The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Just bought this Vesper (STADMAC Standard Manufacturing Company (Acton) Ltd) catalogue.
Amazed by the prices - the "Queen Anne" at 95 guineas in 1920 is equivalent to almost £4,500 today !!

Rare high quality machines. This old thread may be of interest :

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31853

My lightning and disease strike the person who stole it from me on its way to Austria.

The Standard Manufacturing Company (Stadmac) was set up by the directors of Waring & Gillow, a long established high class cabinet making business in Lancaster and London. Like many firms immediately after the end of WW1, they needed to diversify, and, also like several firms including HMV, they tried to establish a market for gramophones in expensive period style cabinets. Alas, the market was not there, for HMV, Aeolian Vocalion, Algraphgone or any others.

The Vesper used the Seymour soundbox and tone-arm (the latter sometimes with its main section of wood, sometimes of Vulcanite or a similar composition), and thus anticipated the first EMGs; the horns were formed of very thin plywood, beautifully shaped. The catalogue shows the soundbox with the name Vesper in it but none of the ones I have seen had any name in at all. On the vulcanite arms (which I think came later), the soundbox is mounted on a T-junction, with a large knurled knob on the rear so that it can be inverted for needle changing.