Help to identify

[etraverssmith]

I have acquired a portable wind-up Soviet 78 Player. It seems to be similar to a Russian Pathéphone Leningrad Gramophone I found pictured on ETSY but the decal on mine is different, marked HKOM - CCCP, and I'm having difficulty interpreting the serial tag under the platter. see photos. It would be nice if I could obtain the correct make and model, and approximate year of manufacture. Model might be LT-8 or NT-8 (the first character in the Cyrillic lettering for the model is pronounced "L" in Russian but it looks similar to the letter "N" in the English alphabet. See the pictures I have uploaded with this post. Thank you!

[epigramophone]

As I am sure you are aware, this is Russia's blatant copy of the HMV102, although close inspection with a tape measure reveals that almost every dimension is different.

My example, pictured alongside the real thing, has a lid transfer which translates as "Pathéphone Factory, Molotov". There is no connection with the French Pathé company. I understand that in Russia "Pathéphone" was a generic term for what we call a gramophone.

I also picture a period advertisement for the machine. I hope the couple on the river realise that gramophones cannot swim .

[Menophanes]

The model reference is PT-8 rather than LT-8. The character resembling a capital H with the cross-bar moved up to the top corresponds to Roman P (it was borrowed directly from the Greek 'pi' as used in mathematics); the Russian L, shown in the second-to-last character of the word (model') which precedes the model reference, differs in that (in this typeface at least) it has a curve instead of a sharp corner at top left.

I did not know that 'Pathéphone', phonetically written, had been used in Russian as a standard term for a disc machine. Russian seems to make a habit of turning foreign proper names into generic words, e.g. voksal for a railway station (from Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in eighteenth-century London) and karandash for a pencil (from Caran d'Ache, a Swiss manufacturer of luxury writing implements, which still exists today.)

Oliver Mundy.

[Frisco The Beagle]

Can parts be swapped between the HMV 102 and the Russian copy? They look almost identical in the photo!

[etraverssmith]

Thanks all for the replies. is anyone proficient enough in russian to translate the decal and tag?
Any index out there to get an approximate date?
Another reply asked if parts might be interchangable with non-knock off equipment. Mine is missing the thumb screw for retaining the needle. Any suggestions for a replacement screw?

Thanks again...

[Phono48]

Can parts be swapped between the HMV 102 and the Russian copy? They look almost identical in the photo!

Some parts certainly are interchangeable. When I got my Russian machine, the lid stay and the arm holding clip were both bent, and made of very thin steel. Spares of both from a scrap 102 fitted perfectly, the only problem was removing the damaged ones, they were held on with hefty sharpened rivets. (I hesitate to call them "nails") The soundboxes are not interchangeable, as the Russian version has a bigger mounting hole, but in my opinion at least, it's is as good as, if not better that the No.5A/B fitted to the 102. It has the same "spider" in the centre of the diaphragm, and is much lighter, the back being made of a bakelite material, rather that the pot metal back of the 5A/B. I emphasise that this applies only to the soundbox on the pictured Russian machine, different machines were fitted with other soundboxes. The only thing I don't like about the Russian machine is that the two halves of the arm are not threaded at the swivel joint, just a push fit, and a sloppy one at that.

Barry