The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hi Guys
As recent owner of a RE45 I became fascinated with early electric phonograph pickups. While digging around for information about I came across this website It is a British one but these might have been available here? I have never seen one come up for sale. It is quite an interesting site with some nice links to you tube repair videos. Nice pics of early add on pickups for wind up machines especially the one accepted by the BBC. For those tinkers here I think the one about rewinding an open coil will be fun!
Dwight
http://www.normanfield.com/pickups.htm

A very interesting site. I have seen these sorts of devices show up on eBay, but not often.

Clay

Absolutely fascinating! Thanks so much for posting!

Here's an Electrola version, which comes as part of the Electrola 106 UP portable machine.

There was a Silvertone with electric pick up that was a wind up on ebay a week or so ago. Don't know if it sold or not?

Larry

Dwight,

I share your fascination. Yes, I bought an RE-57 and rebuild the magnetic pickup. That got me hooked on first generation electric pickups. I bought a 1932 British Columbia radio-gram as they call them and reworked that pickup.

I had run across that website you reference and was fascinated with the Woodroffe pickups. They look so cool since everything is exposed, polished, and finished as nice machine work.

I was shocked to recently find a Woodroffe new in the box, right where I live in Dallas. It was more than I wanted to pay, but when would I run across another on this side of the Atlantic?

I have replaced the hardened rubber piece that balances the needle bar. I also found little dots of rubber between the needle bar and its frame--apparently for dampening. I used dots of silicon rubber to replace those.

The unit seems to play rather well through my 1970s amp and Cerwin Vega speakers.

The Woodroffe is more sophisticated than the American heads I have found in that the two screws holding the rubber band make it easier to balance the needle bar between the magnetic poles. I suppose you could also put some tension on the rubber to change the characteristics of the head. It would be nice to find some adjustment directions. I wanted to contact Norman Field who runs that website on British phonograph heads, but didn't see any contact information.

Here is my Woodroffe.

The Pacent Phonovox, Bosch Re-Creator, and the Alden electric pickups are pretty commonly found, but in stocks of battery radio parts, not with phonograph stuff. Bristol made a pickup which turns up from time to time, but it is a carbon unit, used with a battery and induction coil to directly drive a loud speaker. It is a distinctly unmusical device, believe me!

Here's one that I recently bought on eBay. This was the first time I tried it out. It's running into a kit amplifier I bought from tubesandmore.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NvP3GQC2KU

here's another pickup that I had to have re-wired as the coil was open circuit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0b1jw1VuwY

Sorry, they're links - I can't get the embed code to work anymore...