French Aerophone

Post by **gramophone78** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:42 am

walser wrote:Thank you for all the information. I will die of joy the day I find a hot air gramophone.

My motor is stamped with a 82 in every single piece.
Regarding the bearing in the main shaft, it certainly does not have a top bearing. In the pictures you can see that the top plate has a bump surrounding the shaft and the grove on the shaft is inside this bump (to keep inside some grease I presume). The top the bump is rough so I discard that there was a bearing there at any time. One more thing to reinforce this is that in my case, I have a trust bearing on the bottom plate unlike yours. So, definitely, Paillard improved/modified its motors.
Best regards and thank you again for all the information.

Pedro Martínez

You are most welcome. For your information.....here is what my Maestrophone #3 looks like. Also, a catalog page showing it with a "G" motor. I assume the "GG" motor was an improved version as discussed. Paillard also stamped (in black) the model number on the bottom of their cases when sold by them. Even one of my hot-air Gramophones has "205" stamped on the bottom.

Papycoup · Post by **Papycoup** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:48 am

Coming back to the blog... I was afraid it was dead...

Many thanks for tone arm measurements.

So here is my project for the elbow.

I go to the horn mearurements (I have to manage witch ones to take, and how to do...)

coming back soon..

Pierre.

walser · Post by **walser** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 10:33 am

Merci Pierre,

Do you have pictures of how the arm swivel is attached yo the elbow? And how it is covered?

Thanks

Pedro

Papycoup · Post by **Papycoup** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 11:24 am

No, sorry,

It had been allready "repared" by adding a piece of brass tube.

I think that you may have the good parts.
Does the tone arm fit inside the ring tube you have ? (your picture 20140914_200532.jpg)
I suppose the elbow of that ring fits on on the opening of the main elbow body; so you should modify the mesure of the corresponding part on the main body.

I do not have that ring, so I manage to enter the tone arm directly inside the body, after drilling the corresponding horizontal holes.

Also notice that I have forgotten the "oval" holes inside the elbow for an easier making.

Rgds,

Pierre.

Papycoup · Post by **Papycoup** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 4:35 pm

Hi, Pedro,
here are the meaurements i have done.
It is a bit hard to giv all the informations about that curvilinear assembly !
I hope the pictures will help !

The elbow parts are now at my engineer workshop... He has holydays next week and will work on my project the week after...

I'll show you the results...

Post by **gramophone78** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:00 am

Pedro & Pierre, a good friend sent me pics of the Aerophone he owned. some of these pics may help you. He also confirmed the motor as Paillard.
I will just post a few. Hope they help...

.

Papycoup · Post by **Papycoup** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:45 am

Thanks a lot for theses new informations.
I can see the elbow of the tone arm has been reworked the same as mine.
My tone arm is very shorter, not marked "Aerophone", but so close to the Aerophone esthetics that it should not be false (?)...
A slot has been cut to receive the neck of the sound box... I think the neck is Pathé orgin...
End of the tone arm is 2,5 mm diameter, the cutting is clean and nickel covered (= it has not been shorted).

I wonder about what was the real attachement of the sound box on the tone arm (I only have the "Pathé" type SB)...

Does somebody have a new one under six month garantee ?

Post by **gramophone78** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:16 am

Your welcome Pierre. If I am viewing your arm correctly and there is a seam running along the top of the arm....I believe this is a Paillard made tone arm. To the best of my knowledge, Paillard was the only manufacturer to construct their arm body's in this fashion by rolling them and soldering the ends. Then, adding the rear elbow part of the arm. So, perhaps your arm was removed from it's elbow and used on your machine. However, they placed the seam on the top.

I know of a hot-air Gramophone in a museum with the arm reattached upside down with the seam now on top.

There is also a possibility Paillard supplied the arms. I have noticed some Aerophone's have a Paillard made brake.

I have some spare Paillard made arms. I should measure them.

Pierre, I sent you a PM and you may want to check it.

Papycoup · Post by **Papycoup** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 12:48 pm

Thanks, Wayne,

I just tried to dismount the sound-box for maintenance...
The attachment is a very poor DIY... The tube attached to the washer on the back of the box came from some medicine tube (?) and the soldering broke before the rubber tube came...
So it would be a great help if you could show me a pic of the neck of the sound-box with, if possible, the measurements (diameter, I suppose 20mm, and length).
Was there a screw somewhere, or is the rubber tube the original way to tighten the sound-box to the tone arm ?

Thanks for all,

Pierre.

Post by **gramophone78** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 1:42 pm

Papycoup wrote:Thanks, Wayne,

I just tried to dismount the sound-box for maintenance...
The attachment is a very poor DIY... The tube attached to the washer on the back of the box came from some medicine tube (?) and the soldering broke before the rubber tube came...
So it would be a great help if you could show me a pic of the neck of the sound-box with, if possible, the measurements (diameter, I suppose 20mm, and length).
Was there a screw somewhere, or is the rubber tube the original way to tighten the sound-box to the tone arm ?

Thanks for all,

Pierre.

Pierre & Pedro,

I will try and explain what I can regarding Paillard tone arms. However, I must stress, I have no knowledge of how the actual end was for the Aerophone application.
If your tone arm body is original to your machine....then the company used Paillard arms (at least part).

Paillard had at least two types of straight arm. They also had a "Swan Neck" (their term) that resembles a Victor tone arm. However, in this case, this Swan Neck arm does not apply.

So, the straight arms.....

These arms were advertised as "Duplex" arms. It allowed an owner to play both vertical & lateral records.
This was achieved by the use of adapters.
These adapters were simply placed into a middle section soldered onto the main body. These middle sections have a small screw on the bottom that acts as a stop when pushing the outer end in. There is a small hole that allows a rounded pin in the outer end to lock it into the proper position.

Now the tricky part. There are different sizes of all three parts. In other words, you would need to measure the length needed in order for the needle to touch the spindle.
Once that is established.....you will then need to combined the three parts to make that length.
The hard part is finding all the right size parts. There are many, many different lengths used by Paillard for their models and all the other companies who ordered from them.
Here are pics showing the parts I describe.

I hope this helps in some way. These part can be difficult to locate.