The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I am looking for some direction. I have recently acquired a second style Columbia Q. The bedplate is missing most lines. It has only 4 red rose petals, and a mottled gold paint for a tag that is unreadable. It does have nice corner leaves. Should I redo the entire bedplate or just the tag. These decals I can get from Greg Cline. He sells the tag for 10.00 and the full set for 30.00. Any suggestions?

Actually, it is a matter of personal preference. I had one with a bad bedplate and decided to do full restoration. I repainted it after removing all of the rust, found a local lady who is a painter and had her hand pinstripe the bedplate and repaint the "grass" corners. Then I bought the flower decal and gold Columbia decal which I put on then clear coated the whole thing. It looks great and I think it enhanced the machine. Since Qs are common and plentiful, I would say go for it...

Ditto. There's people who would never touch an original piece at the price of having a collection of rusty, scratched, non-working items, and others who like to restore them the best they can. So it's really up to you.

Personally I restore them whenever I feel that it's reasonably feasible and I'm confident with what I'm doing. I like good-looking objects, and quite obviously my guests also appreciate shiny things more than beaten-up "all originals".

The fact that an "all orginal" is more valuable than a well restored item is *at least* also very questionable. Well restored items have way more market IMHO.

Should I strip the bedplate completely then repaint it with gloss black spray paint? Then apply the decals and then some polyurethane or varnish? Or should I just paint over the bedplate as is?

Again personally, if the black enamel was not too bad, I would keep the original paint and reapply the decals only. Also, if there are areas in which the original paintings or decals are all right, I would not delete them nor cover them with the new ones, but would cut the new ones to size in order to fill only the areas where the original decoration is missing.

Post a picture of your bedplate, so we can get a better idea. You will need to strip the bedplate if you intend to do any painting whatsoever... Whatever was used originally is not compatible with current paints and will cause it to wrinkle - trust me on this, I had to do mine twice because of this. Use black lacquer paint and clear lacquer for a topcoat... do not use other types of paint mixed together or you will have incompatibility issues. Lacquer is easy to work with, dries quickly and gives a nice original look finish... and any edges of decals will disappear in the topcoat.