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Frank, the Ediphonic machine has been discussed in several threads here on the TMF. Do a search on the word "ediphonic" and you'll see all the discussions. Here is the earliest one:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... nic#p47319

To bring everyone up to speed, the Ediphonic was made from an amberola 50 motor mounted in a custom cabinet and fitted with an original-design horn made specifically and intentionally to have an exponential flare. It was also intentionally designed to be about the same size as an Edison cygnet horn so as to serve as a demonstration of how much better Edison COULD have made his horns had he not been so clueless about horn design. Or maybe it was just his unwillingness to pay Western Electric for the patent rights to make an exponential horn. Whatever the reason, the Ediphonic clearly demonstrates how good a cylinder machine could have sounded if somebody had bothered to make one with a properly designed horn, the late amberola motors and reproducers already being pretty good designs in themselves.

The designer and builder of the Ediphonic is Tom Kimble who is a mechanical engineer who is now retired from working for the Baldwin piano and organ company. So he knows a thing or two about designing and making mechanical musical things. Tom is a phono collector friend of mine and a reader of the TMF. I have heard this machine in person several times, and it is without a doubt the BEST sounding cylinder player I have ever heard. Even as good as they sound, the YouTube videos don't really do it justice. I have been suggesting to Tom that he ought to gild the lily a bit more and make a BIG exponential horn for this machine so that it could be compared with a Victor Credenza or such. But I haven't succeeded yet in motivating him to do it. He does, by the way, have a Credenza and a Victor 10-35 (which is what you see in his other YouTube videos, demonstrating his Kimblephonic lateral reproducer) so he would be able to set up these machines for comparison in his own home.

I don't have any updates to offer at the moment, but want to thank you one and all for putting together such a great list of ideas/experiences. I imagine that many of our perspectives have resulted from the phonographs in our lives; for example, my Amberola V plays so well--and my belt-driven machines do NOT--that I'm now quite suspicious of belt-driven machines. Yet, some testimony above reveals that particular belt machines can be great; I've just not had the luck to buy one.

Yes, I did see that five-figure contemporary cylinder player; way beyond most our means. Tom Kimble's Ediphonic has a great potential market.

I knew there was something on the Ediphonic here somewhere and that Greg was aware of it. The motor design of the Amberola 50/75 was really good. Too bad that it was coupled with that relatively small enclosed horn. I'd love to hear the Ediphonic in person. Youtube videos certainly can't do it justice, subject to the quality of the video camera, all the filters, etcetea.

Greg and Valecnik -

Thanks for the replies and the additional info on the Ediphonic... I will search the Forum for more info...


It is a really impressive-sounding achievement.

The fact that Mr. Kimble worked for a piano maker also suggests he knows a thing or two about sound and music...


It's really too bad that Old Deaf Tom had "already heard everything he needed to hear by the time he was 18"...





Frank

gregbogantz wrote:It was also intentionally designed to be about the same size as an Edison cygnet horn so as to serve as a demonstration of how much better Edison COULD have made his horns had he not been so clueless about horn design.

How do you know this?..
Edison filled pages with research on horn design and was hardly clueless when it came to acoustics.
An example would be the very large 125 ft. recording horn that was made and used at the Columbia St. studios in 1923.

gregbogantz wrote: Or maybe it was just his unwillingness to pay Western Electric for the patent rights to make an exponential horn. Whatever the reason, the Ediphonic clearly demonstrates how good a cylinder machine could have sounded if somebody had bothered to make one with a properly designed horn, the late amberola motors and reproducers already being pretty good designs in themselves.

The characteristics of exponential horns were pretty well known in the scientific community long before Bell Laboratories engaged in any basic acoustic research. They are covered in the second volume of Lord Rayleigh's "The Theory of Sound" (London, 1878). Dayton Miller also studied horn characteristics in great detail between 1907 and 1918. His devlopment of the "Phonodeik", a carefully calibrated mechanical oscilligraph enabled him to determine quite detailed band-pass characteristics ofr many different sizes and shapes of horns, as long as he had a supply of undergraduates to grind out thousands of Fourier transforms. A mentor of mine, Bob Shankland, was one of those undergrads at one time, and he described in detail the assembly-line work assigned to Miller's students.

