The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Yesterday I went on a road trip to the other side of the state, we visited many antique stores and then stumbled across this Pathé Actuelle. It is an electric machine with a light inside the cabinet. The cone is in fabulous condition and sounds great. It has the original finish (brown mahogany)with some alligatoring on the front doors. There is a metal tag inside which states this as a model J. It also came with the original instruction manual and some other paperwork. I don't know much about Pathé machines but it was in too good of condition to let sit there in an antique store. I haven't decided yet whether to keep it or sell it, but it was actually fun to go out in the wild and still find a nice item.

The Happy Hunter,
ColoradoPhonograf

Congratulations on your wonderful find. These Actuelles very seldom come up for sale, and you are very fortunate to find one, and with an electric turntable no less, and in really great shape, including the paper cone which appears to be in fabulous original condition. You will have a fun time demonstrating this rare beauty for guests, who will be spellbound by its seldom seen unique technology for playing records.

I wish I could find something a fraction as nice as this by going out on a hunt.

Very good quality machine. How could you possibly dream of parting with it?

Steve wrote:Very good quality machine. How could you possibly dream of parting with it?

I have to say that I agree with Steve on this one—unless you’re hurting on space, I’d think you’d want to hold onto it.

I’m rather impressed that you found it in an antique store, as I cannot imagine there are a huge number of Pathé machines in the U.S., but I’m not sure I want to know how many antique stores you had to visit before finding it.

Is this one of your more impressive antique store finds?

— MordEth

Congratulations on a great find. These rarely turn up at all.

I once had a gothic artmodel Pathé Actuelle, about twice the size of this one, I suppose 5 feet high and almost twice the width. It also had the electric motor. I sold it pretty cheap before moving to Europe. I'm just wondering if it, or one like it, might have ended up with one of you on this forum and if so could you post some pictures?

As luck would have it, here is a copy from some old Pathé Promotional material showing both the model J and the Art model Gothic just mentioned.

Thanks alot for the interesting advert. The gothic shown here looks similar to the one I had. Mine was probably smaller though, open underneath standing on four legs so they must have offered multiple versions in the gothic style.

solophoneman,

Thank you for sharing the advertisement—you always seem to come through with interesting pieces of phonograph ephemera.

— MordEth

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The Pathé advert copy:

No need of any tone chamber, no need to amplify; the music springs to full-fledged and immediate life.

And there is this further big advantage as compared with the stereotyped talking machine. Whereas the latter through its tone chamber focuses the music in one definitely restricted direction the Actuelle diffuses the music evenly in every direction. This means that whereas the talking machine was invariably operated from the edge of the room the Actuelle may be played from the center of the room and the music will fill every corner equally.

What an amazing forward looking technical achievement for that early time period. But it must have been only mildly successful as you hardly ever come across these amazing Pathé Actuelles. The public must not have trusted this strange looking Cone shaped thing sticking out of the rear of the tone arm and the fact there was no horn. Must have been too much of a deviation from the standard look of Victrola, so most folks obviously refused to buy it.

This machine is absolutely wonderful. What amazes me steadily is room-filling volume caused by the paper cone. Although they somewhat lack of bass it is wonderful for voices and acoustic records.