The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I noticed on ebay, somebody is selling rubber belts for all of the Edison belt drive machines. Has anybody tried these belts? We all know rubber bands don't work. I use leather. Any thoughts or opinions on this subject?
Harvey Kravitz

I bought a Edison Standard model E, and it came with a black rubber belt on it. I have to say it works quite well. And it's easy to take off and put on, if I need to work on the machine. I'm sure historical purists might object to it though.

I purchased one of these for my E model Triumph. It does not work very well. The wow and flutter are noticeably increased. I finally gave up and went back to the old leather belt.

Valecnik wrote:I purchased one of these for my E model Triumph. It does not work very well. The wow and flutter are noticeably increased. I finally gave up and went back to the old leather belt.

My experience is the exact opposite. Since putting this on my Triumph B the play is far superior, with a lot less wow and flutter than my admittedly lumpy leather belt.

Jeff

Operafan wrote:

Valecnik wrote:I purchased one of these for my E model Triumph. It does not work very well. The wow and flutter are noticeably increased. I finally gave up and went back to the old leather belt.

My experience is the exact opposite. Since putting this on my Triumph B the play is far superior, with a lot less wow and flutter than my admittedly lumpy leather belt.

Jeff

Wow! (pun intended). I wonder why the difference? My E model is a well running, cleaned tuned machine, everything moving freely. It runs fine with the leather belt and downright unpleasant to listen to with the rubber one. I too thought the rubber belt would be an improvement.

Regardless of historical accuracy, I look at it this way-
Rubber of all consistancies was available in Edisons day, but Edison, Columbia & many others settled for leather belting.
If a small amount of oil is accidently splashed on the belt, leather will absorb it, but this wont happen with rubber/plastic.
If leather stretches over time, it can be dampened & left dry to shrink it, but with rubber it's irreversible.
My Home B had it's original belt until about 5 years ago. Will a rubber belt last 95 years?

I was having a wow flutter problem with my Gem until a week ago. I broke the join, shaved a fraction more off the length of the belt & reglued it. It is now working perfectly for the first time since I bought it a year ago. The belt simply wasn't quite tight enough when I first made the replacement.

I haven't seen them, but rubber does have characteristics that can make it unsuitable or at least questionable in some applications. The rubber mix has to be correct for the load; neither too stiff nor too much stretch. I spent many years of my working life servicing audiovisual equipment, including movie projectors and having the proper belt in good condition was of paramount importance. If the belt is too tight it will bind, too loose it will slip, and too stretchy it will cause the mechanism to pulsate, resulting in excessive wow and/or flutter. This may be a good idea but I haven't tried it and don't need any belts right now. Personally I like to stick to leather belting because it can be customized.

@Valecnik: I think your Triumph E motor is suspended the same way as D2, that is spring suspended with a knurled knob to control belt tension. It does not have the idler arm and pulley to control belt tension as seen in many other Edisons. If you have the same system as mine, you may need to increase or decrease tension in order to make the belt pull properly. My D2 sometimes gives me fits with speed; no wow or flutter but just keeping it even throughout the cylinder because of belt tension, half nut tension, cleanliness and lubrication of the carriage rod, etc, etc. In spite of this, I don't want to do a complete teardown, clean and lube because it runs so well, very quiet and smooth. So, I just add a little fresh oil and grease once in a while and leave it alone otherwise.

Jim

phonojim wrote:I haven't seen them, but rubber does have characteristics that can make it unsuitable or at least questionable in some applications. The rubber mix has to be correct for the load; neither too stiff nor too much stretch. I spent many years of my working life servicing audiovisual equipment, including movie projectors and having the proper belt in good condition was of paramount importance. If the belt is too tight it will bind, too loose it will slip, and too stretchy it will cause the mechanism to pulsate, resulting in excessive wow and/or flutter. This may be a good idea but I haven't tried it and don't need any belts right now. Personally I like to stick to leather belting because it can be customized.

@Valecnik: I think your Triumph E motor is suspended the same way as D2, that is spring suspended with a knurled knob to control belt tension. It does not have the idler arm and pulley to control belt tension as seen in many other Edisons. If you have the same system as mine, you may need to increase or decrease tension in order to make the belt pull properly. My D2 sometimes gives me fits with speed; no wow or flutter but just keeping it even throughout the cylinder because of belt tension, half nut tension, cleanliness and lubrication of the carriage rod, etc, etc. In spite of this, I don't want to do a complete teardown, clean and lube because it runs so well, very quiet and smooth. So, I just add a little fresh oil and grease once in a while and leave it alone otherwise.

Jim

Jim, You are quite right about the way the E motor is suspended. I could try to play with that too but since I put the leather back on and it works perfectly, why bother. The rubber was a nice experiment but enough time wasted on it.

I know what you mean about keeping those Triumphs running smoothly. A lot of things to fiddle with but once you get them running well, at least in my case they are pretty problem free. However half nut too tight/loose, spring suspension, motor suspension too tight or loose and you need to fiddle with it, not to mention keeping those carriage rods clean and lightly oiled! I've found the E a little better than the D2 in that respect because of the spiral channels cut into the carriage rod which help to disperse the lubrication I suppose...

Whether a rubber belt works better or worse as a drive coupler depends on where the source of the flutter is. Since the rubber is elastic, it will act as a flutter filter and reduce the transmission of speed irregularities if they are occuring on the source or drive side of the belt. This is further improved if the load side has a lot of mass such as a flywheel to further filter out the speed fluctuations. But if the speed irregularity is on the output or driven side of the belt (out of balance, bent shaft, sticky bearing, etc.), the elasticity of the belt will decouple the wobbly load from the more constant drive and the wow and flutter will get worse than when the coupling is more firm as when using a leather belt.

Most cylinder machines have some wow and/or flutter, primarily due to the fact that they don't have a massive mandrel that can act like a flywheel. Disc machines usually have a much more massive platter, especially those cast iron ones used by Columbia and some of the Victors which is why they have much less flutter than cylinder machines. The later Edison machines such as those that use the Opera motor, and the Amberola V actually had flywheels added to the mandrel shaft, and they play with much less flutter than the earlier designs.