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Just brought home an Edison model C-VI cylinder player. Has the Fireside type motor and all the right bedplate pieces (black with gold trim) with a Diamond B reproducer that seems to work great. I stuck it on my Amberola 30 and here is the result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-c_VHba-Qw

The cabinet is red mahogany and quite attractive once you wipe the dirt away. The metal grill appears to have been stripped of all paint several decades ago, exhibiting a bit of rust. The spring barrel and spring is missing and the gear cluster has worn so badly that some of the gears are loose and do not connect with the adjacent gears all the time. Got a gear cluster, spring, and spring barrel on the way. Should be up and running in a few days!

Included with this were about 100 cylinders. One of them was a gorgeous 'royal purple' color, almost translucent. Never seen that before.

My phone/camera crapped out on me after only a couple pics. More tomorrow.

CDB

The serial number on this one is 8092. There are apparently 3 different versions of the VI, the A, B, and C. Did the serial numbering start over for each version, or does this 8092 mean only 8092 VI models made up to this point?

Thanks! CDB

CDB,

Thanks for the video! I enjoyed listening to that selection, my first. BA's really do sound nice! Looks like a very nice machine to me.

Fran

More pictures. I did a little polishing on the lid and it looks like it might clean up nicely. Cliff

I'm pretty certain that the serial numbering ran unbroken through the A/B/C variants of the VI. I could always be mistaken, and would be obliged to know for sure!

George P.

Here is the cabinet after some strenuous cleaning and polishing:

CDBPDX wrote:Here is the cabinet after some strenuous cleaning and polishing:

WOW, what a difference. I guess sometimes you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Clay

Still shows the dings, scuffs, and scrapes of age, but at least they're clean and polished. Now all I need to do is watch the YouTube video on how to impart the faux wood grain to the grill.

CDB

I have an A-VI (yep, the one with the noisy motor)with the serial number 3072, so it looks as though in this case the numbers ran consecutively through the three variants. However, like most things Edison, there is no consistency in this. I also own a B5 (the one with the Amberola V cabinet but an Amberola 50/75 mechanism, intoduced after the December 1914 factory fire to use up the surviving Amberola V cabinets) and that is numbered 433, so they were not numbered consecutively after the Amberola V numbering. It may be because Edison called it a B5 rather than a BV, that the company considerd it to be a new line of Amberola rather than a modification to an existing model. Although, again, that is not consistant with the quite fundamental changes and differences between the Amberola 1 and 1b, the VI, BVI and CVI nor the various differences in the amberola X.

It is these inconsistancies that makes the Edison company so fascinating.

All the best

Tim W-W

Got the parts for the motor and put it together. The upper works apparently hadn't been turned in several decades and needed to be disassembled and cleaned before anything would actually spin, but finally it all works! Very happy camper! Now the reproducer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXPuQnCra8

CDB