The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This sold a while back for about $80 and I didn't give it much attention, however, I came across this machine in some of my father's old photographs. He for some reason had taken a lot of detailed pictures of it compared to some of his "better" machines.

At first I took the auction description at face value: a VV-IV tabletop missing door knob and wrong Brunswick tone arm. But the effort put into the photos has me wondering... And closer inspection of the name plate reveals Chinese or Japanese characters under Nipper?

Could there be more authenticity/originality to this piece than I thought?

Does any one here know more about this?

Thanks in advance!

There's nothing uncommon about the Chinese characters on the ID plate. I think your first impression is the correct one. It must have taken some considerable shortening of the tone arm assembly to get it to track with any accuracy.
Bob

that's definitely not a victor tonearm, and it doesn't appear to have been shortened... it appears to be the two piece type common with brunswicks that allowed for shortening or lengthening depending on what type of record you were playing and with which part of the reproducer.