A250, B250, or what?

[OrthoSean]

Ray Wile is the guy doing the complete Diamond Disc discographies for Mainspring Press. He's been around for a LONG time. I don't have his contact info, but the Mainspring Press might be able to help you there, or someone else here may know.

Good luck, this is a fascinating thread for more reasons than anyone knows yet!

Seam

[hillndalefan]

Because of the configuration of the motor board, I'd say that is a B-250 mechanism. In the A-250, the horn was mounted to a bracket that screwed to the right side of the cabinet [as you stood in front looking at it], and that had two pivots that allowed the motor board to be lifted from the left side, then slid out for lifting it free of the machine. This one has the horn operating rod run through the casting of the motor board, as in the C-250, but has the nice maroon paint job. The motor board also is held in place by three machine screws through three brackets fastened to the cabinet. That's why I'm pretty sure it's one of the late B-250s thrown together with an Amberola I case to clear out old stocks before introducing the C-250 in 1915. Bob Ault

[Lenoirstreetguy]

"Pursuant to our discussion,.." as they used to say in the old business letters, I was looking at some issues of the Amberola Graphic from the 80s . In the Autumn 1984 number is the attached undated photograph of the Edison shipping department . The reproduction is mediocre even in the magazine, but the interesting thing is that the text points out that although the cabinet has NO louvres, and the later form of the drawer dividers, the lid has the Edison Amberola picture decal rather than the Edison logo which is usual in a diamond disc machine. I'm taking this on faith because it's impossible to see. The other machines are Amberolas,,,at least they seem to be. This picture caused a fair amount of reader feed back and most felt this was a " post factory fire" shot. I will quote from the next issue..
The Diamond Disc Phonograph in the foreground continues to be a puzzle. Bernard Smith of Tacoma Washington has one of this model with a fairly high serial number (12707) but his also has no side louvres , but inside the cabinet is chalked the date Dec, 1909 suggesting that this might have been a made over Amberola cabinet. Bernard goes on to say " I heard a few years ago from some 'Frisco collectors that the Edison factory sent out 600 of these to California in a special train clearing out this model for introduction of the " Lab" model 250, the common one. It was rumored that Tom had ordered them destroyed but the general manager had secretly shipped them out. They were quite common here in 1970 - I had six of them in 1972"
Interesting, eh? Although I think we can discount the " Tom wanted them destroyed" bit it's pretty clear that there are some interesting cabinet variations stemming from the clean up after the fire.

Jim