What is This Machine?

[Lah Ca]

I have been looking for a beater phonograph to hone my repair skills on.

As with guitars, on which I sometimes do my own repair work with garage sale purchases, I am reluctant to tinker with things that I care about, at least at present.

This machine has popped up. Unidentified. Not working (how is unspecified). Price is attractive and perhaps negotiable.

Any ideas as to what it might be?

[Lah Ca]

Well ... the question about what the machine is appears to be entirely academic now. Its listing has vanished, only up for a few hours.

So I revert to simple idle curiosity.

[VanEpsFan1914]

That has a reproducer from a regular portable, like you'd find on the average 1930s-1950s portable phonograph.

It's pretty nice though, I see a few elements that are a notch above the usual Sears Silvertone. Hopefully someone with better knowledge steps in. It was definitely assembled from standard catalogued parts, and the crank escutcheon is making me think this is housing a regular Michigan Industries/Garford Elyria motor or whatever it is that went in the cheap Birch 500 portables. I should know what that motor is; I've sold them to people here when I had a couple of those old portables. Embarrassing. I'm too young to be forgetting this kind of stuff.

[Lah Ca]

That has a reproducer from a regular portable, like you'd find on the average 1930s-1950s portable phonograph.

It's pretty nice though, I see a few elements that are a notch above the usual Sears Silvertone. Hopefully someone with better knowledge steps in. It was definitely assembled from standard catalogued parts, and the crank escutcheon is making me think this is housing a regular Michigan Industries/Garford Elyria motor or whatever it is that went in the cheap Birch 500 portables. I should know what that motor is; I've sold them to people here when I had a couple of those old portables. Embarrassing. I'm too young to be forgetting this kind of stuff.

Thanks.

I am sorry its listing disappeared so very, very quickly. I would have had to drive some distance to go look at it, and I thought it might be nice to know what it was before investing the time.

The cosmetic condition appeared such that putting time into getting it working would have been worthwhile. The cost was such that if I screwed it up badly I could just shrug my shoulders ... "Oh, well."

[OrthoFan]

What I find interesting is the tonearm support bracket. Virtually all of the portables I've seen from that era--mid 1930s/early 1940s--did not have the overhang support.

OrthoFan

[AmberolaAndy]

What I find interesting is the tonearm support bracket. Virtually all of the portables I've seen from that era--mid 1930s/early 1940s--did not have the overhang support.

OrthoFan

Less pot metal to crumble and become a headache to find a replacement 100 years later too. *cough*VV-2-60*cough*

[OrthoFan]

What I find interesting is the tonearm support bracket. Virtually all of the portables I've seen from that era--mid 1930s/early 1940s--did not have the overhang support. OrthoFan

Less pot metal to crumble and become a headache to find a replacement 100 years later too. *cough*VV-2-60*cough*

True..... But, since the overhanging tonearm support bracket IS unusual for a portable from this era--mid/late 1930s-1940s--perhaps this feature might help identify the make and model, assuming, of course, it's not a replacement of the original.

OF

[MisterGramophone]

It looks like some 1930s off-brand electric machine

[drh]

What I find interesting is the tonearm support bracket. Virtually all of the portables I've seen from that era--mid 1930s/early 1940s--did not have the overhang support.

OrthoFan

Odd about that bracket. The point of the overhanging design was to have a pin come down from the overhang to the top of the tonearm to secure it, right? This arm has no flat spot or other provision for such a pin; it curves away from the bracket before any pin could engage it, and the overhang just, well, hangs out into thin air, serving no purpose. I wonder if it is a later addition to the machine, replacing a mounting bracket/socket that had gone bad?