The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Just to reiterate what has already been said, you have a family heirloom to pass down in your family. To some people that means nothing, but to me, I would love to have anything that belonged to my grandfather. You are lucky, since you probably got to know him when he was still living. Unfortunately, both of my grandfathers died before I was born. My dad's father died in 1919 when my dad was six and 30 years before I was born, so little was known about him. I have spent years tracking down family history that was thought to be long lost and have put together a fairly complete family history dating to the 1700s in Germany. So, when I say that it is important to keep an item known to have belonged to your grandfather, it could be very meaningful not only to yourself, but to future family descendants. Who knows, maybe your grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be very thankful to you for preserving that history, which is definitely not worth parting with for $300 or so dollars... Just my thoughts...

drh wrote:

[edit] Your machine is of the sort retrofitted with gearing for four minute cylinders, the sort playable with your reproducer. The gear shift is by the drive belt; it's the smaller disk to the right of the pulley. Pushing it into the pulley gives you gearing for one type, pulling it out from the pulley gives you gearing for the other. For now, if you're set up for 4 minute cylinders, I would leave it be. Oh, and I agree with others before: if it's a machine that came down through the family, I would never part with it and would not mess with what your forebears did to refinish/redecorate it.

From zooming in, I think I can see the shift lever that controls it: I have the same arrangement on my Home A.

The good thing is that Model C (2 minute) reproducers are not hard to find; so you can play both types of cylinders.

- Bill

An Edison Home B from about 1908? Maybe late 1907?