The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

You can put me in the restorer/collector category. Love bringing these machines back to life. Brought many a forlorn pile of wood and flapping veneer home and in the process learned a lot of woodworking and refinishing skills. Once I'm finished with a machine I rarely play them. Cheers


Bill K

The more I collect talking machines the less room my "other half" has for her silly things. Does that count?

briankeith wrote:The more I collect talking machines the less room my "other half" has for her silly things. Does that count?

Careful you may wind up included in that group....

Bill K

fran604g wrote:

pughphonos wrote:I bet your restoration work is strictly mechanical (invisible) and not appearance-driven

Ralph, you've pegged me exactly.

To Steve's point about museums, if you'd ask those whom know me best, they would absolutely describe my home more as a museum than a house. I love relics.

Fran

Whereas I am appearance-driven; all of my antique phonographs have been sent out for cabinet restoration except for my dinged-up VV 8-4. Not only do I want a machine sounding like it did back in the day (no dried up original diaphragms for me); I also want it looking like it looked back in the day. This shoots the re-sale value of my machines; but I don't care.

Fran, this is also why you and I have taken the Edisonic interest in different directions. You are compiling information to determine original configurations and evolution of models; whereas my thread is a repository of ownership history and modifications made--without apology.

dutchman wrote:You can put me in the restorer/collector category. Love bringing these machines back to life. Brought many a forlorn pile of wood and flapping veneer home and in the process learned a lot of woodworking and refinishing skills. Once I'm finished with a machine I rarely play them. Cheers


Bill K

Dayum, this is working well! A restorer's testimony that playing them isn't all that important. I think that makes your a purer form of restorer; but no doubt there are those out there who restore and also play them.

briankeith wrote:The more I collect talking machines the less room my "other half" has for her silly things. Does that count?

Whatever motivates you to collect.

Thanks for stopping by to comment; you're the only Collector to do so thus far (apart from Fran, who's a Data Collector). I'm waiting to see if Rich Gordon (the archetypal, ultimate Collector) will stop by--or not bother as we're not discussing any thing in particular.

pughphonos wrote:

dutchman wrote:You can put me in the restorer/collector category. Love bringing these machines back to life. Brought many a forlorn pile of wood and flapping veneer home and in the process learned a lot of woodworking and refinishing skills. Once I'm finished with a machine I rarely play them. Cheers


Bill K

Dayum, this is working well! A restorer's testimony that playing them isn't all that important. I think that makes your a purer form of restorer; but no doubt there are those out there who restore and also play them.

I feel so much better now that I got that off my chest

Bill K

100% Culturalist here. I play with my toys!

Edit: I just thought about it and realized I need to make a sub group in Culturalist...

I am an AESTHETIC Culturalist. I don't necessarily care about history... I care about MUSIC. And I listen to music from all time periods up to the present day. I don't just like jazz or classical or country or blues... I like great music of all kinds. Most people specialize and become experts in genres. But I prefer to focus on creative excellence and just skim the cream off the top of all genres and time periods. Sometimes I think I may be a rare bird.

bigshot wrote:100% Culturalist here. I play with my toys!

Cool! One is bound to have favorites among the toys as there is only so much playtime.

How about the category of "dealer/flipper" ?

The appeal that these kinds of things have to me
is that they are built to last. They are made from
more permanent materials such as wood and metal instead
of the cheap plastic we see all around everywhere today.

One of the most interesting aspects of early phonograph
technology is that from the very start, Edison's
cylinder machines offered both the ability to play
pre-recorded cylinders, and the ability to make one's
own recordings at home!

That fact is mostly overlooked now, almost totally
forgotten except among people such as ourselves, who
know.

Some years ago, in the 1970s, info on Edison cylinder
recorders and blanks was very hard to come by. Nobody
seemed to know much about them.

I have worked steadily over the years to try and bring back some of this portion of the cylinder record genre.