The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is an example of a "home repair" which is amazing in its own right - see if you can pick out the original and the home made replacement.

Bruce

I'm not sure how old these "homemade" parts are, but one of them fooled me.

The 2/4 gear cover was in a box of parts, so I obviously knew right away-

The Amberola gear cover was on a machine I purchased on Ebay several years ago. The angle of the pictures, the distance and the fact that it was a good Buy It Now price-- and I rushed a little-- and I missed it. A "nice" surprised when I opened the shipping box. Still, someone did a pretty decent job crafting the replacement cover out of a thick steel. Worked just fine.

Brad Abell

I'm repairing a Grafonola D-2 tabletop for the priest at a church some distance away. Monsignor Lawrence's phonograph has been expertly refinished, the motor is fully rebuilt, but the trouble is, no one has ever fixed the tonearm. So it of course has that "typical Columbia sound" as they sometimes do before rebuilding.

There was a ball of very, very old yellowed paper wedged between the needle bar pivots and the frame of the reproducer, instead of adjusting the pivots to keep them in line! With that removed, the needle bar was free to wobble considerably, causing buzzing and blasting.

That should be no trouble to sort out, but it was interesting to see what people used to do back in the day!

AmberolaAndy wrote:This guy does a really good job making DIY parts for his Victor Type C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAaqvI7dwJg

"Really good job making parts...?" You are kidding I hope...
A WalMart transmission funnel and some copper tube fittings wrapped in electrical tape for a horn? A phillips screw on the homemade traveling arm? A homemade crank with the head of a phillips screw on the wrong side? Why do people like this, who can't help screwing around with things find these rare machines... and then "fix" them? Odd fixes are not something just done in the past, as evidenced by this video...

In the late 50s' I wrote RCA Victor a note asking if they knew who could repair an Edison reproducer. They sent me the name of Leonard Ferguson. Envelope had a return to "Original Edison Repair Man". I sent him the reproducer and when it returned it sounded worse than before. When I opened it he had used string as gaskets for the originals. Needless to say it didn't solve the distortions in the sound. Its one reason I ended up ditching all my edisons and records back then, couldn't get anyone to fix them so they didn't distort the music. Luckily later on when I found an edison at a sale about 15 years ago by now I got back into it and first thing I discovered was a real need for something that didn't distort. Its how the "True Tone Diaphragms" came into being. After quite a bit of time and years working with the previous tires and then making the True Tone's I have decided to pretty much retire from doing it. There are over 370 in use now and I think I can rest easy knowing a lot of people are hearing the music about as well as possible. Others are now creating some good sound as well and hopefully it will be available to those who want and need it.

Larry

Curt A wrote:

AmberolaAndy wrote:This guy does a really good job making DIY parts for his Victor Type C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAaqvI7dwJg

"Really good job making parts...?" You are kidding I hope...
A WalMart transmission funnel and some copper tube fittings wrapped in electrical tape for a horn? A phillips screw on the homemade traveling arm? A homemade crank with the head of a phillips screw on the wrong side? Why do people like this, who can't help screwing around with things find these rare machines... and then "fix" them? Odd fixes are not something just done in the past, as evidenced by this video...

Yeah a early Victor machine from 1901/1902 is worth putting the money for original parts. But at least he did a good job repairing the case and motor.

This is what it looked like when he got it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oygSqq2W1z0

Here we have a (not so) "clever" way of trying to fix a governor problem. I was yesterday servicing a Lindstrom 132 motor inside an Odeon floor model bought last weekend, where the previous owner told she could not make the gramophone run at correct speed, and also the last few weeks it had stopped completely.

Opening the motor, this off fix revealed itself. Obviusly in need of a lost spring blade screw, the governor axis set screw had been removed and installed on the blade, causing the governor to move freely along its axis. In addition, since the set screw is longer than the governor blade screws, the solution had been to tie a knot with a good old string around the end section of the governor blades to keep the blade in place. Trying to solve one problem had initiated another problem with the set screw removed, and also at the same time preventing the blades from expanding as they are supposed to.

Since I have a donor Odeon portable, I could take a governor spring blade screw from this machine ( that luckily fitted), and put the borrowed set screw back where it was supposed to be, problem solved!

Bumping my old thread to show a governor “repair” on a recent machine I acquired.

This VV 1-70 I got from eBay showed up in one piece (thankfully) but when cranking the motor, I noticed it was very noisy same with playback.

So I took the hood off to inspect the motor and I saw this!

Yep Uncle Bubba got ahold of this one!

The “springs” appear to be made from a plastic Dixie cup.

Offered without comment: