Amberola I A with lyre grille and serial number > 500

[victorIIvictor]

TinfoilPhono wrote (in the Suitcase Home thread):


"My Amberola 1A has a lyre grill but the serial number (motor, tag, and inside of the cabinet) are over 1000, way beyond the 500 claimed for that grill style."

I didn't want to hijack the Suitcase Home thread, so I will start a new one. If the motor, data plate, and cabinet are all stamped with the same number, doesn't this indicate that the cabinet was assembled by Edison?

Since (I believe) the grilles are not stamped, and are somewhat delicate besides, perhaps the lyre grilles were shipped from the Herzog Art Furniture Co. uninstalled in the cabinets. This would allow for late serial number Amberola I As to be fitted with a lyre grille. As workers assembled cabinets and machines for shipment, perhaps they grabbed what was available from a stock of grilles.

Or there may have been a grill swap at some point after sale.

Pure conjecture, of course, and I know that Edison was not known for consistency.

--Mark

[52089]

I have the converse problem, a 1A with plate and motor 257 but in a late-style, third grill cabinet. The top grill (square style) is marked 178 and the drawers have numbers in the 200s. I assume it was assembled from multiple machines, but again, who knows?

[phonogfp]

The claim that only the first 500 1A cabinets had lyre grilles is inaccurate, but an honest mistake by Frow based upon the initial order given to the Herzog Art Furniture Company. There is a three-part article on Amberola 1As and 1Bs that appeared in the March, June, and September 2009 issues of The Sound Box (available here: http://www.antiquephono.org/back-issues ... honograph/) that explains in detail the sometimes convoluted combinations of serial numbers and cabinet characteristics.

The short answer is that there were at least four cabinet suppliers, some cabinets were arriving damaged at West Orange and required repair by Edison, and contracts with other suppliers were spanning timeframes of one cabinet design with a succeeding design. This means that at certain times, one cabinet supplier was manufacturing one style while another was manufacturing another style.

George P.

[52089]

FYI, George's articles were published in 2009. He was kind enough to post one of them to this thread a while back:
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... s&start=10

[phonogfp]

52089, thanks for adding that little detail: the year! I have edited my post above to include 2009.

George P.

[victorIIvictor]

George and Kevin,

Thanks for your Replies to my musings. I am a little embarrassed because I purchased those 2009 issues of the Sound Box specifically for those articles, read them with interest, and apparently have forgotten a lot of what I read. Rereading the third article, it does answer my original post thoroughly.

Best wishes, Mark