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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Victor-Victrola ... SwSlBY1u3b

I have to say that this is one of the absolute best reproduction parts I have seen yet.

It is beautiful, but wow it is expensive too. Must be the gold.

Dan

melvind wrote:It is beautiful, but wow it is expensive too. Must be the gold.

Dan

It's called recouping your investment. I can just imagine what it cost to get the tooling set up to do that.

When you consider what a 90 plus year old original gold plate brass reproducer often goes for, then add in the cost of an overhaul, I don't think this price is too bad. You don't get new gold plating with the original plus overhaul, either!

Certainly you would get some peace of mind that the reproducer body is not likely to warp & crumble in your lifetime.

The (polished raw brass or nickle plated) castings for these reproducers have been available for twenty-five years from Ron Sitko. I suspect that he gets them from Mr. Somers. You can try to build your own if you buy the parts from Sitko (Just over $100 as I recall) and then set up a gold plating bath, plate them, paint the backs, and build up the reproducer. Having done this myself I'd strongly advise buying one already done up from Mr. Somers, whose work is excellent. Note that when these replacement parts first hit the market the back plates were "Scooped out" to lessen their weight, making an improperly dimensioned air chamber. I had to use pot metal backs salvaged from original reproducers, machined to fit. I understand that the newer parts do not have this problem, but that is a moot point, for at the price of $625 if I need another unit of this sort I will be buying it from Gettysburg PA.