The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Two sought after Meltrope items (one maybe incomplete) and a Box of Shakespeare volumes (* life enrichment) , slide rule and electronic screwdriver.


https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... e2411e45a4


Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;
Unless some dull and favourable hand
Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
(2 Henry IV, 4.5.1-3), Henry IV

This is a rare Meltrope IIIa with special chucks for Burmese thorn needles. Much more interesting than Shakespeare.
"A Winter's Tale" for "O Level" English followed by "Antony & Cleopatra" for "A Level" cured me of the Bard for life.

Only one working chuck and one which appears to be damaged. The most important chuck with triangular piercing and needle fixing screw is absent.

Sold for £120 hammer price, £156 including fees. On account of which items, who knows.

These soundboxes are interesting and rare. This one was local to me so I bought it. The confected lot was a strange one including a slide rule, a cheap electric screwdriver and eight volumes of Shakespeare's plays !

The Auctioneer's photo suggested that some of the collets were missing but, in the event, they were to be found at the bottom of the box---very lucky. The damaged one was repairable. The soundbox had clearly not been used in decades and I was fearful that the compression ring would be seized as it was on another I bought in 2020 and which had to be scrapped. The problem is the dreaded Mazac which can "grow" over the years when the lead content starts to change shape and destroys the alloy. In this case I was fortunate and the ring yielded after an hour in penetrating oil and the use of a fabric oil-filter wrench. The gaskets were as hard as iron and had glued themselves to the aluminium diaphragm but were able to be separated following careful use of a scalpel. Rebuilding (after re-forming the compression ring threads with thread gauges---24 TPI) was straightforward and the box now sounds pretty good I think.

All other examples of the 3A I have come across have had four-piece diaphragms, the exact reasons for which are a bit of a mystery. Clearly the four-piece was the final development and it was presumably found that by adding a fourth section, as far as the extremity of the annular rings, gave greater strength and performance. What a shame the development records/results no longer exist. Interestingly this 3A does NOT have the four-piece---only the usual three-piece---so must be an early example.

I have included some photos of the Meltrope sharpener which was produced by the company at the same time but have to say that using it is incredibly fiddly and good results are hard to obtain. That being the case, when playing a box of this specification, I would always opt to use a Universal Type sharpener (or Mal if you are lucky enough to have one) with the screw fixing collet.

Thank you poodling around for the original alert.