The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A while back I posted here about a Columbia BII I found in a barn and was planning to restore. (http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... =2&t=33697) I've since restored the cabinet and the horn, and am now dealing with the back bracket, elbow, tone arm and reproducer. I have questions about the reproducer that I will post separately, but these are about the other parts.

The nickel plating on all of them has become oxidized or corroded or whatever over the decades. (Can someone please explain to me what, exactly, this is, and what causes it?) I have a back bracket/elbow/tone arm from a BI (that's all I have of it) that I was planning to swap out on this machine, but upon closer inspection, while everything else seems identical (please correct me if I'm wrong about that), the ends of the tone arms are different, and the reproducer that came with the BII will not fit on the BI tone arm. Did all BII's have the kind of tone arm that mine does, or is mine an aberration?

Also: As you can see in the last photo, I machined my elbow in an attempt to try to "clean up" the nickel plating (is that even possible?) and, to no one's surprise, quickly got all the way down to brass. (See the last picture.) I'm trying to decide if I should (a) strip the rest of it down to brass to match, or (b) have them all professionally re-plated. I do not believe the back bracket is brass (it's magnetic), so option (a) would likely not end up looking very good. Does anyone disagree? And if I go for option (b), can anyone recommend someone to do the replating?

Thanks!

I believe you can swap out the tone arms, to keep your original one with the machine, but use the BI back bracket & elbow. Your original arm is aluminum and will polish out beautifully after you strip off the corroded nickel plating. Really, the nickel usually just peels off, but may require some patience to do so.

You could also re-plate it.

I've been working on a BN Graphophone that someone stripped down the back bracket & elbow to brass. Plating was the step that took them from humdrum to amazing, and it's more period-accurate.

I don't know if my tone arm was plated or stripped, though. It's suspiciously shiny.