The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

OK, I'm interested in hearing others thoughts on this question.

Do you leave your external horn cylinder player set up, horn attached ready to play and on full display all of the time (collecting dust)?

or

Do you remove the horn and upper crane, put the cover on and put the horn and crane away until the next time you want to play it or show it off (shielded from Dust)?

What do you do and why?

Bill

There are 2 that I play and I leave them ready to play. I dust them whenever I dust everything else. They are meant to be played and enjoyed. I don't buy machines as an investment although I hope they will be worth as much after I'm gone as I paid for them but if not, at least they were cared for and enjoyed.

Hello,
I have 40 plus cylinder machines in my collection. They are always left in full display with the horns on. That's just the way I like it . I enjoy being able to walk around and look at them when ever I want to. Dust is always a problem. I just spent the last three days dusting through our house. Besides Phonographs and Gramophones I have collections of Clocks, antique bottles, China, Stone crocks and Folk art. It is all part of the fun!
Pete

I like Phonogal's and Pete's approach. These things are meant to be enjoyed, and the bother of setting them up can sometimes limit that enjoyment.

I've gone both ways with the cover/don't cover approach. When I had two bedrooms to display my collection, I kept the cylinder machine lids in place, and I had little plastic "sheets" cut from plastic bags that I placed on the turntables of disc machines. Why I covered only the turntables, I don't recall... Each plastic cover had a piece of masking tape on it with the machine's name ("AK"; "Vic. II"; etc.) Just how OCD can a guy get? However, being on the second floor of the house, those covers collected a lot of dust. Years later when I moved everything into the converted attic, I started out the same way, but realized that the only time I saw the machines uncovered was either on the rare occasions when someone was seeing the collection, or if I took the trouble to uncover everything. Well, to heck with that. I threw away the dopey plastic sheets, put the cylinder lids in a closet, and never looked back. Who did I buy all this stuff for anyway???

Within a few weeks I also discovered that there's very little dust up there!

George P.

Bill, my lone Edison Standard is kept covered. The horns and crane are kept behind an arm chair. It's not played as frequently as the Victor III.

George, I keep my turntable covered with a decorative record, as a dust cover for the felt.

James.

Roaring20s wrote:
George, I keep my turntable covered with a decorative record, as a dust cover for the felt.

James.

Yes, but what about the dust on the decorative record???

George P.

phonogfp wrote:

Roaring20s wrote:
George, I keep my turntable covered with a decorative record, as a dust cover for the felt.

James.

Yes, but what about the dust on the decorative record???

George P.

This reminds me of the old plastic slipcovers on the sofa thing and toaster cozies . When my Grandparents passed away, their 1955 Oldsmobile still had the original seatcovers in like-new condition because they had been covered with plastic covers. Hey, maybe this is a business opportunity. Turntable slipcovers and Nipper decorated phonograph cozies. I can just picture it now

Since i do not keep my machines for display, but for play, I put the covers on my AT and Home to keep the dust off…

Bill

I have my machines on display with horns on them most of the time, and they get dusted frequently, my Triumph gets taken apart and cleaned often, about every 2 months as it gets lots of wax dust in it I record about 30 records a month.

I leave the lids on and turn the cranes toward the rear to keep from walking into them. It doesn't take that long to set one up to demonstrate.
I only have 5 Cylinder players and a Victor IV. I also keep a nice looking, not valuable record on the turntable to protect it.