Newbie hello Aeolian Vocalion Graduola help

[SCD53]

Hello my name is Steve and I am a newbie to this forum.
I inherited an Aeolian Vocalion Graduola which was in a garage for 56 years. This was my wife’s when she was a young girl.
I got this thing running with about 10 days of work. It had a broken intermediate tone arm, which I made work. I figured out how to repair the breaking system and also repaired the crank and lubricated the gears.
I did find some tips on cleaning up the machine on your forum. They worked well for a 100 year old machine.
I looked extensively on the Internet and hardly found any information on this machine.
I have many questions and hopefully you can answer them.
1) What kind of records do I need to play on this machine? I have many needles, sharp pointed ones, dull pointed ones, and flat pointed needles.
2) Where do I find information on this machine? I have the model and serial number of the machine.
3) Are there any people that sell parts for these machines? I need an intermediate tone arm section and I need a new felt for the record disk.
4) I also need a key for the lid.
Thank you.
Steve

[SCD53]

Also does anyone have a picture of the Graduola plunger.

Steve

[Inigo]

Hello. How familiar are you with the old 78rpm shellac records? I'm asking this just to know where to start...

[SCD53]

Not at all. The only thing I know are modern day records.

[AmberolaAndy]

Hello Steve and welcome to the wacky and wonderful world of antique phonographs and 78s!

This is a great site for anyone who wants to get into the hobby.

http://www.gracyk.com/beginners.html

And don’t forget to ask us any questions you may have! We don’t bite here.

[phonogfp]

Another excellent web site for beginners is the Antique Phonograph Society:

www.antiquephono.org.

Click on the "Articles" tab, then "Introductory" on the drop-down menu. Note that there are 2 pages of articles listed, and some of the best beginner articles on on page 2.

www.antiquephono.org/category/introductory/

www.antiquephono.org/category/introductory/page/2/

Best of luck!

George P.

[zenith82]

Your machine dates to about 1920, give or take. It was manufactured for the Aeolian Piano Company, who was one of many companies who diversified into phonographs during the boom of the mid to late 1910s. Unfortunately, production records have been lost for many phono manufacturers; however, you can get an approximate date through period advertising such as Talking Machine World and in popular magazine ads of the era.

One thing I immediately see is that your reproducer is in the position to play vertically cut records, such as Pathé labels. Turning it 90 degrees will play laterally cut records, such as Victors and Columbias. There are also different styles of needle for playing the different types of records as you've noticed. The cylindrical shaped needles that come to a point at the end are for lateral cut and the ones you saw that look like a small spade shape at the end are for Pathé. There are several resources out there that explain the difference between lateral and vertical cut.

Each needle is designed to be used only once and then discarded. Reusing needles will damage records. I'd never use any needles I found in a machine. Needles are still manufactured today and are inexpensive.

As you already discovered with the broken tone arm, a lot of machines of this era used pot metal parts. Pot metal of this era had no universal composition, but was usually zinc based and contained other cheap metals with low melting points such as tin and lead. The composition varied between batches and may explain why some pot metal parts have aged well and others have swollen and cracked.

The reproducer should be rebuilt with fresh gaskets and a new diaphragm if the old one is damaged.

Finally, this is an acoustic machine. It pre-dates electrically recorded records which became the norm in the mid 1920s. Electrically recorded 78s should not be played on acoustic machines. The good news is, a lot of pre-1925 records are still plentiful and can even turn up in places like thrift stores today.

[SCD53]

Thank you members for all the information you have given me.
You have opened up a vast number of new web sites and channels on the information that I seek.
I will be purchasing a couple of records so I can show this off to my guests.
This fits into the criteria of my dining room suite and bedroom suite. (no need to restore)
Thanks so much again
Steve

[emerson]

Steve the other nice thing about your phonograph is that you can get Aeolian Vocalion (red/brown)records and record supplements to add to the persona of it. Also if you go and look on the internet you can see a picture of one of the Aeolian factories in Garwood, New Jersey. Majority of the site has been torn down for condos but the original
office entrance is I believe going to be left for historical purposes. ---Herb (Emerson Collector)

[Benjamin_L]

Welcome to the forum, Steve.

I'm a big Aeolian Vocalion fan and your machine doesn't look that bad. Aeolian was founded in 1887 originally making Pianos and Organs later going on to their specialty player pianos like the pianola. At one point Aeolian was the largest piano company in the country surpassing Kimball and even having contracts with Steinway. By 1915-1916 Victor and Columbia's patents were expiring on the disc phonograph and everyone saw this as big opportunity to invest into a rapidly growing market, including piano companies like Aeolian. In the early 1920s there would be over 300 phonograph companies in the US alone.

Aeolian produced phonographs from 1916-24, and though zenith82 is right that no production records survive, you can get a close estimate on the year from certain things on the machine. Just like any company today Aeolian didn't keep the same design through their production run, they changed the tonearm, reproducer and motor design when big companies patents expired or a new design benefited the machine. Aeolian pretty much abandoned their earlier tonearm design like the one on yours in 1922.

I really suggest getting the whole machine serviced before you try playing a record, and primarily sticking to only acoustic 78s. You still can get parts through several people but you need to be extremely careful with them, Aeolian used pot metal which makes the tonearm/reproducer very fragile.

(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd00 ... 1012ae.pdf)

(http://nipperhead.com/old/aeolian01.htm)

I hope this was some help and I can't wait to see it cleaned up.-Benjamin.