The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Side note...it’s actually like blowing my mind how much a new needle did for my machine. Like for real it sounds presentable now

Still slightly tinny, but presentable at best (:

PeanutTheRabbit wrote:Side note...it’s actually like blowing my mind how much a new needle did for my machine. Like for real it sounds presentable now

Still slightly tinny, but presentable at best (:

Wait til you see what happens when you change the gaskets!

And remember to use each needle only once! Needles are available from pretty much all the parts suppliers in the Links section.

Would anyone here happen to know of anyone that could repair this machine in Illinois?

Also, is it ok? To leave tention in the springs?

Worth repeating - use needles one play only then throw them away - they are designed to wear out with a single play. If you reuse them you will damage the records

PeanutTheRabbit wrote:Also, is it ok? To leave tention in the springs?

The general consensus is to let the spring run down - but not completely - when you're finished playing.

-Bill

The IV has such a small spring that it probably won't have much tension at all left when it's done running.

Ok, so tell me this...I have some titles that need help when they run...like, I’ll have to skip the beginning of “beginners boogie” because it slows my machine down. So much so that it will stop. I presume dirty records will halt a machine?

Machines sometimes have a difficult time with worn records or more modern 78s that are made of a slightly softer material. I'm guessing your "Beginners Boogie" is a 78 from the 40s or 50s.

Jerry B.

Oh yes. What ^^ Jerry B said.

Your Victrola is old--even if it is a 1920s machine it still was a design invented in 1912. So this ancient "Gilded Age" technology just doesn't handle the soft vinyl of late 1940s-'50s discs. You need regular shellac 78s.

I don't know how much you figured out yet about records but in 1925, Victor started making "Orthophonic Records" that sound just about like modern stuff. They used a microphone. The early "acoustic" records were made through a metal horn with no electronics whatsoever. Anyway, they came up with some different Victrolas to play them on, and Orthophonic Victrolas are sought after today. Columbia Graphophone jumped on it with the Viva-Tonal machines, and Brunswick came up with the Panatrope, and everybody started switching away from acoustic records and by 1930 the old acoustic 78 was pretty much gone.

Then they started changing the formula for records, later, and by the 1940s they started using a softer composition because the old windup Victrolas were going away too. (Not quickly--but some.) They now had electric phonographs which had been developing since the late '20s. They came out with them and by the late 1930s, most record players were electric except for some portables that were still cranked, and a few regular crank phonographs used in rural districts before Rural Electrification came along with FDR's New Deal. (These old things are a complete history lesson in themselves!)

And anyway, for your Victrola VV-IV, you'll want to get some original 1900s, 1910s and '20s records, maybe some from the '30s and early '40s. But if it's soft vinyl, it won't play well. I put you a few pics up to give an idea but I got to run now so maybe more later.