The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Finally posting these. I've always wanted a nice C-250 and I finally got one from Mike Sorter's garage. Just took a little work.
this is a fairly early one so I'm still piecing it together to what I think it had originally. How I received it was with a mechanism from the late teens in it with the automatic electric stop, which is cool, but I think it would have originally had the bedplate with decals, etc. It's working fine and it's the reason I bought so many diamond discs yesterday.

Someone drilled a hole in the back of it and while I probably should have re-veneered the whole panel, two things: 1) this is a long-term keeper for myself and so I'm the only one I have to please and 2) IT'S THE BACK so...I filled the hole and patched it with a little circle of mahogany. I'm fine with it.

I went through some work JB welding a mute ball assembly together only to find out that it sounds so much better without it that I think I'm going to remove it again. A little loud, but other than that it's great!

BEFORE:

DURING:

NOW:

This is very hard to photograph. Some views it's pretty vivid red. Mostly it's glare, lol.

First time removing backgrounds. Nice or weird?

Here's what the back looks like. You can see a ring in high light if you look closely but in general room lighting it's pretty undetectable. To me, anyway. AND IT'S THE BACK.

Here's a shot in progress showing how red it is in the light (and before a final French polish of shellac, so that probably darkened it slightly)

Very Nice!

Beautiful workmanship! You did a really great job, including fixing that hole in the back. I think you were better off patching than re-veneering, especially on the backside.

Congrats on bringing back a beautiful machine from the grave!

Outstanding!!

You should be very proud of the overall job and that hole fill especially. I certainly would!
James.

What an amazing job! I can hardly believe that it is the same machine. Well done!!