The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A dreadful tutorial on a Victrola restoration. Sandpaper to clean the tonearm, pliers on nuts, rough handling, polyurethane refinish,
How many poor techniques can you see?

https://youtu.be/zOvsFnzuT0Q?si=4LyQa1U0nWKi0SJz

It irks me how he scrapped off all the paint on the back of the exhibition.

I fast forward through most of it. And then once more. I didn’t see any work on cleaning & degreasing of the spring. That poor thing must rumble like a Model T, with badly maintained springs, running over the trolly tracks.

Most likely will wind up at an antiques mall. At $750 as it’s been re-stored

The fellow, I'm afraid, has no concept of conservation, of keeping an item's original integrity as much as possible. There was no need to remove the original felt. No need to strip and re-paint the back bracket. No need to "upgrade" the reproducer. And most of all, no need to sand and re-stain the wood. He could have left the original finish alone, or, if chosen, could have removed the remaining shellac with ethanol and a rag and leave the wood untouched. No need to stain, just a proper choice of shellac, and certainly no polyurethane. I'm not sure if that even existed in 1917.

We can answer the question asked by the ‘restorer’.

Because the black patination is original, was in good condition, and that is the way the machine is supposed to look.

It’s not “chrome”.

I spent a little time going through the comments and debunking or correcting the more egregious nonsense. But then I looked at some of the guy’s other videos, including his “restoration” of an Edison cylinder machine, and realized he’s…

- indiscriminate in his choice of artifacts to mutilate

- unknowledgeable and doesn’t care

- really not interested in anything but clicks

Not sure which of these that bugs me most. Probably the worst part is the poor ignorant audience, who are impressed by this dumbforkery and shower him with compliments.