The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I recently got a very dirty Standard Model A. I cleaned up the wood case (still needs some attention) and am now turning my attention to the back bracket. It is dirty as well. I searched our website and found a couple of things that people seemed to have used with good results: Fantastic, GoJo, and some sort of cleaning wax available at auto parts store. I can try these, but it's the ands, ifs, or buts that worry me. So for my reassurance, do I understand correctly that these products will safely clean my bracket? I think I have some Fantastic laying around the house somewhere. I will of course do a small test first.

Use GOOP from WalMart - no pumice hand cleaner, it's cheap, works great and an added bonus won't harm paint or decals...
Fantastic may be a little harsh, since it removes hard water stains, etc. WD-40 will also work and won't harm anything.

Curt: Thanks. I will buy some Goop and WD-40 today. I'll do a test spot first.

The Standard Model A was an inexpensive machine. I have found that the paint on the horns is often deteriorated, more so than other makes. Also the nickel (?) plating on the tone arm does not seem well bonded. The tone arm on my machine is 99,9% intact with a couple of blisters. Has anyone given any thought, short of re-plating,how to conserve the plating.?What about a thin, clear coat of acrylic or some such sprayed-on material? I assume it would darken over time, but if it were removable and did not lead to further deterioration of the plating, I would be interested in knowing of other people's experience with this sort of thing.

Since WD-40 is primarily Naptha (paint stripper) I'd avoid it for any application related to phonographs, whether it's cleaning, lubricating, or otherwise.

Use this, it's the best for bed plates and wood: http://www.newlifewoodconditioners.com/ ... re-masque/

Non-Pumice Go-Jo also works well. GOOP would be a runner up to either of these.

The nickel plated aluminum tone arms that Columbia used are seldom in good shape. If one is just visually unpleasant, I would remove the rest of the nickeling and simply polish the arm. The polished aluminum looks spectacular. Jerry Blais

Unfortunately no luck at my Walmart for Goop. Found only the pumice GoJO at Home Depot, which I won't use. I will test a small area with a Q-tip and some xylene. The bracket has been painted with black enamel. There's spot inside the bracket that I can try to spot test.

I've never tried this, but I have had a couple of women that restore old sewing machine heads tell me that they use kerosene or diesel fuel to clean up the bed-plates on the machines. I had some sort of a rare machine head I sold on ebay a long time ago when your email was part of your ebay name (remember those days?) And it was so dirty I could find no evidence of a maker or anything on it. So I suggested that it would make a handy boat anchor since a rope would tie easily to it. WOW did I get some hate mail for that crack from these people on a website called "Treadle On" Anyway, this gal out in Montana bought it for $10 and a few weeks later she sent me a picture of the head, with almost of the decal work intact and it was a really nice looking sewing machine head. I thought she had two of them and was letting me know what brand of sewing machine it was, but it was that black dirty head. She just soaked in in diesel for a week or so and all that black stuff came off. THEN she posted pictures of it on that treadle-on site and I got another bunch of hate email! It kind of makes sense though because the diesel or kerosene shouldn't bother the shellac or varnish that's usually over the decals. Naptha or gasoline would of course. Good luck with your project now, but I would test that on a surface first of course.

jboger wrote:Unfortunately no luck at my Walmart for Goop. Found only the pumice GoJO at Home Depot, which I won't use. I will test a small area with a Q-tip and some xylene. The bracket has been painted with black enamel. There's spot inside the bracket that I can try to spot test.

Why wouldn't you use GoJo? It's practically the same as GOOP and is what most of use use to clean our machines.

Oops, I misread that. I thought you wrote that you had found NON-pumice GoJo.