The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hello!
My question revolves around the Columbia Q and Q client machines.
Very simply,
I have a Q, and a cylinder Busy Bee. I know the cylinder mandrels between the two are different.
Where does the language phone fit in? Same mandrel as the Q, or the Busy Bee?
Or perhaps a different size exclusive to the language phone?
That’s it!
Thank You!

The "Language-Phone" used standard sized cylinders, same as the Q.

- Bill

Lucius1958 wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 9:18 pm The "Language-Phone" used standard sized cylinders, same as the Q.

- Bill

Thank You!

I own a near mint original Language Phone cylinder phonograph and there is one interesting aspect about it that (I'm presuming) not many people realize. When I bought mine it clearly had been used very little if at all. As we know the Language Phone cylinders were recorded at 120 RPM and the Language Phone cylinder phonograph was designed to play best at 120 RPM. I decided to play a standard 160 RPM 2 minute cylinder from my collection...and guess what. When I increased the speed to anything higher than about 150 RPM the governor weights began striking the metal "arm" supporting the governor...bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. Yikes. Enough of that...and I very quickly stopped the phonograph. Then I thought, wait a minute, maybe I can mess around with the governor position to allow it to run at 160 RPM without the weights hitting the arm. Yeah, great idea! Nope. Sorry. [scratches head and looks out window for what to do next]. What the heck is going on here? {Columbia Graphophone dealer wiggling index finger at Language Phone customer: "Ah-Ah-Ahhh...if you wanted to play REGULAR cylinders you should have bought a Q model. Too late now!}

Doug

Did all cylinder language phones come With a wood case? I haven’t yet seen one without.