In your opinion: what are the WORST off brands?

[AmberolaAndy]

Yes ANOTHER thread by me? I was reading the TAP magazine’s June issue about the off-brand boom of 1914-1921 and one line mentioned “charlatans hawking crappy consoles with shoddy parts”

And that got me thinking. Which brands were these “crappy consoles”? And what are YOUR experiences with them? Come on. Don’t be afraid to name names! Give me your crappiest and shoddiest!

And don’t be afraid to admit that these said machines aren’t crappy either!

[colmike1]

The worst one I ever ran across was the Davenola of Davenport Iowa. It kind of looked like the packing crate that a nice phonograph would have come in. The cheapest mail order works and tonearm. True trash.
Mike Wohl

[zenith82]

They are all over the place in terms of quality. Some were built just as well as Victors, others not so much. Most were middle of the road.

I can't think of any brand names right off, but the worst ones were toward the end of the phonograph boom era that used cheap pot metal tone arms and motors with pot metal gears.

[AmberolaAndy]

The worst one I ever ran across was the Davenola of Davenport Iowa. It kind of looked like the packing crate that a nice phonograph would have come in. The cheapest mail order works and tonearm. True trash.
Mike Wohl

Dave Nola was not a very kind feller wasn’t he?

[NEKTREG]

In Germany the „Edelton“ brand is the paragon of a cheap off-Brand machine and sadly it was so popular that they come up all the time.

To reduce costs they exclusively sold one model only for a long period. Much later they also sold a portable, which isn‘t as commen as the tabletop Maschine.

These ones were never sold in music stores- you could only buy them from the factory in Berlin. Again: it reduced the costs, because a dealer no longer had to earn anything from it.

To make matters even worse the soundbox is a really cheap one for acoustic records only (in 1930!) out of Potmetal and it has a wobbly tonearm made out of Wood.

The company was really a child of the great depression in Germany and was really successful in what they did. You even could buy records on weekly instalments (just like the machines).

Not my machine thank god:

[OrthoFan]

I've had a few off-brand portables over the years fitted with cheap components; one had a "horn" that was simply a bent piece of cardboard that made a half-circle from the bottom of the tonearm, around the motor, to the opposite side of the case where the horn opening was.

The most cheaply built cabinet model I've ever owned was a UK import, branded "Mastertone," circa early 1930s. Though it was about the size of an Orthophonic Colony, it only weighed about 20 pounds. (I could easily lift it, hooking two fingers on both sides of the cabinet.) The sides, front and back of the cabinet was constructed of ¼ plywood, and given a faux walnut finish. It did have a nice Garrard single-spring motor, a well-made swan-neck style tonearm, and a generic style sound box fitted with an aluminum diaphragm. The horn was quasi-exponential and constructed out of thin metal, and while three feet long, it had a very small mouth--only about six inches by 12 inches.

When I got it, the area around the horn was packed with what looked to be filthy shredded wood or straw. I removed this and immediately found out why it had been placed there. Because of the thin metal used for the horn, it vibrated and buzzed whenever a record was played. (I solved the problem by re-packing the area with sheets of foam rubber.) Overall the sound quality was similar to that of a small Columbia portable from the late 20s/ early 30s.

The BIG mistake I made was to refinish the cabinet. I removed the scratched, dried out original finish using Jasco Paint Remover. It came off easily. Then I stained the cabinet a warm, dark walnut color and coated it with a liberal coating of shellac. I had planned to apply a top coat of clear lacquer when I noticed, once everything was dried, that the entire cabinet was starting to warp--both the sides and the lid. I eventually disposed of it, as a throw-in, when I sold my Credenza, around 1998.

OrthoFan