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Hi All,

While looking through the posts on eBay, I came across this item:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Victrol ... 3a7103f109

The seller has it listed as a Credenza, but I have not seen a Credenza like this before. Could this be a clone from another manufacturer? It even has light bulb under the lid...

NO ID plate and no lid decal ????

blizz

Looks like a "-phonic" clone from Sears (Tru-phonic) or maybe it's Montgomery Ward's Cecilian (I think theirs was Melophonic). The needle rest looks like the nubby rubber rest used in some Sonora machines, so perhaps it's one of their late 1920s products in the "-phonic" vein. The lack of a decal or name plate is puzzling, unless this has been refinished at some point. Credenza-like without being an actual Credenza, but were such knock-offs all that much cheaper than the actual Victor product they were imitating?

OR....the other possibility, did somebody take an empty Victrola Credenza cabinet and carefully fit these off-brand parts into it? The back looks to have been replaced, perhaps this was an electric-motor model (a Victor would have had the round vent louvers in the back). The placement of the crank hole wouldn't have been an issue then----just drill one where it suits this motor. We can't see what the horn looks like, so no telling what's back of that very Victrola-looking grill. That electric light socket looks just plain big sitting in there, and it looks like an after-thought. Not so sure about the secondary-brand aspect. I would assume that Victor held design patents on their cabinets, so manufacturing any off-brand model that is so very close to a Victor product would have---I'd have thought---raised the ire of the Victor legal team.

I also thought the middle door trim did not look like a Credenza.

looks like a knock-off to me.

An Ortho-Phony.

It looks like a legitimate machine, just not an Orthophonic. It's only "phony" because the seller is calling it a brand it is not.

That's about the best "Credenza clone" I've seen in 30 years.

Some of the differences are very subtle, some are easy to spot:
Someone should ask the seller to remove to back so we can see what the horn looks like.

I'm not an ebay member, otherwise I'd contact the seller and give him a jump to this post string.

DS

It's a clone- but a good looking one with much better proportions than most.