The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This Ultraphone has two tone arms, reproducers and sound boxes which are supposed to play at the same time... yet only one turntable. Does is require a specialty disc/record?

eBay Item #270627117587

You don't need a special record. The acoustic signal emanating from the second reproducer is a little time-delayed, which is inaudible. Amplified tones should result from this arrangement - a slimmed version from the Triplophon we discussed elsewhere.

In early 1895, Albert Költzow of Berlin patented a phonograph with two reproducers very close behind one another to amplify sound. Leon Forrest Douglass' polyphone attachments of 1898 worked after the same principle.

I'm not so sure the time delay is inaudible. I've never heard one of these things but I once rigged up my own version, the needles ran together in the same groove almost touching. In a vocal record the impression was of two singers in exact unison, it was less noticable with dance music.

I have listened to an upright version of an Ultraphon and I cannot remember to have heard a difference. Perhaps the recording wasn't demanding enough.