The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

These are before and after photos of my first major restoration, my Orthophonic VV 8-9. The first five photos are after, and the rest are before completion. The restoration involved new grill cloth, extensive sanding, painting, and polishing, as well as new turntable leather, new tone arm and reproducer, and a replacement back (no photos). It's not perfect, but the phonograph does look and sound rather good. The restoration took about 5 months.

I spotted this:
Seems to be a pretty good match, though in the ad the striping shows up as deep blue, in spite of the fact that it states "green" bands.

OrthoFan

Later...185 views and I'm the only one to comment? Didn't mean to kill this post string.

The turquoise stripes look green due to discrepancies with my flash. In real life, they are blue green. I didn’t paint them, but did polish them. I am also puzzled by the shortage of comments, but am gratified by yours. Thank you.

I showed a photo of my 8-9 unrestored on facebook. Nice job you did. I hope to clean up my green more but will not be restoring anything like you did. Great looking machine. Neil

I like it.

Clay

It would be nice to know just how Victor did those polychrome paints the way they did them. I know glaze is involved and they are generally quite bright when they are new. But the oil paints will oxidize over time and especially with all the smoking that went on in those days. So you've cut through a lot of the oxidizing when you polished those colors and really brightened them up. Your machine looks pretty good! I have one upstairs that someone decided to "re-paint" and oh boy is it messed up. At least the people I got it from realized they should have left it alone. I know at the factory they sprayed those colors on, but then went over it with glaze in some way to make the end result look shaded. But there must have been some color in the glaze but who knows just what was going on there.

You also picked a bad weekend to show things off as I'll bet everyone that can, is at Stanton's right now... Good luck with the phonograph collecting. You have a very nice machine there. Earl

Bruce, excellent job on everything, but I'm puzzled by the green banding. Instead of turquoise, it looks grassy green. Are you sure no one added some green color to the banding? Earl is right on when he talks about glazing. As an artist who is trained in oil painting, I know what glazing is. It is obvious from my own 8-9, and the one I sold to you, that the turquoise bands were glazed. I have seen repainted 8-9s where the painter just painted a flat green on the banding and it just has no depth. Glazing provides depth. The way glazing works in oils, is you paint an underpainting in a bright light color. That would be the turquoise you see in the before pictures. Time has worn away the semi-transparent glaze so you just see the underpainting. The glaze would be done with a darker semi-transparent color mixed in a copal or other oil painting medium to make it transparent and give it depth. I don't know exactly what color paint that would be in the glaze, but it would be darker than the underpainting. You did a great job on those door knobs, feet, and other appliqués! Excellent job overall!

marcapra wrote:Bruce, excellent job on everything, but I'm puzzled by the green banding. Instead of turquoise, it looks grassy green.

I noticed that only in the second photo --
-- does the banding look blue-green.

I'm wondering though, was the gold banding repainted?

OrthoFan

I didn't do any painting on the turquoise. The grassy green color is due to my flash being too close. When the camera/phone is further away, the color is the expected turquoise.

I repainted all of the gold stripings by hand. I cleaned the quartersawn panels with New Life Furniture Masque and waxed/polished with Howard Feed 'n' Wax. It was a fun project and I'm happy with result.

Bruce_Van_Note wrote:The grassy green color is due to my flash being too close.

I find it difficult to comment fairly on the appearance of this machine since the colors shown are evidently not how they actually look due to camera/lighting issues. I guess I would need to see it in person.