The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

The tonearm back bracket on my Victor 4-3 Orthophonic was cracked and swelling making the tonearm bind really bad. I ordered a new repro one from Justin at JAS. It took me over an hour to slowly "crumble" it away from the base mounting bracket without damaging the perfect tonearm. I managed to save the tiny ball bearings and the spacer plate which was caked with hard thick old grease. The reproducer was already rebuilt by Peter Wall and plays super loud and crystal clear. I just wanted to point out how much this collector really hates pot metal - even more than liver & onions

The JAS replacement - on its way!!

Me too... if you heat that stuff with a torch it turns into a puddle of solder looking gunk...

The line in which those who hate pot metal are standing is very, very long!


Clay

I must admit I hate liver more than pot metal but I'll have the onions!

I love liver and onions!!!!! Yummy.

Anyways...I agree that pot metal is horrible. Most of the time I cringe when I look at a orthophonic and you open the lid and there is the poor tone arm hanging down with a broken bracket.

I have used Gorilla Glue and Sandpaper to repair broken brackets. There are no known replacements for the thousands of portable Orthophonics or the VV 1-70 and VV 1-90 machines. I wish someone would make these back brackets I would throw a new one on my VV 1-70 in a heartbeat.

I had a VV 2-55 with black tone arm, so what I did to prevent breakage was to coat the entire arm in gorrilla glue and then sand it down nice and repaint it black. I never had a problem.

Cheap Pot metal is terrible.ive used IIRC 3M 420 glue on a few v-55 brackets with great success.ive had a few off brand great sounding orthos that just fell to small pieces once i started trying to fix them.

As most of you probably know, pot metal, which is mostly zinc, was a new development in the mid-1920s. It was less expensive than brass or other traditional metals, and quickly came into widespread use for many kinds of cast metal products. By the early 1930s the metallurgy involved had improved dramatically, so it's mostly pot metal from the 1920s that is so very problematic. Vintage car restorers face the same frustrations and challenges with pot metal, only with potentially much more serious risks involved. Imagine your pot metal carburetor springing gasoline leaks onto a hot exhaust manifold!

I would like to add my name to the list of those who hate pot metal.

I have been a toy train collector for decades and many of the parts (wheels especially) were made of this evil stuff.

NashTwin8 wrote:As most of you probably know, pot metal, which is mostly zinc, was a new development in the mid-1920s. It was less expensive than brass or other traditional metals, and quickly came into widespread use for many kinds of cast metal products. By the early 1930s the metallurgy involved had improved dramatically, so it's mostly pot metal from the 1920s that is so very problematic. Vintage car restorers face the same frustrations and challenges with pot metal, only with potentially much more serious risks involved. Imagine your pot metal carburetor springing gasoline leaks onto a hot exhaust manifold!

Actually, pot metal parts go back to the 1890s, when Columbia started using them for reproducer carriages, pulleys, and eventually whole top castings. Edison started using it for pulleys on their Gems in the 1900s, and began making reproducer tops as well...

Bill