Re: Gramophone Needles!!!
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:37 pm
You might be thinking of the "Rexonola" tin attached to the motor board of the small Rexoport gramophones?gramophone78 wrote:Did we not all see a while back a Rexophone machine for sale with it's needle tin inside or was it the record brush??. I seem to remember something like that.
J&M started importing complete external horn "Rexophone" machines from Thorens in about 1907/08, and then started manufacturing Rexonola's in 1912 using Thorens parts.
Rexophone records were made by Homophone in Germany from 1912 until 1914, then Edison Bell took over production until 1917 when the label was discontinued.
All my Rexonola tins are British & date from the late teens or later AFAIK, so I can only guess that J&M were importing Rexophone needles from Japan in the early years until the outbreak of WWI, after which both tins were coming from England.
I doubt the Japanese would have bothered making cheap copies of a nobody brand name from the other end of the planet, and I dont think Rexophone machines were sold for more than a year or two after the war, so the name Rexophone would have been obsolete by then anyway.
I'm still a little intregued as to how such a tin would turn up in Mexico, unless the Japanese company off-loaded their existing stocks there, after they lost their Aussie customer in 1914?
.I like a good mystery. That said you should see the 6" Japanese kids record (on the music board) that I pulled out of the same place. One of our members as told me that they are very rare to find and thought it was discovered in Canada.....Wait until he reads where it was really found.... 
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