Odd items found inside phonographs

[CDBPDX]

Just brought home a dilapidated Victor VV-IV to restore. Took off the tone arm bracket from the cabinet and found this brochure or users sheet for an Oro-Tone No.4 reproducer adaptor for playing lateral or Pathé records on a diamond disc player. It was in the horn just inside the cabinet. Pretty neat! Cliff

[Jerry B.]

Nice find! Jerry

[TVfuzz]

HAH! What a great topic.

I've found enough steel needles to melt down and make a Cadillac.
Aside from that, I've found a Sonora reproducer, very old graduation card (I think maybe the phonograph was the gift with the card, not sure of the date).
The motorplate was leveled by nailing some wadded magazine papers with a tiny roman nail. The ads were from 1930-something (I carefully removed and unfolded them like a CSI).

Still waiting to score the Victrola that has fat stacks of prohibition gangster money. A guy can dream!

[startgroove]

While exploring some junk stores in the Olympic Blvd area of LA, I found a cabinet for a Gabel Automatic Entertainer. The owner told me it had a unique history. There is a large mirror on the back panel which reflects an image of the record compartment. Behind the area where the needle changer sits, was a spot on the mirror where the silvering had been carefully removed in a neat 3 inch dot, which by the way, was at approximately eye level. Upon examining outside of the back door I found the wood outer layer had been cut away very neatly, right over the dot. Thus, someone standing behind the machine could peer through the opening, across the record compartment and out through the front glass.
In addition, there was a little hinged door above that, which appeared to be an access door to the horn compartment (which was located at the very top of the cabinet). That caught my interest as it seemed not quite the quality of workmanship one would expect from such a finely made cabinet. I couldn't open that door on the spot, so that was going to be explored later.
The seller told me he believed the machine was likely used as a spying tool, wherein it would be placed to cover an alcove or some other hidden area behind the cabinet. Visions of gangster activity or voyeurism passed through my mind.
When the cabinet arrived home, I found the tools to carefully open the little access door. Inside, I found a cone shaped horn, similar to the funnel horn found on a Columbia Q. Sticking to the floor of the compartment was a dried up and very stiff ear tube set. Thus the spy could hear, as well as see, what was going on in front of the machine!
As I mentioned, this was a cabinet. The mechanism was missing altogether. It took another couple of years to complete this machine, but that is another story altogether. Russie

[EarlH]

About 25 years ago a friend of mine bought an orthophonic Victrola, Granada. Terry took it all apart to clean it all up the next day and found a couple of dozen pictures of the guy he bought it from under the motor board. They were about 20 years old at the time and the guy was naked in all of them! About 3-4 days later the guy called him and said there was "something in the Victrola he forgot about" Of course Terry knew what it was and hurried up and put them back in the thing in the envelope they were in and acted like he never saw them. We still laugh about it. He was glad that the garbage hadn't been picked up yet so he could put them back in there.

[Victrolaboy]

Several years ago when I first started collecting phonographs, I found a very strange tungsten stylus inside the cabinet of a silvertone phonograph. It turned out it was the very rare "Everplay" tungsten stylus. I have also found some valuable 78rpm records from the 40s behind the record dividing slats in an Edison diamond disc phonograph.

[fran604g]

Coincidentally, after looking at this thread which I couldn't add much to, I discovered some stuff in an Edison DD machine over the weekend that is interesting in a historical context.

The person who originally owned the machine must have been a classical lover, since there was an ad for Rachmaninoff recordings on DDs, but the most interesting was a letter to the owner of the machine sent in 1922.

The letter was from someone in Daytona, FL who was writing to bring the owner up to date on various things, but she included a first hand review of a concert she attended on February 1st, 1922 at 8pm in Daytona, which featured Frieda Hempel as the main attraction. Along with the letter were two newspaper clippings of the concert and a complete concert program... in addition were the original unpacking instructions for the machine, a shipping notice and two DD original sleeves.

Curt, I'm a little late to this party, and just read through the posts. I found yours and had to pause to tell you what an amazing find this is! A personal account, of an actual event "in realtime" - Feb. 1922, is just amazing. How cool.

What DD Phono was it in?

Fran

[fran604g]

Just brought home a dilapidated Victor VV-IV to restore. Took off the tone arm bracket from the cabinet and found this brochure or users sheet for an Oro-Tone No.4 reproducer adaptor for playing lateral or Pathé records on a diamond disc player. It was in the horn just inside the cabinet. Pretty neat! Cliff

Very cool, Cliff! I hope you don't mind, but I just had to download the images! I love instructions!

Throughout my research on the Chippendale, I couldn't help but notice the dozens of advertisements in Talking Machine World issues for 78 adapters. So many manufacturers! I think there's a story in there somewhere...

Fran

[CDBPDX]

Just dismantled an old Silvertone floor model cabinet and found a cancelled check from 1928 to the General Motors Acceptance Corp. Somebody must have bought a new Chevy! Cliff

[CDBPDX]

Just brought home a dilapidated Victor VV-IV to restore. Took off the tone arm bracket from the cabinet and found this brochure or users sheet for an Oro-Tone No.4 reproducer adaptor for playing lateral or Pathé records on a diamond disc player. It was in the horn just inside the cabinet. Pretty neat! Cliff

Very cool, Cliff! I hope you don't mind, but I just had to download the images! I love instructions!


Fran

Happy to share! Cliff