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You know how you get sucked into a project because you feel kind of bad for some of this stuff that's barely survived, so I went to Michigan over the weekend and brought home this VV-360 from over there. They young folks that owned it just had a baby girl a week ago now, and are very nice. I'm really glad I decided to make the drive, but I've never seen so much salt on the roads as the do over there along lake Michigan. Man, that was almost like driving on a gravel road, but it was rock salt and sand! I thought Iowa was salt and brine crazy, but the roads weren't too bad, even though it was snowing pretty hard for about 50-60 miles.

I guess these 360's are pretty scarce so it's worth putting back together. After I get the door panels flattened out I can re-veneer the doors and I'll also have to re-veneer both sides as well. My brother can help me route the details back on the doors and route an edge for a new lid panel. The one side is pretty much shot and I'll have to do both sides, so they match after it's refinished. At least the veneer on the back is ok. The serial number is 1275 and if they really only sold 3-4 hundred of them, it makes me wonder if Victor started the serial numbers over at say, 1200 so they knew which one's were sold at the 60% discount they offered after the orthophonic machines were introduced? It makes me wonder what sort of warranty differences they might have offered by taking such a drastic cut in price, and that might be where some of these serial numbers that don't make sense fit in. A friend of mine has a late XVIII with a high serial number like that, and it might have been part of that program as well.

It's too bad there isn't a place like the reed organ society has done, where you can just post pictures of your Victrola with the serial numbers, with no personal information, so there would be a data base like that for reference. Looking at pictures of 3,500 Victrola X's might be kind of an interesting thing, especially if you could sort them by serial number.

Anyway, the lid is completely apart on this machine as well, and that's the first time I've been able to take a Victrola lid apart. The board on the top of the lid needs to be replaced as it's cupping really badly. Victor did a nice job of putting those lids together and the joint at the top of the lid where the side pieces go in, is really tightly fit together. There's not too much evidence that this thing was actually wet, but it was certainly somewhere that was really damp for a long time. Probably a basement that didn't have much air circulation. The guy I bought it from said it came from a household auction in Grand Rapids and it had been in that house for a long, long time. The paper label on the bottom is gone, but the veneer on the bottom is all there, just loose.

It's really a well made cabinet. Victor used those STUPID wedge splines in the tops of the leg dowels also. I'll take some pictures of that and post them eventually. If you need to take the leg base apart on one of these things they will drive you nuts because there's no way to see what's holding the leg in place even though it might be loose. I'll finish knocking the bottom of the case off this cabinet when I get ready to veneer the sides, and then I'll know for sure if you can see the tops of the dowels with the base removed. That's not quite as bad as those wedge joints where the split the dowel, put a wedge in there and when you drive the leg in place it spreads the dowel out making it nearly impossible to get the legs loose if they need to be re-glued. A really frustrating situation.

So, it looks like my glue pot will be getting a work-out one of these days. Haha! It's been awhile since I've done this much veneering on a project and I'll probably remember why once I get started on this one.....

Whew looks like you got your work cut out for you!

Love that stove btw.

There's a special place in Phono Nerd Heaven for guys like you that save these nearly beyond help project machines.

Jerry Blais

According to http://www.victor-victrola.com an estimated 1267 VV-360's were produced, all in 1924, with serial numbers 501 to 1788. Something seems inconsistent there, as the serial number range totals 1287 not 1267, and why start at 501?

Congratulations on saving this fine machine, which many people would have dismissed as a lost cause.

Good luck on this one! There's unfortunately not much left, but It's still savable. You'll most likely need to make a new motor board and fit a different motor, since the machine is so scarce. Can't wait to see it done though!

GregVTLA wrote:Good luck on this one! There's unfortunately not much left, but It's still savable. You'll most likely need to make a new motor board and fit a different motor, since the machine is so scarce. Can't wait to see it done though!

Was the motor not there? What's so unique about the motor in this model?

Earl,

Better get that machine away from the pot belly. Your wife might get ideas!

