I also picked up a cool old Brunswick Automatic Panatrope from Jerry B last fall... I just need time to go through it and fix some cabinet/ veneer issues. I also have a 1939 Stromberg- Carlson console that's nearly done but it's just a garden variety "slicer" changer and likely too new.

One of our members here has a 1928 Sparton (I think) for sale that I'd love to see in operation, and someone else here picked up a '29 model from a guy I know up in Portland that needed a complete go- through. Was it Russ?

These machines have been red- headed stepchildren for too long (with apologies to any actual red- headed stepchildren!) so it's really good to see some enthusiasm. The hifi and stereo crowd turns their noses up at them because they are too old and primitive; the windup crowd does the same because they're too new and electrically amplified.

[EarlH]

Here are some pictures of this 10-70 I've had now for a couple of years. I think a thread called something like "Machines I dragged home on an impulse (or whatever causes a collector to make such a decision) and was then completely impressed (or unimpressed) with. I really have to say that about this machine. I am REALLY happy with this old girl and can't get over what a nice machine it really is. This one came out of a restaurant up in Minneapolis somewhere, but I don't know where.

I've been working a lot of overtime this week and not getting home much before 8:00 every night, so I haven't had time to move some stuff away from the front of it (mostly piles of records) to take a few pictures. The original volume control was giving me some trouble, which I guess is kind of typical with these things, so I had it all apart a few weeks ago to mess with that thing. I have a little bit later volume control in it now, and it sounds and acts much better now. The potted volume control in these is fine when they are working like they should, but when they aren't, they can be a little bit of a frustration. And they offer 10 choices for volume and some of the volume jumps do go from a "whisper" as it says in the advertising, to "FULL ORCHESTRA" sooner than it probably should. And it would definitely fill the average ballroom, or skating rink with music. Holy cow do these things are capable of a great deal of volume. But the control I have in it now has dampened that down quite a bit and has settled the tone down a lot on it, and evened out the bass a treble. I also really don't need to be listening to it a half-mile away!

It's also coin operated, and you can see the Mills wallbox in the picture on the floor there by the original volume control. The auction house I bought this from sold the wallbox for this a couple of weeks earlier, and I looked at it but had no reason at that time to buy it and I figured it was for a coin operated piano. And it was just a plain round black wallbox, much like the Mills wallbox, but with no thing on the front to put a tune sheet on it. I also don't have the coin part connected to it. It's easy enough to hook back up, but much easier to play this way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7jSCBbgW6k Is a video of it playing through a few records. I never was much of a Jesse Crawford fan, but he is really impressive on this thing. And it shows off the tone on it about as well as any record can I suppose. And I really like the second record as well. For some reason Paul Whiteman really did a nice job with that arrangement. I think he usually saved his really good arrangements for Columbia. This one must have slipped through the cracks I guess. A good friend of mine from High School that used to work on TV's and old radios when we were young, used to say that these really old electric phonographs knew how to "squirt the bass notes out at you!" I've always thought that was kind of funny. They must have worked hard at getting the recordings to sound balanced and decent since there is no tone control on these things. It just has four tubes in it and uses a 210 tube for the output. I need to get a better video camera, but this $89 thing I have does a really good job for the most part. But I would like to get one with a separate microphone.

Anyway, it's a wonderful machine. It was a lot of work to refinish and re-veneer the front door panels. I would say the devil really is in the details with one of these things and it takes quite awhile to really understand some of the adjusting on that changing mechanism, but once you get that figured out it's really not a bad thing to get working. The guy that had this thing before me should have left it alone, and we have all had to sort out messes caused by willful ignorance on these things. The service notes weren't written for the problems encountered 90 years on of course, but they are really helpful.

It doesn't care much for warped records and the only record I broke with it was one I dropped while removing them from the drawer after they were done being played. If a record is warped, it will simply keep it from lifting that record from the bottom of the stack, and then it will shut off since no record is on the turntable after the ring comes back down.

My neighbors think I'm nuts of course. My Mom is 86 now and she is back in love with her first husband (since all the others are used up... Haha!) and Glen is 88 now. He was over here last fall and said "You mean to tell me this is the sort of thing my Mom and Dad would have wanted when they first got married in 1928? My gosh, I thought they were hard of hearing in their old age. Those people must have all been hard of hearing in the 20's" Glen is pretty funny, and in really good shape for his age. And it's really kind of nice that those two are friends again in their old age. He also never remembered seeing an outside horn phonograph in his whole life! But he did remember seeing a lot of regular Victrolas when he was young.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0kjfYwHapM This one is more dance music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv-uGwgW4EU and this is more blues I guess. To me it's all dance music, but I never could figure out how some of these record collecting hairs get split. I like most all of it (even the waltzes).

[gemering]

Earl,

The 10-70 was certainly one of Victor's most beautiful offerings.
Your machine is no exception.
It looks fantastic.
I'd love to stumble across one in the wild one of these days.

Gene