The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

That "Ediphonic" Machine looks almost homemade...lol....

I wonder how many were produced?

)

Tony K.
Edison Collector/Restorer

fourforty wrote:Hi George,

I envy you for your nice Amberola 1A and 1B machines. If only every collector who wanted to own one could have one. Alas, there are not enough of them to go around for all of us to enjoy.

David,

Alas for me; I've never owned a 1B. (But I do have a III, and that's fine by me.) Plus I'm lucky to say that I have a 1A...

I agree that it would be great if every collector who wanted a particular machine could own one. Of course, that would imply a limited demand for these machines (meaning small value), but I for one would be willing to sacrifice value on the altar of availability.

Best,

George

Yes, the "Ediphonic" phono IS partially homemade. As stated in the opening written description of the machine in that video, the horn is an accurately EXPONENTIAL design which was popularized on later Victor orthophonic disc machines, but which was never available from Edison or any other maker of cylinder phonographs. This horn was designed by Tom (he's a mechanical engineer) and deliberately made to be about the same size as the cygnet horns that were common in the later cylinder machines, and is made from common materials that were readily available when the original cygnets were made. The point of this engineering exercise is to demonstrate that if Edison had adopted the exponential horn design, he could have made MUCH better sounding phonographs than he did. The motor is a stock mechanism removed from an Amberola 75 (which had an unsalvageable cabinet), and the reproducer is a stock Diamond B model with the exception that the diaphragm is another Kimble design, but made from materials that were commonly available back when the Diamond B was originally produced. No exotic modern materials were used in any of these designs. Further indicating that the original Edison diaphragm was also not the best design that could have been obtained in the cylinder phono period. The cabinet is a custom design made by Tom. I would say that although this project was begun as an engineering exercise to see whether the Edison phonograph could have sounded better than it did back in its day, it turned out very well indeed. And, yes, it is the BEST sounding cylinder phonograph that I've ever heard. Tom is a friend of mine and I have heard this machine in person. Yes, it sounds even better when you hear it live. It smokes ALL the competition, including the Amberola 1A, 1B, and III which are the closest things you'll ever find to it.

Very Interesting. Greg, how does it sound compared to a diamond B played through an oak cygnet horn? I've been collecting for over 45 years and have always thought of that combination the ultimate in cylinder reproduction. This id fantastic sounding and I would love to hear it in person playing some familiar (to me) titles. Excellent audio in the Youtube presentation also.
My take on original Edison diaphragms is that we can't know what they actually sounded when they were new...the shellac dries up as it ages and creates a stiffer diaphragm than it originally was. I actually started an experiment based on the experiences of a friend. I soaked a DD diaphragm in denatured alcohol until i was able to separate the the layers (5)of rice paper, dried them and they have been sitting around for years waiting to be reassembled which I still hope to accomplish someday. My friend's claim was that the rebuilt diaphragm sounded much clearer, cleaner and louder than the sound we are used to getting from 80 to 100 year old diaphragms. I'll post results when (hopefully)I finally get it reassembled.

Jim

The "Ediphonic" is a nifty experiment. Would love to hear it in person some day.

Clay

An oak or mahogany cygnet sounds a little mellower than a metal cygnet, but still not as good as the unique horn shape that was in the Amberola 1A and 1B. The III is nearly the same shape, but it is made of undamped metal and has a little more brash sound compared with the jute fabric horns of the model 1s. The flaring taper profile of the horns in the Amberola 1 models were purely accidentally, I'm sure, a little closer to exponential than anything else that Edison ever made which is why they sound the best of all his designs. He never made another horn that was this shape. But they still are not exponential and they don't sound as good as the accurately exponentially tapered horn of the Ediphonic. This proper shape is responsible for the Ediphonic sound having extended frequency response with noticeably better bass and treble range as well as a flatter midrange response without the annoying midrange peak that causes the typical unnatural honkiness and blattyness in less desirable tapered shapes.

Edison, like everybody else in the 'teens didn't really know what he was doing acoustically, so he didn't appreciate the fact that the model 1 horns were a fundamentally better design than the simpler and cheaper ones that came later. Nor did Victor or Columbia or anybody else until Western Electric applied mathematics to the problem and came up with the exponential taper. The exponential horn was the most drastic improvement that was made to the acoustic phonograph in all its years of existence. An exponential horn will make ANY acoustic phono sound better than with a lesser horn.

The Victor orthophonic reproducer does not contribute nearly so much improvement to the sound of the orthophonic Victors as did the exponential horn. If you put an earlier reproducer on a Victor ortho, you still get a very pleasant sounding phono - the magic was in the exponential taper of the flare of the horn.

You are right that probably nobody today knows what an Edison DD or Diamond Amberola reproducer sounded like when new because the diaphragms have dried out, warped, and stiffened from what was their new condition. Today, most of them have a high resonant frequency due to their increased stiffness (lower compliance) which causes them to sound tinny and to blast (mistracking distortion) much too easily. I have designed diaphragms for these reproducers from ordinary materials (similar to what Tom Kimble has done) which sound better than any of my original Edison samples. Other people here have done the same. There isn't really any magic to it so long as you understand the fundamental requirements for making a good acoustic reproducer diaphragm. But there is no one "right" way to do it. By the nature of the acoustic reproducer, there are design tradeoffs that MUST be made - it is impossible to put the best of everything into one design because the requirements conflict with each other. So you get some designers who favor a mellower sound at the expense of treble response, some that favor loudness at the expense of flatness of frequency response, and some with other preferences. These decisions are nothing new, and the original designers who made their commercial designs 100 years ago had to make the same choices. It's still much too easy to make a crappy sounding diaphragm if you don't know what you're doing, but within the range of acceptable designs with good efficiency and low distortion there is still quite a range of options that you can put into your design.

There is nothing magic about Edison's use of laminated rice paper, the white button, the cork stiffener, the steel rivets or any other part of his complex design. He probably did it that way mostly to make them harder and costlier to copy by his competitors. And so that he could get yet another patent out of it. But those features really contribute nothing of any consequence to the requirements necessary to make a good compromise among flatness of response (resonance frequency and damping), compliance (stiffness), and low moving mass (a very important and much misunderstood component). Likewise, the design of the link that couples the diaphragm to the stylus bar is important and is often overlooked. It's the balance and the tradeoffs among these features that is critical to getting a good result.

Greg, do you think that Tom's exponential horn could be reproduced in small quantities for collectors owning open horn machines?