The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Jerry B. wrote:Here's cool Edison option for the Amberola 1-A, 1-B, III, or Opera allowing you to make home recordings. Jerry Blais

Wow, cool attachment. Kind of the opposite of "amberolizing". Was this sold by Edison or a third party?

Thanks
Andreas

Jerry Blais wrote, "Here's [a] cool Edison option for the Amberola 1-A, 1-B, III, or Opera allowing you to make home recordings."

Also the School model, of course, and IIRC this recorder is fitted to a School model as illustrated in Frow.

This recorder option would seem to bear on the December 30, 2014 discussion about 4 minute cylinder blanks initiated by winsleydale:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 2&start=10

[starting at the top of the second page of" Advice About Cylinder Phonographs"]

… because all the machines save one for which this recorder option was offered were 4-minute-only cylinder players. (The exception, of course, is the Amberola 1-A.)

I wonder how well these recorders worked and what the four minute blanks were like. Were they like the 4 minute blanks that Shawn Borri makes today?

Andreas wrote, "Was this sold by Edison or a third party?"

Again, if I am remembering Frow correctly, this was manufactured by Edison and sold by them. How rare are they? Were reproductions ever made?

Anyway, Jerry, thanks so much for these pictures, which shows the recorder much better than the photos in Frow do.

Best wishes, Mark

This Recording Attachment was meant only for the Opera and School Phonographs, although once the Amberola III was introduced, it would have been just as appropriate. As you can see from the labels on the box shown below (click once or twice on the photo to blow it up), the attachment was provided with a 4-minute recorder. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the box when I obtained it!

George P.

Also, some years ago, reproductions of this attachment were made.... .

Thank you, George, for this even better picture of the Amberola 4 minute recording attachment part. I guess since yours is painted black, it was intended for a School model (the one in Jerry's pictures is the brown enamel version for all the appropriate machines but the School). I guess if you don't have a recorder to show, the recorder must be very rare indeed!

Thanks also to gramophone78 for letting me know that reproductions were made once. Between how rare the parts are, not to mention the blanks, I gather Edison wasn't able to interest the but much in this option before the December 1914 fire put an end to the whole thing.

Best wishes, Mark