The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

For Edison stuff:

The "Edison Cylinder Phonograph Companion" c 1994 is great (unfortunately out of print)
and "Edison Disc Phonographs and the Diamond Discs"

Although few of the Diamond Disc machines made it to Europe, at least one B450, (one of the most desirable models)turned up in Spain or Portugal and a couple even more desirable art models turned up in the Netherlands , (I think).

Steve wrote:I'm beginning to believe they are either the rarest machines in existence or they never existed, only in faked photographs.

I have seen one in person, but it wasn't for sale. It's very impressive.

There are lots of wonderful books, as has already been noted here. But I think for any beginner, especially someone unfamiliar with terminology, Eric Reiss' "Compleat Talking Machine" is a must. If you want to do any work at all on machines, this book will help guide you, and more importantly will help you avoid making expensive mistakes.

Beside the excellent book "His Master's Gramophone" which details EVERY HMV Gramophone known to have been sold here in the UK (Not every Gramophone sold in Europe or the rest of thw World) there is one other book not mentioned that contains details of HMV Gramophones available in the UK.

All new copies of the book "HMV Gramophones 1921 - 1936" were thought to have been lost in a flood after the owner and distributer Barry Williamson sadly died in 2010.
A few undamaged copies have been found and are now described on my Website http://www.gramophones.info

Contrary to the above post I cannot really recommend this book as it misses out several years worth of machine catalogues for the period covered. I believe it was a work in progress that had to be published incomplete otherwise none of it would have ever seen the light of day. It's not the 'fault' of the author par se that the catalogues were rarer than hen's teeth to give him access to the scans but I do think their absence might have been acknowledged. Instead a newbie might miss machines like the HMV 100 and conceivably not even know about their existence.

The new HMV book is a bit better although the text is very muddled in places and the ordering of the machines is at times bizarre and completely incomprehensible.