This is a stange British machine.

[EarlH]

https://atlanta.craigslist.org/nat/atq/ ... 77059.html

[Steve Levi]

Tis strange, but I like it. Thanks for posting. Steve

[epigramophone]

Full details of the Gilbert Model 52 here. Not identical but very similar :

http://www.gilbert-gramophones.co.uk/model-52.htm

[EarlH]

That's a nice website and it's certainly an usual machine. If it were close to me, I'd at least go look at it. So much of that stuff came over here in the 1960's when it was cheap to ship stuff like that yet.

Usually most furniture from Europe doesn't fare well here because the climate is so much different, and they didn't need to treat the wood like we need to over here before it was made into something. That phonograph seems to have aged pretty gracefully though. Wurlitzer had all kinds of problems with the Orchestrions they were buying from Germany in the early part of the century. They finally just started shipping lumber over there for them to build the Orchestrions with. I've worked on a few German pump organs and some of them will tear themselves apart over here.

[estott]

I've worked on a few German pump organs and some of them will tear themselves apart over here.

I heard from an importer back in the 1980's that, depending on where it came from, old european and UK furniture has to spend a lot of time in a controlled warehouse where it can be Acclimatized to US conditions. A lot of it wasn't- and some pianos fell to pieces or exploded. Caveat Emptor.

[briankeith]

THIS MAKES A GREAT BAR! Noooooooooooo