identification...

[Phonofreak]

Looking at the pictures and the horn, it is a VV IX. The lid shown on the first picture is the lid on the cabinet. The original lid was removed from the machine, so it would fit in this cabinet. On the machine by the bracket, there would be a small brass data plate. If there is no data plate, there will be 4 very small holes where the tacks to hold the plate would be. Looking at the schematic of the motor, and the narrow slats on the front, this is an early VV XI from about 1912, possibly 1913. I'm really curious to see what the crank looks like.
Harvey Kravitz

Thank you for your replies! Harvey, this does have a lid. See photo number one in my original post. There is no data plate so I don't know the s/n or model... (an auctioneer told me that the plate could just be missing...) That is what I am trying to get more info on.
Also, from what I have read, the horn could be small and black? Is this true? Its so hard to compare apples to oranges... and make what I have fit with descriptions and then dates and any and all other info. lol. Im hoping you guys who have been at this a lot longer know some other things or other ways to find things out.

[talking girl]

Thanks Harvey!! I will look more closely at it tomorrow. I appreciate your help with this!!

[Mr Grumpy]

A picture of the crank would be great.

The case looks like it may have been purpose built for the alter of a church?
Just a guess, but the details on the front sure look like a couple of crucifixes.

In that picture you took from below of the horn, is there a wood panel that covers that
so that the horn is enclosed?

[FloridaClay]

The mechanism dropped into this cabinet, motor board and all, is obviously Victor, although it is unlikely Victor made the cabinet. There were furniture companies who made aftermarket cabinets into which you could drop the mechanism from you own table model phonographs to convert them to instant consoles. This could well be one of those. In any event, I rather like it.

Clay

[mhb]

The black iron piece below the tone arm base (for which I do not know the correct name) is the connector between the tone arm and the 'horn' - the full horn, in this case, consists of the connector and the wooden pieces which extend to the front of the cabinet. Usually, the wooden extension is closed (a 4-sided box, as it were), whereas the photo appears to show the bottom of the wooden extension open: perhaps it merely sits on the inside surface of the caabinet, but that is poor acoustic design, and would not have been done in a Victor-built machine/cabinet, I think.

mhb - Mike

[Mr Grumpy]

I've seen the cabinets that allowed for dropping-in of table top machines, to me this one is custom built.

In this first close up you can see the original Victor machine that was used had a lid.
The lid support bracket is still visible.

Closeup1.jpg (152.01 KiB) Viewed 1297 times

The back of the original Victor machine was completely removed, there isn't any sign of
where the original hinge attached.

On the front, there doesn't appear to be any evidence of hinges for the volume doors and
the area around the grill doesn't seem to match what I would expect the original cabinet to
look like. I think the grill was also custom made and not part of the original Victor.

If you click on the original images and zoom in on the veneer, it looks pretty
old and in original condition, almost what I would expect to see on a machine 100 years old.

[jboger]

I have an early VV-VI with a wooden horn similar to this one. There are three sides to it. The bottom board slides into grooves on either side to form the horn. The bottom board also looks a bit narrow now; not a tight fit. But that is not a sign of poor acoustic design. Wood shrinks across the grain, which is what has probably happened to the bottom board of my horn, and what was a tight 100 years ago, no longer is. The crank is an early female crank.

I think the person who said to look for a Stickley label was expressing his enthusiasm for the piece, an enthusiasm I share, not claiming it was actually made by Stickley (either Gustav or his brothers). It could be argued that Mission furniture is an outgrowth of the Arts & Craft movement. This piece has features characteristic of furniture made in the early 20th C, from the use of oak stained in imitation of English brown oak to the use of horizontal and vertical parallel lines so common to both A&C and Mission furniture. I would not claim the piece to be Colonial Revival because it has a square tapered leg done in a Hepplewhite manner.

I don't have any A&C furniture except for an end table that I inherited. (I'm more of a Federal-period sort of guy.)From what I can tell, the cabinet is well constructed. I like it because it's true to its period, not IMHO like the Colonial Revival cabinets characteristic of so many floor models. With those you have a mish mash of styles that in the early 20th C said "colonial" to many people. A&C is a genuine design period on the same footing as Queen Ann, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and so forth. So even if this is not the purest expression of the A&C movement, it is nice, and a nice break from so many floor models that I see.

So a nice piece. I see it has captured the attention of many people.

[talking girl]

oh my gosh, thank you everyone for your comments! I was unable to get online yesterday but here is a picture of the crank and of the, I guess, hinge to the speaker door. I have to reread your comments so i can better reply! because some of what you're saying is Dutch to me. lol

[Marco Gilardetti]

As a matter of fact I'm not very sure that you actually grabbed what they tried to tell you. And as I reckon that our language can be hard to understand for those who are not accustomed to gramophones and how they usually look like, I'll try to be very very basic, absolutely no offense intended. We all started from our first gramophone, and before that we hadn't seen one previously.

This is how your gramophone is supposed to look like:



Very different from what you see, isn't it? It was a tabletop model.

What they said is that the top lid that you see in this picture (the one with the "Victrola" decal) and the two volume doors on the front that you see in this picture have been removed by someone, and that what remained of the machine was slammed inside a larger cabinet, that is the big big piece of furniture that you photographed.

So basically: whatever still belongs to the machine in the picture I posted is original. All the surrounding furniture is mock, albeit perhaps also "vintage" in some sense.

[talking girl]

[quote="Mr Grumpy"]I've seen the cabinets that allowed for dropping-in of table top machines, to me this one is custom built.

In this first close up you can see the original Victor machine that was used had a lid.
The lid support bracket is still visible.


Hi Mr G. So, is this that you say here a bad thing?

& can somebody tell me how to copy only part of someone else's comments? as opposed to the entire thing which required a lot of deleting.