JerryVan wrote:Earl,

Better get that machine away from the pot belly. Your wife might get ideas!

My wife certainly would!

Valecnik wrote:

JerryVan wrote:Earl,

Better get that machine away from the pot belly. Your wife might get ideas!

My wife certainly would!

That's funny! I should have gotten married when I was young, and I didn't. I'm to the point in life now where I'm just a benefit package. HAHA. I get stink-eye from the cat sometimes though with the junk I drag home.

Those hard coal stoves really don't burn wood very well. It's had the same fire in it since the end of October when I first fired it up. And it will keep a fire in it for a day or two if it's not too cold out and I can pull the check damper some. But, it's been really cold out this last week or so, and then it's nice to have a bright fire in it, so it will go through a load of coal (about 40 pounds) in 12-14 hours. When it's hot like you see in the pictures, I can get some water behind the veneer on that cabinet and get it all to pop loose and I'll probably work some on that tomorrow. It's supposed to be warmer later in the week.

Here are some pictures of one of the front legs. Victor didn't carve the rear legs and just left them as a turning. But it's a nice detail. These late machines have those sliders as well, instead of castors. But it says you can get castors for extra money. I don't suppose many dealers wanted to spend the extra 80 cents or whatever it must have been for castors. I kind of like these better anyway. In the other picture you can see that spline I was talking about. I can't remember the name of that sort of a joint, but it can really be a problem when you need to remove a cabinet part to re-glue it. I don't have the base off the bottom of the cabinet to see if they drove that wedge in from the top, but usually they leave the top of the spline sticking up and it spreads the dowel open when the leg gets driven into place, and then it almost impossible to get apart. But if these things have been slide around carelessly (and we all know that would NEVER happen) and the legs loosen up, it's really hard to get it apart to re-glue. And often times, at least for me, a great deal of damage is done before you realize what they did to keep the two parts together.

If you run into small wood knobs on a cabinet and there's no screw holding it from the back side, this will usually be the culprit. Good luck with those. RCA did that with some of their radio cabinets and I've run into the on some piano knobs as well.

epigramophone wrote:According to http://www.victor-victrola.com an estimated 1267 VV-360's were produced, all in 1924, with serial numbers 501 to 1788. Something seems inconsistent there, as the serial number range totals 1287 not 1267, and why start at 501?

Congratulations on saving this fine machine, which many people would have dismissed as a lost cause.

In Baumbach's book he says that Victor cranked out 285 spring and 185 electric VV-360's. And if they did separate the serial numbers from the one's that they got full price for, from the others that were very much discounted, it might explain some of the serial number anomalies. It's anyone's guess on some of these things, that's for sure. Some machines seem to have had a really good survival rate too, and I think the XVIII is in that camp. If Victor made three times as many XVIII's as they did of these VV-360's, they sure tossed these things and held on to the XVIII's.

I'm sure Victor started at 501 so it didn't look to the customer like they were getting the first one, or a poor seller if they even noticed the serial number. And I know my grandmother wouldn't have been too keen on getting the first of anything. She would have rather had one that was made after all the problems were worked out. She really didn't like the notion of buying up a companies experiments and in those days many companies did sell their experiments. Piano companies certainly sold a lot of stuff they shouldn't have. Mellville Clark player pianos are sure an example of that. They are nice pianos but good luck finding two that are alike!

So, who knows on that one until a bunch more serial numbers turn up. They eventually will I would imagine. Too bad that RCA tossed so much stuff out when they took over from Victor. I have a letter around here somewhere from around 1924 and a guy wrote to Victor about either a P or an R that his Dad had bought "Some time ago" and someone at Victor responded and said his machine was in oak, it left the factory on (I'll just say February 12th 1903) and it went to so and so jobber, and from there they would have no idea where it went. So they did keep track of all of that stuff. Probably in a card file of some sort. And if they kept track of those lowly machines, they kept track of all of them. I doubt anyone would say that Sarnoff was sentimental about much of anything.