The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

nostalgia wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 4:04 am apart from the Pakawa carrying handle (of course). I keep wondering how this company were able to keep selling so many poorly made carrying handles,

It's not that they were poor quality or poorly made
It's because after at least 60 years, with sweat and oil from your hand, the leather becomes brittle and the cotton stitching rots.
Modern replacements are probably the same quality but have the advantage of being new. In 20-30 yrs time they may well have deteriorated too, perhaps even sooner if they get used as often as many would have originally in the 30's, 40's and 50's.

It's not what you'd call a good and practical design though, and probably why it wasn't used on regular luggage, , but you can see it's appeal to manufacturers being cheap and easy to make, and being flat against the cabinet would have made it safer and easier to ship in a cardboard box.

I see your point Shane, but myself I am still not convinced with the quality and design of the Pakawa handles. I have also come across several machines that barely ever have been used, and most of them still have this Pakawa problem that must have arisen decades ago, since the machines have been stored away for decades without being used. I can see the advantage of the design since the handle was kept close to the cabinet though. Somehow I always felt the leather used on the handle was too thin for carrying the weight of the machine without cutting the metal wires into the leather, and as you say oil from hands and sweat have a big impact, but myself I have a feeeling this deterioration happened rather quickly since so many pristine machines have this problem too. The problem is often smaller on the later HMV portables though, of course because these machines are smaller and more light weighted than the 102.
But this is just my humble opinion of course, and I may very well be wrong

My recent acquisition - a blue German "Polyfar"

I just link the responses to this great and interesting portable, since the responses are found in that thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=49848

Here is an Odeon portable for sale in France, which answers to the name of "Bobby". It looks cheaply made for an Odeon product, especially the crude bolt fixing inside the lid for carrying records

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234062492513 ... %7Ciid%3A1

It's all authentic, one of the cheapest Odeón portables. I've seen others, you can google it to investigate other examples...

"Bobby" was a totally new Odeon portable for me, thanks for adding.

I am adding another Odeon portable model to the thread for reference, since it did not show up in a search. I picked it up yesterday, since I had never seen the model before, and well, the excuse was that it is so small, and (maybe) could be fitted in somewhere here

It has a 6 inch turntable, and we can see it side by side a HMV 102 for size comparison. It is working...

Yes, the Kismet! I've seen it before, in books and websites, don't remember now exactly where...