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Urban legend has it that at one point any Zonophone motor board that fit into a Zonophone case was married together and sent for sale. This was reported to especially be true after Victor bought Zonophone in late 1903, early 1904, depending on your sources. What fascinated me about this thread, is that Mark's early export Zonophone has the exact same motor board as my Zonophone A, which is the earliest of the A's. (circa 1900 give or take no more than one year.) Both have the "central" location of the travel arm support, verses the more conventional lateral position. Also, the travel arm supports are attached with a screw from the top, rather than the later knurled thumb screw.

As Mark's has no serial number, this begs the question as to why? Perhaps this was strictly for export with no serial number? The crank of Mark's machine is certainly not typical of what one would expect from an American Zonophone? As Zonophones were also produced across the "great pond," perhaps this is a European machine that found it's way to the US? All of this is unfortunately pure conjecture!

Fascinating!

My Zonophone A is serial number 4463. And, as much as it pains me to say, it is also for sale.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =9&t=28712

Best,
Jeff
Wisconsin

Jeff-

My early Zonophone has no celluloid tag what so ever and no evidence of one ever having been there. So just what in my post makes you think that mine is an export machine?

If you think it's because of the case design...well think again. Because I know of two examples that have regular Zonophone celluloid tags (with no reference to Prescott) as one would find on any A, B, C, or D. One of them is in the well observed Jasper Sanfilippo Collection. Check it out the next time your there. From the 4 or so known examples, one has a Prescott export tag, two have an American tag, and mine has no tag at all. So go figure that one out and get back to me.

And, although the crank is suspect, it's how I got the machine. Arguably, the crank belongs on a later model.

-Mark

Everything in my post was phrased as questions, conjecture, and "could be's." I have no idea where your machine was made, nor did I make a definitive statement towards that end. I apologize if you took it that way. There is far less actually known about Zonophones than there are available facts.

That's one of the things I dislike about this form of communication. As we are not actually "talking" to each other and seeing faces and hearing voice inflections and tone, folks get the wrong idea.

Best,
Jeff

I've uploaded a video to YouTube.
https://youtu.be/9sBGC53Qi1k