How to get maximum sound from Brunswick Panatrope Portable.

[James]

or here is the link...

http://www.capsnews.org/apn2011-2.htm

I second the motion, now it is seconded........James

Hi,
I have a Brunswick portable, it is rated by many that is better than the top of the line of Victor portables. If it is well sealed between the horn and the base of the tone arm up to all the joint of the reproducer, that all it need. If still the is an issue, it is the reproducer itself is the problem.

This is it, James! The best American portable, when sound + record wear + durability are added together. I don't want to tout it too much, because I hope to find another at a decent price.

[FloridaClay]

Nicely written article. Thanks for the link!

Clay

[RAK402]

I just picked up a Brunswick Panatrope portable from Ebay, at a reasonable price.

Other than the governor needing a bit of tweeking/lubrication, it works well.

The sound is quite a bit better than my Silvertone portable (which, as I am reading here, was to be expected).

Nice machine/nicely made/great sound!

[Meltrope3]

Hi.
The bezel or front cover of the reproducer, close to the needle holder, there is a part of the bezel, that bent down to touch the needle bar. I think it give more pressure to the needle bar to muted it little, it should be just right to get the right sound. I tried to bend up very slightly, noticed no difference, if there was, negligible. I was just doing an experiment. Please do not perform this because I am not sure the purpose of the bent down end of the bezel that touches the needle bar. If someone can verify, please come up. Then I said to myself, if it is not broken, why do you fix it.
Larry

[/quote]

I think this tiny projection or tab in the lower middle of the bezel was meant to be very close to the needle bar, but not to touch it. Its function was to prevent it from getting moved too roughly and damaging the diaphragm. Thus it was Brunswick's answer to the stop screw found on the Victor Orthophonic soundbox. Over time, things could get out of alignment (maybe through gasket shrinkage?) so that the bezel came closer to the needle bar and the little tab actually touched the needle bar. That was the case with my reproducer, and it caused buzzing on loud passages, especially in the treble. I gently nudged the tab a TINY bit away from the needlebar using an eyeglass screwdriver, taking care not to do too much at a time. You really only want to get the tab about 1/32" away from the needlebar, so that they're not touching when at rest, and won't touch when the needlebar moves during the loudest passages of playing a record. It makes the buzzing and distortion go away like magic. (The last thing you want in a soundbox is two pieces of metal buzzing against each other.)

[Edisone]

Note patent drawing; neither 'stop' should touch the needle bar, as Meltrope3 has correctly surmised.

[Meltrope3]

Edisone, when you oiled the soundbox bearings did you first remove the blued steel cap that covers both ends of the bearing bar, wrapping over the middle of the front housing? Taking it off would help get the WD-40 into the bearing wells, but I suspect that it would be very difficult to crimp it back over the bearing bar as tightly as before; and any looseness there would of course cause the soundbox to buzz.
(Attached: picture of a slightly different Panatrope model soundbox just to illustrate the bearing bar cover)

[Edisone]

Nope, I left it together !

[Meltrope3]

Last night I took my Brunswick 109 over to my friend Jim Cartwright, a scholar of recording history who has a beautiful museum of phonographs here in Austin. When Jim heard the Panatrope play, he said he'd never heard a suitcase portable sound so good! (Actually it sounded much better in his house, with its high ceilings and thick old-fashioned rugs.)

Jim showed me that has one of the same model, minus the soundbox and crank. Curiously, the hardware on his machine is plated in nickel, not gold.