Paillard table top ( off brand cabinet)

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nostalgia
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Paillard table top ( off brand cabinet)

Post by nostalgia »

I add some photos of a Paillard table top that came into my possession yesterday, since table tops of Swiss origin are not too often covered on the forum. What are there to say? The machine has a far better motor and soundbox than wooden cabinet. We can see the motor board is thin, and broken, and seen from the the under side it is not too convincing. The same applies to the rest of the cabinet, it feels thinner and not of the same quality as HMV and Victors of the same period. I would think this machine is from the mid to late 1920s, at least that is my feeling about it. As we can see, the horn is also very small...

I have used: http://www.gramophonemuseum.com/paillard.html as a reference. The double spring TOR motor is listed as found in the Paillard no 3 catalogue, issued around 1920, but this particular motor is only seen on a drawing on the website, so I add some photos of the motor here for future reference.

The motor kept running noiselessly for a very long time afte removing the brake, far longer than expected, the Swiss quality of gears and bearings immediately comes into mind, remembering having the same experience when servicing my Paillard portable.

Along with the machine came two soundboxes, a Paillard Maestoso No 2, and...as a pleasant surprise, a flawless Pathé soundbox.

At first I had planned to keep only the motor and soundboxes, since I absolutely don't need another tabletop in my storage room, but instead of chopping the cabinet, I have started to get some other ideas.....
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Last edited by nostalgia on Sun Nov 07, 2021 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Marco Gilardetti
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by Marco Gilardetti »

Was the cabinet genuinely made by Paillard, or does it bear the Paillard trade mark anywhere?

I would rather think that this is an off-brand cabinet, equipped with Paillard generic parts...

epigramophone
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by epigramophone »

Marco Gilardetti wrote: Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:33 am Was the cabinet genuinely made by Paillard, or does it bear the Paillard trade mark anywhere?

I would rather think that this is an off-brand cabinet, equipped with Paillard generic parts...
I agree. Paillard were major suppliers of components to the gramophone trade.
My chinoiserie Fullotone has the identical "Tor" double spring motor and speed control.
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by gramophoneshane »

Marco Gilardetti wrote: Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:33 am
I would rather think that this is an off-brand cabinet, equipped with Paillard generic parts...
I tend to agree.
I would expect the cabinet to carry either a Paillard or Maestrophone decal/transfer if it was a Paillard machine.
The cabinet would probably be of better quality too.

I think it's more likely either made to order for Eriksen through a cabinet maker, and sold as a sort of house brand machine, or made by a wholesale company and sold to various music and/or furniture retailers, who could attach their own transfer or plaque if they chose to.

The same motor, speed control and brake on the above machine is a common combination used on various offbrands, and some used identical tonearm and soundbox too.
I think one of American Sonora's models even used the same motor brake and speed control.

I think the machine is well worth preserving though, regardless of its origins.
If it were mine, I'd probably try searching advertising for Eriksen in online newspaper archives, and you may find information and pictures of this model, stating the cabinets was imported or made locally, timber finishes, price or even model number or what years this style was introduced then discontinued.

Here in Australia we had probably hundreds of different offbrands in Australian made cabinets, and they all relied on either Swiss, German, English or American components.
There was no such thing as Australian spring motors, tonearms etc, but I have found original advertising for just about every machine in my collection and some or all of the information I listed above.
It's surprising what info you can find out about the machines in your collection by searching newspapers from the teens and twenties.

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nostalgia
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by nostalgia »

Thank you all for the response. This seems to make sense, I was surprised Paillard would create a cabinet like this really, in particular the motor board, and well..the horn is very simple, but we also looked at this machine earlier on, that also had a simple horn construction: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=49316&p=292438&hil ... or#p292438

The cabinet has no marks on it at all, no decal or transfers. You will probably get angry when you see what I will do with it. :mrgreen: In some days I will upload photos of the results. Someone had even knocked a needle with a hammer through the lid, and as you can see there were veneer problems close to the door that opens and closes the horn.

(Eriksen must have been a very small dealer in a very small town in Norway, like all dealers in Tonsberg in the past, and when I say small I mean small. The town has around 53000 citizen today. )

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Inigo
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by Inigo »

The case and horn look very similar to these German tabletops we see everyday in eBay by the hundreds. I cannot understand why they did so big cases almost empty, and with those ridiculous horns... There are plenty of them.
And why did they have two doors :?: One of them is completely useless... How would these machines sound?
I don't know Paillard original tabletops, but their portables and horn machines were high quality. Their sisters at Thorens made also good portables, and I've seen once a very nice small high quality upright in Oak that was delightful. Also before the pandemic I saw a wonderful Thorens tabletop in rich solid wood, combining two colours, with chamfered corners and nice details, which also was a little marvel... So original Paillard machines of these classes, if there ever was such thing, should have been likely also very good machines... That one is definitely not an originally factory assembled Paillard...
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nostalgia
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by nostalgia »

Does someone remember/know how to open this spring barrell correctly? I need open and cleanse and regrease it, since it does not wind and unwind well.
I need be somewhat careful here too, since a screw is missing that holds the barrel together, and another one has ruined threads obviously. I would have preferred not to open it, but it needs to be done. I see no pins, and no screws that are holding the shaft.
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nostalgia
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by nostalgia »

SOLVED. The Barrell needed to be opened without removing the shaft first.

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Re: Paillard table top

Post by VanEpsFan1914 »

I want to see what this machine gets turned into...

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nostalgia
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Re: Paillard table top

Post by nostalgia »

What do you think when you see this?
I have problem with the governor...
--Update...
I have spent 2 hours trying to adust the governor, the main drive spins on top of the governor worm gear, it was like this when I started to service it. Paillard has this special way of adjusting the governor bushing ( if that is what it is called), a pin hole where the governor shaft is fastened, and they can be adjusted at both ends while turning the bushing 24 hour clockwise ( or anti clockwise), that will change the angle of the worm gear. I remember having some small problems with this on my Paillard portable, but nothing like this, so probably the main drive gear are somewhat destroyed.
Right now, there there seems to be only two different results.
1. The main gear spins on the worm gear
2. The governor halts completely.

I start longing for the HMV governor, and how it is working...
Paillard also has so many different motors, that it is hard to find parts..

I think this was the reason why the gramophone was abandoned, it has been serviced in the past, since a motor screw had been changed with a newer screw, but obvioulsy they had not been able to adjust the governor and it was impossible to wind the motor. I have been able to make the motor run and avoid the problems with the worm gear and the main drive, but I am not sure if there is enough power left after having to lower the main gear to its maximum over the worm gear. Because of it, the governor does not run with too good power, there is a thin balance here...

Maybe I will need to remotor this machine, since I will not leave it when I first have started working on it. I will know in a day or two...
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