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A couple weeks ago one came up at a local auction and I decided to go look at it. Well it was in excellent condition, lots of dirt and dried grease and oil, but after looking it over closely I realized that it had never been fooled with in probably 90+ years. Original finish on the cabinet that after cleaning I can see my reflection in it. Light alligatoring, just enough to show it's original.
I spent about a week on it cleaning as much of the dried grease off as I could without damaging the finish, 90% of the gilt is still on it, the mandrel of course has lost it's oxidized
finish due to the plaster inner core of the blue amberols played. Surprisingly it sounded good with the unrestored reproducer, the stylus had a small groove in the diamond so when I rebuilt the reproducer I installed a new diamond.
From the location of the dirt on the piece it must have been sitting in a house in playing position, the outside top of the horn and inside bottom was filthy as was the bed plate. The lid was clean, virtually no dirt came off when I went over it.
This is a short video of it playing Hungarian March before rebuilding reproducer.
Chuck
