Cool "off brand" machine

[travisgreyfox]

Went back today. I pulled the motor out and you guys nailed it,the spring barrel busted open at some point. I left an offer of $50, but doubt I will hear back

[VanEpsFan1914]

Goodness, what an explosion! I don't know what it would take to get that back together, but if you buy it, you'd better wire-tie the old springs before you take it apart.

[travisgreyfox]

Thanks for all the invaluable advice/information everyone! I'm still hoping I can get this for $50 and start working on it.



-Travis

[Benjamin_L]

If he does deiced to come down, you could track down a Heineman motor or another similar off-brand motor and swap out the spring barrels.

You could also try finding an earlier Starr before they moved over to pot-metal ones.(I'd be cautious looking around locally, that tabletop model looks like it's been swapped out with a Columbia motor.)

[VictorVV-X]

Wow!

I never would have believed a phonograph company would use pot metal for something as important as a spring barrel! I suppose I understand pot metal sound boxes and tone arms, but for something that has to contain a considerable amount of force from the spring(s) just seems so strange!

[zenith82]

Wow!

I never would have believed a phonograph company would use pot metal for something as important as a spring barrel! I suppose I understand pot metal sound boxes and tone arms, but for something that has to contain a considerable amount of force from the spring(s) just seems so strange!

If I had to guess, this may have been done during WWI.

[TinfoilPhono]

At the time this was made, pot metal was a common inexpensive choice for a vast number of industrial applications. It's important to remember that when it was first made it was not brittle or fragile. That problem only occurs over time, as the disparate metals develop intracellular corrosion. No one would have anticipated that we'd be using these machines a century later. Pot metal was perfectly fine when these were new, or even a few decades old.

Pot metal is still in common use today.

[estott]

Aside from what I already posted, I'm not terribly familiar with the line. (Other, I suppose, than that when I was in high school, I got the bug to buy a Starr console model whose finish had gone positively black; thankfully, my parents put the kibosh on that dubious notion!) I've heard it said, "New England pianos competed on quality, Midwestern ones on price"; from the use of pot metal in the spring barrels, for crying out loud, may I safely assume that Starr's phonographs were examples of the latter approach?

Starr pianos were, on the whole, very well built.

[VictorVV-X]

At the time this was made, pot metal was a common inexpensive choice for a vast number of industrial applications. It's important to remember that when it was first made it was not brittle or fragile. That problem only occurs over time, as the disparate metals develop intracellular corrosion. No one would have anticipated that we'd be using these machines a century later. Pot metal was perfectly fine when these were new, or even a few decades old.

Pot metal is still in common use today.

TinfoilPhono,

I never thought of it that way before. I have heard, too, that metallurgy was not what it is today, so, as you have said, they never could have seen what would happen after about 100 years of use.
Does anyone know if any other phonograph companies used pot metal for their spring barrels?

Gerald.

[phonogfp]

Does anyone know if any other phonograph companies used pot metal for their spring barrels?

I don't know of other companies used pot metal for spring barrels, but some (a relatively small number I think) Q Graphophones have aluminum spring barrels which have cracked over time.

George P.