The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Good photos, Clay! I enjoyed seeing that!

One more little issue rears its head. Perhaps part of the perversity of potmetal is that it fails when you don’t want it to and doesn’t when you might rather it would. Notice in the pictures that the diameter of one of the shafts in 90-degree opposition is larger than the other. That is because it still has what appears to be the remainder of the miter gear that was originally there and it refuses to budge. Suggestions for how to get it free without damaging the shaft and the valve attached to the shaft would be appreciated.

Clay

I am hoping someone on the board may have an acoustic era Orthophonic Victrola with a factory supplied Radiola radio and might be able to answer a question for me.

See the photos posted earlier in this thread. As you will notice from the pictures, one of the 2 shafts that meet at a 90-degree angle in the train of the mechanism that controls whether the sound path to the internal Orthophonic horn is open to the phonograph or to the radio (the one extending out of the valve) has a larger diameter than the other. You can see a shaft the same size as the other one in the center with something around it which accounts for its larger diameter. At first I thought that something was the remnants of the old potmetal miter gear that was originally there. On further examination, I am not so sure. It may be just a metal sleeve; perhaps added so that someone would have something with a large enough diameter to make it easier to turn by hand as a workaround when the potmetal miter gears failed. Whatever it is, I can’t get it to budge when I try to remove it, even when getting it quite hot with a hair dryer.

I don’t want to get too aggressive with trying to remove whatever this sleeve structure is without knowing more, because it is also possible that the sleeve was part of the original equipment. I am hoping someone who has a similar machine would be willing to look to see if theirs has a similar sleeve, or as I suspect just a miter gear set with 2 identical gears mounted on two shafts of identical diameter.

Clay

Hi all,

Just a little progress report that I thought might be usefull to others. Fabric No. 52 from http://www.grillecloth.com is a dead on duplicate for the original grill cloth.

The odd e at the end of grille is correct, by the way. If you leave it out of the webaddress you will get another site with modern stuff.

Clay

One mystery solved, thanks to Forum member Bob Coon. What I was describing as a sleeve around one of the shafts that meet at a 45 degree angle in the mechanism that controls whether the horn is open to the phonograph or to the radio IS part of the original structure. Turns out that the miter gears used to make the turn are of unequal size, with one (the one that is missing on my machine) being considerably larger in both external and internal diameter than the other. Thus the “sleeve” to increase the diameter of that shaft to accommodate the larger gear.

Thanks Bob!!

Clay

A couple more updates. As I think I mentioned elsewhere, the potmetal tone arm pivot mount was also broken and I found a very nice steel reproduction at Victrola Repair Service in St. Johnsbury, VT.

http://www.victrolarepairservice.com/

I have since seen these on some other repair websites as well.

The reproducer is off to Peter Wall in San Francisco for repair and he is going to make me an extra Orthophonic reproducer mounting flange so I will have it to use to mount the speaker driver when the radio comes back from my antique radio repair guy in Orlando. Working on a couple of possible leads for replacements for the defunct miter gear set mentioned earlier in this thread.

Clay

With his permission, I am posting the picture that Bob Coon sent to me that shows clearly that the "sleeve" around the shaft described earlier in this thread, giving the shaft a larger diameter, is original. As you can see, the miter gears are of unequal size.

Clay

Got the reproducer back from Peter Wall in San Francisco today. He worked wonders with it, even though the pot-metal was too fragile for disassembly. It sounds good. He also made an extra Orthophonic reproducer coupler for me to use for mounting the Radiola's speaker driver when the radio comes back from my restorer. Getting there, slowly but surely.

Clay

The Radiola out of my Victor VV 9-15 is in the shop awaiting repair. It goes into the cabinet with a rather elaborate and involved wiring harness that has seen better days and should really be replaced. Anybody know of someone who makes them?

Clay