Featured Phonograph № 82: Pathéphone №29

[VintageTechnologies]

Even though I stated this in a previous post - I own two Pathé machines,,, and they are louder and clearer than any Edison, Victor, Brunswick, Sonora, or what have you. Very very loud units. I wonder what their secret was to create such load playing internal horn machines?

The Pathé discs can be very loud. I've read that they were mechanically dubbed from a large recording cylinder and they could adjust the transfer linkage to increase the amplitude of the cut on the disc.

The Pathé reproducers have large diaphragms and I think in combination with the tonearm have less mass for the shallow grooves to carry than the Brunswicks. They seem to skip less than the Brunswicks for that reason, in my opinion. I also think the records themselves have a lot to do with the volume. I have hundreds of Pathé disks which I have compared and have noticed quite a variation of quality and volume, even on the American-issued disks alone. The loudest disks are indeed loud, vibrant and exciting. The cylinder masters were huge, much larger than 5" Concert cylinders.

[New Owner]

This accurately sums up my reaction to the size of those cylinders:

1293955299_1259352397_wtf019.jpg (49.06 KiB) Viewed 1298 times

I was gonna put one with "Holy **** that's huge", but I couldn't find anything remotely work-safe

[Flvice]

I thought of this.....

[alang]

Thanks for all the comments and the information about the Pathé recording process.

Actually, I was hoping that someone here on this forum would be able to provide a little more information about my specific machine. I can't believe that there is no information out there about a Pathéphone №29. Does anyone have the Pathé book from Copeland and Dethlefson? Does it have any related info? Or maybe in some catalog? Original pictures, manufacturing year, something? I would even be happy to see more detailed pictures of similar machines like the Pathéphone №28 or others. It's very hard to restore something properly if you don't know what it's supposed to look like in the first place.

Thanks
Andreas

[FloridaClay]

I have the book, but don't see the Model 29 in it. Note though that the book concerns primarily Pathé in America. I suspect that the model 29 was made and sold in Europe.

Clay