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I just had an idea to take a crapophone and modify it (lengthen the tonearm, change the sewing needle out for a thinner diamond one, reduce gear ratios, etc.) to play 33s, 45s, and 78s.

Any ideas?

There were actually acoustic kiddie phonographs produced well into the late 1970s/early 1980s, sold by Woolworth's and other companies that were designed to play LPs and 45s using a sapphire tipped shank. They were equipped with two-speed electric motors, and were fitted with a plastic tonearm and non-detachable plastic sound box that used an aluminum diaphragm.

I bought one on sale, once, and made the mistake of actually trying it out. It completely ruined both the LPs and 45s I tried playing. I had neglected to read the disclaimer that it was for monaural records only .

So, if you could come up with a tonearm/sound box assembly what was compliant and light enough to track vinyl records without damaging the very fine grooves, you'd have to take into consideration the fact that the needle would have to track in both a lateral and vertical direction if stereo records are played, or you'd have to hunt down monaural records.

What about using something like fibre/bamboo for the needle, or something like tightly rolled tinfoil? I'd allow the needle to have some vertical leeway to allow for stereophonic records (I'd lose some volume, but I'm obviously not going for optimum quality here

There's still the problem of tracking weight, which can be considerable on an acoustic reproducer (and would most likely ruin the vinyl)....

I've always thought the acoustic playback of vinyl would work better with something like the lumiere pleated diaphagm, or a cone speaker like Pathé or Polly portable used. With modern light weight materials, I'm sure you could make quite a large "reproducer" that would produce reasonable volume with little record wear.
I think the conventional soundbox. tonearm & horn design would be very limiting.

gramophoneshane wrote:I've always thought the acoustic playback of vinyl would work better with something like the lumiere pleated diaphagm, or a cone speaker like Pathé or Polly portable used. With modern light weight materials, I'm sure you could make quite a large "reproducer" that would produce reasonable volume with little record wear.
I think the conventional soundbox. tonearm & horn design would be very limiting.

I might two separate reproducers: a normal one for 78s, and one for 45's and 33's (and possibly 16s?).

What about speed control? Since the motor that comes with these is designed for 78 RPM (as well as speeds lower and higher), I might either remove the motor altogether and make it hand-cranked (like the earliest Berliner's), which would be the easiest, or install gearing to reduce it to the proper speeds. To get it down to 33 ⅓, I'd need a 2.34 gear reduction, and to get it down to 45 RPM, I'd need a 1.733333333.... gear reduction. I might just use the speed-knob for the speed selection (78 would be "fast", 45 would be "78", 33 ⅓ would be "slow").

Can anyone make a picture of the motor/speed mechanism on their crapophone? I haven't exactly decided whether I should buy one or not

Ya know, if there are so many bad repro machines on the market, why doesn't some knowledgable collector/machinist create and sell their own, more accurate, outside horn gramophones? Think of it, those who have always wanted a spear-tip horned Victor II but don't have $3,000 to shell out can pay a couple hundred for a reproduction machine! It wouldn't deteriorate an original machine's value, as even though first-edition facsimiles exist of various collectible books, authentic first editions can still fetch enormous sums at auction (ie: a rare first printing, first edition Hardy Boys book from the early 1930s fetched $12K at a PBA auction back in 2008, even though facsimiles have been made of it).

That actually blows my original idea of modifying a crapophone out of the water.

Blimpy wrote:Ya know, if there are so many bad repro machines on the market, why doesn't some knowledgable collector/machinist create and sell their own, more accurate, outside horn gramophones? Think of it, those who have always wanted a spear-tip horned Victor II but don't have $3,000 to shell out can pay a couple hundred for a reproduction machine! It wouldn't deteriorate an original machine's value, as even though first-edition facsimiles exist of various collectible books, authentic first editions can still fetch enormous sums at auction (ie: a rare first printing, first edition Hardy Boys book from the early 1930s fetched $12K at a PBA auction back in 2008, even though facsimiles have been made of it).

That actually blows my original idea of modifying a crapophone out of the water.

The big problem there would be that a decent reproduction machine would cost way more than "a couple hundred" to produce, Unless you had the economy of scale that the original manufacturers did, a repro of any decent quality would likely cost as much, if not more, than a good original.

That's why crapophones are crappy: they slap them together as cheaply as possible, in order to make a profit.

Bill

Lucius1958 wrote: The big problem there would be that a decent reproduction machine would cost way more than "a couple hundred" to produce, Unless you had the economy of scale that the original manufacturers did, a repro of any decent quality would likely cost as much, if not more, than a good original.

That's why crapophones are crappy: they slap them together as cheaply as possible, in order to make a profit.

Bill

Well, crapophones have come down quite a bit in the recent past (from $400 to $130), and I guess that some of the earlier and simper types (such as hand-wind Berliners, Victrolitas, Victor Premiums, etc.) would be cheap and easy to produce

Well, there's always the "build it yourself" Gakken Gramophone --

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