The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I've been viewing some FB market listings of VE models, but I'm a bit skeptical. Right now I have 3 hand-crank Victrolas, but I'm slightly wary of plugging in a 100-year old motor. Anyone have any advice?

I have worked with several motors of the same period and as long as you check the windings before you should be fine even though I check mine I plug them into an extension lead then stand about 6 feet away from them then plug in the extension lead (better safe than sorry).

If you wanted to just plug the motor in without testing I did it to a 20's Columbia motor that I thought too far gone to care about its coils covered in a thick green layer of copper oxide and the motor body covered in rust so I plugged the old girl in without testing and only a quick peak inside at the motor which was thick off rust and it started without any problems, rebuilt it and it is now sat rebuilt in a Columbia table top running great (sometimes you gotta take a chance)

If you treat them with respect the biggest danger you have with early gramophone electric motors is the tinny amount of asbestos occasionally found in old wire but they should be replaced for safety reasons any way so unless you plan on grinding the wires covering up and snorting them the motors are very safe.

I have 6 different victor and Edison machines with electric motors in them. I usually clean up the motors and look for bad wires and such. First time out I plug them into a Variac which is a form of rheostat and bring them up slowly watching for smoke or a burning smell. If anything is amiss I shut it down and have never burned up a motor doing it this way. I plug these into an fused electric strip with an on/off switch. While I use the switch on the machine, I do leave them plugged in but turn the strip off. Its better to be safe than sorry.
Abe

Electric machines should always be unplugged when not in use, regardless. If you’re playing it and you smell something funky or it starts slowing down, etc. shut it off and assess. Usually a new power cord is a good idea (cloth covered of course.) Otherwise they are pretty safe in my opinion. Then again, during the summer I sleep with a restored fan from 1914 running, so maybe I’m just crazy.

I have run some of my machines for 6-8 hours at a stretch and not had any trouble with them. The 10-70 I have, does have something going on with the motor though as it will get kind of hot on one of the windings, but it was stored somewhere damp for a long time and that seems to be pretty hard on the insulation they coated the wires with.

It may depend on your machine though too, as the earlier motors that use those resistors to burn the voltage down to 32 volts are different than the later induction motors are. A friend of mine has an electric XVIII and he got a 32 volt DC converter to operate that machine with, and it works just fine. A lot less heat as well. Line voltage is stable now, where it wasn't 90+ years ago, so they had to figure out a way to run the motors under those conditions. I think it's much simpler now.

And you do want to keep that stuff unplugged. The friend of mine that has the XVIII is from a town about 30 miles from where I live and a couple of years ago a tree came down where his mother lives, and everything in her house that was plugged in got burned up. Some of the stuff had fire fly out of the back of it. She is right at 90 now and had no idea what was going on! It did trip the circuit breakers, but it ruined everything that was plugged in and melted her TV. The power company wasn't responsible for that and she had to turn it in on her insurance. The house across the street from her did catch on fire from something that blew up in the house, but someone was home and was able to get it put out. Strange things can happen I guess.

I'm not sure the resistors are only for line regulation. After all the governor is regulating the speed.
I think it helps when the motor is stalled. Motors do not like to be stalled. The resistors greatly limit the current. I would never run an early Victrola from a fixed 32 volt supply.

I have no experience of Victor electric motors, but when I purchased my E.M.Ginn Expert Minor it's Collaro induction motor still had the original cotton braided twin core cable attached. This had been crudely attached to a length of modern three core cable and thence to a 13 amp plug, so the electrics were not earthed.

I disconnected the plug, removed the motor board assembly and handed it over to an electrical engineer who rewired everything to modern safety standards. He also checked all the bearings, made any necessary adjustments and then ran the motor for 24 hours. Nothing overheated or fell off.

All of the information given above is relevant and accurate. I'll just add that the resistors in the earlier VE's were intended to be voltage dropping elements to a low voltage "wild" motor. Speed regulation is through a spinning mass governor. Those resistors can handle a stalled motor for a short while, but will grow hotter the longer the motor is stalled, as will the motor itself. As to the likelihood of one of those motors stalling, it is very rare. Aside from hardened grease in the bushings, or some mechanical interference, or a shorted or open circuit, there is not much that can really prevent the motor from spinning. Then there is the issue of old hardened wiring. Externally, any hardened or frayed wiring should be replaced. The external power cord should always be replaced. Internally, the windings are fairly well insulated and failure proof. Occasionally a winding, or other internal wiring will fail, but that will be obvious as there will be indicators of a problem such as strong burning odor, or failure to run up to speed, or even smoke. Obviously, the safest thing to do is to perform continuity and resistance checks before applying power, and voltage checks at the motor immediately after power up (if there is a shorted winding, the voltage across the motor will be less than 32 volts).

Thanks for all your replies! I feel a lot better about the possibility of purchasing a VE model

Skihawx wrote:I'm not sure the resistors are only for line regulation. After all the governor is regulating the speed.
I think it helps when the motor is stalled. Motors do not like to be stalled. The resistors greatly limit the current. I would never run an early Victrola from a fixed 32 volt supply.

Weren't those motors also meant to be run on those 32 volt farm systems? I thought that was one of the selling points of that universal motor.