Western Electric did not hold patents on the basic exponential horn, nor did they hold the basic patents for the folded horn. They did hold design patents for certain features of these horns, but their patent situation in this area was hardly fundimental. The great advantage that the Western Electric designers held over their competition was in the excellence of their testing and measuring equipment. The engineers at Bell Labs did were not forced to rely entirely upon the subjective qualities of the ear in the evaluation of their results of their labors.

The Edison horns are suprisingly good. Try fitting an Orthophonic reproducer to a cygnet horn. The reproduction of this combination is suprisingly good, although a somewhat longer horn with a more carefully determined taper as used on the "Ediphonic" machine makes a tremendous improvement. Edison's empirical method had definite limits. I suspect that some of the more glaring deficiencies of the various horn designs offered by the firm may be due to the specific characteristics of old Tom's hearing loss.

Now, I've taken my share of shots at T.A.E., but I must stand up for him in this case!

The Edison flower horns introduced in 1907 were designed and patented (No.797,725) by Charles Eichhorn and was assigned to the Tea Tray Company. (These horns were manufactured by Tea Tray and the Standard Metal Manufacturing Company.)

The Edison Cygnet horn was designed and patented (No.1,010,333) by Peter Weber. (These horns also were manufactured by Tea Tray and Standard Metal Mfg. Co.)

The design for the Amberola 30, 50, and 75 was the work of John Constable (U.S. Patent No.1,359,966).



George P.

Thought I'd update everyone on my efforts to chase flutter out of my Triumph model D. I began this string, as you can see, so frustrated that I was willing to modify my Amberola V (which plays incredibly evenly) so that it would pay 2m cylinders as well as 4m. Well, I backed away from that as George and others strongly urged that I not make a modification that was not possible at the time and which would not be easily reversible. Others had helpful hints on how I could proceed. I appreciated ALL the comments. But, in addition to the issue of significantly altering a machine, it would have been a very, very challenging process; a custom-made feed screw (with threads twice as wide as for the 4m screw) would be required; and then it would have been hard to switch back and forth between the two feed screws.

So, I've gone back to trying to chase the flutter out of the Triumph. In today's mail I received a new gear from George Vollema, plus the Triumph's governor, which he looked at (the governor was fine, but the gear was indeed slightly bent and it was good to have him replace it). The Triumph is now re-assembled and I'm pretty convinced that everything under the bed plate is operating maximally.

BUT--there's still flutter. Listening to the upper works, I can hear definite noise coming out of the planetary gear, especially when it is set for 4m. Sounds like I can hear some little ball bearings clicking against each other.

Anyone have experience with planetary gear troubles? 69CamaroSS posted about this issue back in October but that discussion seems to have petered out--hope he was able to come up with a solution.

I should just replace that planetary gear and see what happens. Any tricks for getting it off my
machine?

Ralph

Those planetary gears in 4 min mode are rarely silent. There's always a bit more noise in the 4min vs. 2 min mode on any combination machine. Also if your mandrel is slightly untrue or your record is slightly out of round that can introduce some flutter, just as with a disc when the pressing is not properly centered.

Thanks, Valecnik. I'm willing to make some allowances for a bit of noise from the planetary gear, especially when set to 4m. Thing is, I have my Amberola V parked immediately to the right of my Triumph, and when I play a cylinder on the Triumph (to test) I then immediately switch the same Diamond B reproducer to the Amberola V and play the same cylinder--so I'm not misled by imperfections in the cylinder. I definitely am hearing some sort of flutter and "pull" on the Triumph. Not huge, but definitely notable. For example, I have an excellent copy of BA 26069, which starts with a series of prolonged chime tones. On the Amberola V, those tones maintain even pitch after the initial strikes; on the Triumph, there is waver.

I'm thinking that I should just remove the feed screw and planetary gear assembly and send it in to George Vollema. Does this mean that the mandrel has to come off too? I don't want to mess with the bushing, which I had replaced in 2012.

Ralph