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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pathé-Adapter-f ... 58c140d2de

Has anyone ever seen one of these little widgets? How did it work? I am guessing it must have been pretty rough on the Pathé discs; there must be some reason such a simple device didn't catch on.

As usually the entire soundbox is rotated, it took me half an hour only to guess how the gizmo is intended to be used. It is for the needle only, isn't it?

By the tone of your message I think you already figured that it will probably trash both the tracking angle and the offset (supposed the gramophone has acceptable ones, which isn't usually the case with Victor goose necks & tapered arms).

The problem is that I can hardly figure how this thing might work altogether. The best I can figure is that it transforms the vertical oscillations in both vertical and lateral oscillations together, through a mix of linear and twisting forces. Then only the lateral oscillations will be picked up and revealed by the soundbox, the rest going in heat and wear. If so, I expect the sound to be shallow and poor.

Thank you, Marco, for figuring this out! Your explanation makes a great deal of sense to me.

With all that wasted kinetic energy and all that groove wear (to say nothing of tracking error), as you say this device must have provided a pretty unsatisfactory listening experience.

Louis

Meltrope3 wrote:Thank you, Marco, for figuring this out! Your explanation makes a great deal of sense to me.

With all that wasted kinetic energy and all that groove wear (to say nothing of tracking error), as you say this device must have provided a pretty unsatisfactory listening experience.

Louis

why don't you post a photo from the listing? otherwise once it expires and the link dies, this thread will be useless.

Hope these are helpful ?

I noticed your device has "Reflexograph" impressed on it, and thought it looked a lot like an accessory for for the "Magic Mirror" phonograph toy made in the 1950-60's in the USA. Here's the piece I'm talking about: This accessory was used if the child's phonograph had an acoustic soundbox. This piece was needed to offset the soundbox so that it wouldn't come in contact with the mirrored centerpiece. Maybe your device was for a similar setup.

Bob

emgcr wrote:Hope these are helpful ?

definitely. and that's similar to another such adapter - recently available on ebay and, from a different seller, in the trader section here - except that one had a fixed saphire needle and no thumbscrew. I never realized that using these would result in extra record wear. is that really true?

I think this might be the link to the item Brian's referring to.
(Which he may or may not now own?)

--> http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =9&t=20891

Mr Grumpy wrote:I think this might be the link to the item Brian's referring to.
(Which he may or may not now own?)

--> http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =9&t=20891

Yes, that's the one. I have a couple other Pathé and edison adapters for victor machines and thought that one was pretty different but someone else apparently beat me to it. The one on eBay I think was just really overpriced, he wanted much much more.

I liked it as well but it was gone before I even saw it.
It looks purpose built, while the one on ebay is probably exactly
what Bob has described as an offset device.