The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

As a result of my ongoing search for shavers
and parts, I find myself also getting interested in Dictaphones.

I justify this by thinking that having a few
operating Dictaphones, those can be used to
test brown wax blanks as they get produced.

My question for the group is: Is there anyone
or a group of people out there who know about
these machines? I recently purchased 2 of them
and I am very unfamiliar with their design and
how they work. Both of them are fairly complete machines, but they need lots of cleaning and restoration work.

Usually I can figure everything out as I go
along and learn just by looking at how everything goes together.

But, I figured maybe it is a good idea to
ask around to see what (if anything) is
available about these machines as far as
parts manuals, diagrams, operating instructions, stories told by others who have
restored them, etc.

Just trying to get a general feel for what
the overall knowledge is about these.

Issue #1: Belts.

Thanks, Chuck

my interest goes beyond the columbia & ediphone dictahones as i like the macines like parlograph, excelcior, Pathé better since they look like propper cylnder phonographs with wood cases and so on
but the workings on them are prety simular
with the columbia dictaphone there are 3 types
1 a recording machine on wich you can only make recordings but you can't listen to it
2 a playing machine only for listening
3 a combi with this one you can record and play back
i hope you have the number 3 otherwise my explenation is prety useless
above the trunion part holding the head with the diagraph there's a lever now it depends on the dictaphone push lever up makes it record push lever down for playback (in some casses its visa versa)
and this goes for any dictaphone with the excelsior its left and right but the general idea is the same

when ecording on a edison type brown wax be sure that the record-playing head nearly touches the mandrel some of the later types of dictaphones were fixed to a certain position remember that the dict,cyl are quite thick and with the later types you sometimes need to fiddle with the head to make it touch the cyl

also the reording stylus is often quite worn remember that some of these dictaphones had been in use from 1925 to 1948
and when buying a edihone be sure the recording stylus is even there they are in the habit of braking off completly these also have a tendency that the recording stylus has sunk into the stylus holder

you can make quite satisfactory music recordings by replacing the mica with the mica often used in early talking machines wich is a harder mica you will have to split the mica into a thinner diagraph with that you an record 8 or 9 min of music (depending on the speed)

i hope i've been of help
greetings
tino