Victrola 8-35 (1928) forgotten son of Credenza?

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gemering
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Re: Victrola 8-35 (1928) forgotten son of Credenza?

Post by gemering »

Cody,

What a great find.
Especially with a very decent set of books included.
Congratulations.
The machine in Cumberland has been refinished ( A turn off for me.)
I've been looking for a nice original 8-35 for several years, with no luck to date.

Gene

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PeterF
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Re: Victrola 8-35 (1928) forgotten son of Credenza?

Post by PeterF »

Funny, but I don't find them as attractive as many of the others of us seem to. It's odd to me that the record storage is exposed - and although the colorful spines on the original albums are pleasant, the overall look just doesn't gel for me. But there's no accounting for taste.

There's a certain utility in having the handy little drawers, and the cutout lid is cool because you don't have to remove all the stuff you have stacked on top to play the thing.

(As an aside, does every one of your consoles and uprights have a tabletop model on top? Mine all do. Tends to be cylinder machines on top of disc/disk machines, which means more cylinders get played around here. It's a disease. You can help...or turn the page.)

8-35 is kind of cool stylistically because it's low. And it's also kind of inconvenient because it's...low. And wide.

Remember, the exact same metal orthophonic horn is in the 8-9, so you can get the same sound in a more manageable package. It's also in the considerably rarer 8-8.

But: congrats on the great find and the really cool story behind it.

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Cody K
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Re: Victrola 8-35 (1928) forgotten son of Credenza?

Post by Cody K »

I think this thread's about ready to go back to its nap, but I want to thank you gentlemen for your kind words.

Andreas, yes, you do have to have the room for something like this, and I don't! But it'll stay, and I'll be doing some purging to accomodate it. I'm even giving the Credenza the side-eye, though I love it and it's great to have these side by side.

Marc, thanks very much for the link to the adhesive. I think it's exactly what I need.

Peter, the thing I like best about the 8-35's design is that it doesn't look like a Victrola at first glance, but rather like a handsome breakfront cabinet with bookshelves on the sides. The visual illusion that they actually are books, and not record albums, is strong. The look doesn't hold up without the original, matching books though, so that's where I got extra-lucky. Seeing pictures of examples that have ordinary albums (or none at all) on the shelves makes it clear how fragile the illusion can be. One example I've seen online had the shelves filled with ordinary brown Victor albums, and then it just looks very obviously like open storage. The necessity of looking at the storage area when the doors of a two-door Credenza are open is the biggest reason why I much prefer the four-door models; storage looks less tidy in the two-door models, and it's not like you can close the doors when the horn's utility depends on them being open. With a four-door Credenza, the small doors hide the records. With the 8-35, the records hide in plain sight, and that, to me, is the genius of the design.

I got the impression that this machine has sat in the same dim corner, ignored, for several decades at least. That may be why none of the books disappeared.
"Gosh darn a Billiken anyhow."- Uncle Josh Weathersby

gunnarthefeisty
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Re: Victrola 8-35 (1928) forgotten son of Credenza?

Post by gunnarthefeisty »

not to beat a dead horse, but have any of you new 8-35 owners out there found anything interesting in the drawers? I love the phonos with a little storage space like that.

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