FOUND: Edison Concert Phonograph Drawer -With- Update Notes

[FellowCollector]

I will pay your price for an Edison Concert or Edison Spring Motor phonograph drawer. Please send a PM with pictures if you have one to sell or trade.

Thanks,
Doug

[FellowCollector]

I would like to publicly express my sincere appreciation to George Paul for his help in my effort of trying to locate a drawer for my recently acquired Edison Concert. George mentioned that Tim Fizer had made a very good quality drawer years ago for the Edison Concert / Spring Motor.

I presumed it would be pretty unlikely that I would locate a loose original Concert drawer in a reasonable timeframe so I did a bit of research online and found Tim's contact info and sent him an email. Long story short, Tim made a very nice drawer for my Concert for a fair price and within a reasonable amount of time.

My next thought was to try to find a near perfect stain (or mix of stains) that would match my existing original Concert cabinet color. As it turns out this is just about impossible!

So after LOTS of my time spent mixing of different color stains and testing them on several solid quarter sawn oak test pieces...I gave up in frustration.

I contacted a local antique wood furniture repairman with an excellent reputation for fine wood work and wood finishing and sent him pictures of my unfinished oak drawer inside the original Concert cabinet.

He called me promptly thereafter and told me that he would NOT attempt to match the drawer color/stain with the original cabinet as there were several colors going on (orange, yellow, green) and quarter sawn oak wood grain variables going on in my original Concert cabinet that Edison and Company used and he could not possibly duplicate it to his standard of perfection.

I was incredibly disappointed. I went on to explain to him all that I had tried using test oak pieces and asked if he would at least consider selling me some samples of the special stains he uses since MinWax stain mixing just wasn't getting me anywhere with matching the color I wanted.

After about 15 minutes of my sharing the frustration hours of trying to match the color perfectly he finally caved in and asked me if he could stop over to my place and look at the cabinet and drawer in person.

Long story short (again!) he took my Concert cabinet and new drawer several days ago to his shop and just yesterday he brought it back to me. It looks really nice. Even my wife was impressed at his work. And he only charged me $100 which I felt was very fair considering that he took time out of his huge backlog of work (he's backed up with work through September!).

Thanks for listening.

Doug

[phonogfp]

Way to go, Doug!

There's nothing like tears welling up in the eyes and a trembling lower lip to bring out the best in people...!

George P.

[rgordon939]

Glad it worked out for you Doug.

Rich Gordon

[alang]

Congratulations! Can we see pictures? Please
Andreas

[FellowCollector]

Thank you everyone for your gracious comments.

Congratulations! Can we see pictures? Please Andreas

Hi Andreas,

With apologies for the poor lighting (we seem to be having more than our share of rain and clouds lately here!) this is about the best picture I could capture for now of my Edison Concert with its replacement drawer. While it's not a perfect match of color with the original cabinet, I think it is about as close as anyone could possibly get with all things considered.

Again, my sincere thanks to George Paul, Tim Fizer and my local wood craftsman for helping me out with the drawer.

Also, my sincere thanks to an always helpful and courteous Forum member here for offering me the opportunity to purchase the nice original spun aluminum horn seen mounted on my Edison Concert here.

I had posted an ad in the Yankee Trader for one of these horns as I was seeking a little better sound without having to resort setting up one of my floor cranes and large horn. (And I have to update that listing as FOUND!)

For those of you who are interested in the videos on my YouTube channel, I'm hoping to record a few videos of my Edison Concert playing some of the many Edison Concert cylinders that came with it.

At least three of these Edison Concert cylinders (brown wax, of course) are dedicated to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and all are incredibly entertaining (!!):

1) "AT THE PAN-I-MARRY-CAN" by Will F. Denny (Absolutely WONDERFUL!)
2) "PUT ME OFF AT BUFFALO" by S. H. Dudley (Equally WONDERFUL!)
3) "PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION MARCH" (A WONDERFUL MARCH DEDICATED TO THE EXPOSITION)

Thanks again for your kind comments and interest.

Doug

PS>> I mentioned to George Paul this morning via PM and may as well here also, I'm now seeking a decent original Edison Spring Motor phonograph so please keep your eyes open for one for me. And I'm hoping that it has its original drawer!

[alang]

While it's not a perfect match it is very close. Thanks for sharing the picture.
Andreas