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Hi, about half a year ago I inherited this portable wind-up gramophone.
I spent some time cleaning it and rebuilding the reproducer, so it now works and sounds pretty good!
Many thanks to this forum btw, it was a great source of information/advice when I was working on getting it functional again.


Now I've done the best I could with trying to find info about the machine, but I've yet to even find a picture of another portable that has the same box design. I'm not sure where or when it was first purchased; it originally belonged to my great great grandparents in Finland. There aren't any labels on the case itself, and the handwritten signature on the inside (as opposed to a plaque) makes me think this was a DIY build or something made and sold by a smaller retailer.



I can't quite make out what the signature says. It seems like it might be in German.
Something along the lines of:

Warens
1929
Wiltass aus
Jundigou
Joffiee

The reproducer is a generic Parlophon one that I've seen online in a couple of places. It seems like the design is from the 1910s and that it was sold under many different brand names in the 1920s (see the Okeh advertisement in the "Sound from Substance" article for example).



The platter is likely German (D.R.G.M. = Deutsches Reichsgebrauchsmuster, a German copyright designation).


The latch is some British design.






The motor is probably the strangest part of the whole thing, as one of the sides appears to have been cut so that it would fit in a portable case! I'm guessing it might have been designed for larger gramophones? The speed control arm seems to be rather DIY as well (and was very finicky to adjust to 78 rpm).
The only markings on the motor are EHN 10 and 633, and apart from some rust it appears to be in pretty good condition (it ran a bit uneven at first, but now it runs just fine).

If anyone here knows anything about the make of the motor and the case then I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

It is not the same, but the needle tin reminded me of the one in this video:

https://youtu.be/fmOuVWg2YAk

Looks like an HMV 101 knockoff from the Lindstrom company.
No idea what model, but perhaps someone on the German forum would know.

It is possibly the work of a talented home craftsman converting older parts to a fashionable portable in 1929 I have a Home Handy Man book from the same period giving plans for something similar.

This is what suggests this to me

The signature inside
The poor soldering and forming of the horn
The very poor tracking alignment of the sound box ( bad planning at the start with the horn length possibly )
The cast iron turn table, a bit weighty for a portable
The motor and poor control over the speed with a soldered extension wire by the look of it.
The lack of branding on the case.

The tone arm would have to be purchased new I suppose in 1929.

But as I say I have only seen plans in a book suggesting that some people were making there own portable gramophones at this time and I have never seen one so it is just a suggestion.

recordmaker wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 5:24 am The very poor tracking alignment of the sound box ( bad planning at the start with the horn length possibly )

It really is a shame that they put such a long arm on it. And it isn't exactly helped by the arm not using the same mounting style as the reproducer, so there is an adapter in between them that makes the whole thing a little bit longer.