The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

One of you guys should really own this. Were it not for the size and the 4000+ miles between me and the machine I'd probably be bidding on it

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT

What an absolute beauty!

Imagine the skills required to do wood carvings like these.

I have not had time yet to look for additional information on this. Baumbach's book may well have something. I'll check it tonight if someone else does not do it first. I agree it is really beautifully done.

Now THAT is splendid! Columbia tone arms have a streamlines elegance that Victor's arms lacked- if Columbia had installed proper bearings in the joints they'd even be better.

Gee, with an opening bid on $9.99 I could bid on it just for the thrill of being the highest bidder, if only for a few minutes.

I used to do antique restoration for a living, and it's always great to come across something high quality like this. Even though it was produced in a factory I'm sure these must have been put out one at a time. Since so many craftsmen from Europe were coming to this country in the teens and twenties it was probably no problem to find men to perform work like this.

You can probably consider each one to be unique because, even though they followed a pattern making this, the nature of hand carving is that no two would be precisely alike.

I found this in Baumbach's book. The seller has hi/her story right. It is a "Charles II" model (P7). It's a reproduction of a cabinet dating from ~1600. Introduced in 1919 at a whopping price of $700. Interestingly even with all that cabinet there's NO RECORD STORAGE! A matching record cabinet was available though.

I guess you're still going to run into the same problems playing records that you would with any other columbia phonograph (given the tonearm assembly's added wear on the discs), regardless of how nice the cabinet is... which I'd agree is super nice.

the motor is electric though... does anyone know much about columbia electric motors? were they similar to victor electric motors - better or not as good? I've never seen or owned one.

Brian, you are right on the added record wear. This would be one to enjoy the looks of but I wouldn't play it much and can't imagine it would sound that fantastic anyway.

I have never had a Columbia with an electric motor but I've had a Cheney and a Pathé art models like this with electric motors and they both worked perfectly. I also had a Victrola XVI with an electric motor. That was more noisy.

Technically, this is not a Columbia although it looks like it (now) has the Columbia tone arm. The Orsenigo decal shows that it was made after Columbia cancelled its contract for cabinets in 1921. Orsenigo made the cabinets for Columbia's period phonographs, and when the contract was cancelled, it sold the cabinets under its own name using generic motors and tone arms. The company continued making these cabinets for several years and made office furniture for decades after.