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I saw this on Facebook Markplace today. It is located in North Toronto Canada.

It looks like an Edison C-250 (C-19) but fitted with a standard spring motor turntable and a "universal" type tone arm. This suggests it is from the early to mid twenties?

Could it be that a surplus of Edison cabinets were used by other companies to fit other components. It looks to be original and period to when the C-19 was still for sale.

Might be a Frankenphone (a well done one)

According to Frow, in late 1927 efforts were made to clear thousands of disc phonograph cabinets in store.
Many were sold to other companies who fitted them with components to enable them to play conventional 78's.
Some of these were badged as Playertone or Saxophonic, and the De Luxe pictured was probably another.

I have a Sheraton Inlay model with cheap die-cast sonic components in the cabinet and using thin plywood as a motorboard. There isn’t even a horn (the sound just goes into the chamber behind the grille), and the cabinet was never drilled for the Edison horn pivot post socket. It does sport an ‘Edison’ script decal. It’s my understanding that these cabinets that were canceled by Edison after they were already produced by the Jamestown Mantle Company of Jamestown, New York.

Looks really interesting and I hope it's correct. The big clue for me would be the number of crank holes in the cabinet. If there's two I would have some doubts. Even then that would bring into question at what stage of cabinet construction were holes drilled. If the "Edison" hole shows no signs of having an escutcheon mounted and any possible pilot holes remain just pilot holes you could assume it never had an Edison mechanism mounted. As I mentioned, this is very interesting, so report back immediately with details and additional photos.

Jerry B.

I have contacted the seller and I am going to take a look at it. To me I think as Frow described it was likely cleared out by Edison towards the end. Interesting as the C-19 was Edison's biggest seller and was apparently still available in 1927. It looks too authentic to me to be a Frankenphone.

Besides I have a C-250 and it might be an interesting companion.

Governor Flyball wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:06 pm I saw this on Facebook Markplace today. It is located in North Toronto Canada.

It looks like an Edison C-250 (C-19) but fitted with a standard spring motor turntable and a "universal" type tone arm. This suggests it is from the early to mid twenties?

Could it be that a surplus of Edison cabinets were used by other companies to fit other components. It looks to be original and period to when the C-19 was still for sale.

The drawers suggest an earlier cabinet: by the '20s, the C-19 would have had record racks instead, wouldn't it?

- Bill

Perhaps they were excess cabinets from when the C250 to C19 changeover occured?
I know there were some early C19's that retained the drawers, but maybe these were C250 cabinets that were yet to be delivered to Edison, and rather than spend time removing drawers and refitting slats, (and waste labour and timber making the drawers) the cabinet factor just sold them as is?
That's purely a guess though, but it does seem unlikely that a decade later there would still be C250 cabinets laying around.

I have also heard rumor of some of the earliest Brunswicks being built into Edison cabinets, as they had previously constructed cabinets for Edison. I've yet to see any examples, though.

In my opinion, the non-Edison components appear to be authentic to the 1920's. The tone arm, needle cups, speed control - all the same finish and authentic off brand parts commonly seen on other lesser known brands of the era. If somebody modified the cabinet after the fact, that used the right parts to make it look like an off brand in an Edison cabinet.

I agree with previous comments, the crank hole and the internal horn set up [pop that grill out and look behind it....] may tell a lot....

It's neat to see different things!!!