The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I was fortunate enough to find an Edison P-1 portable this week in useable but far from perfect condition. There are 2 things that particularly need help:

1) Reproducer - is semi-attached to the tonearm using some kind of dried out putty, probably due to some pot metal deterioration. Who is the "expert" on these who could advise what, if anything, can be done to save this? It plays OK considering, but I'd rather have it playing well.

2) "Fabrikoid" cloth - I'm sure there's no one making this or anything similar, but I'd like to try to patch the tears on the bottom ridges. Any ideas?

Also, has anyone seen an owner's manual? Among other things, I'm trying to figure out the automatic brake without any luck.

Oh, one last question - how do you clean "Fabrikoid" safely?

Thanks in advance!

There's some very comprehensive information about the P-1 on this page --

http://myvintagetv.com/updatepages1/cha ... sonP-1.htm




The brake is described as a manual set type, and very unreliable.

You might want to get in touch with Carsten, the author of this web page, via the address on the "best portables" main page -- http://myvintagetv.com/updatepages1/cha ... tables.htm

Thanks for the links. I've seen a couple of those videos on Youtube and I will indeed contact the person who made those pages.

One small note is that mine is slightly different. The P-1 shown on those pages has a separate crank escutcheon and hole on the main board for storing the crank when not in use. Mine has a clip that holds the crank on the main board instead. Mine is also more of a greenish color than the blue shown on the website.

these are nice machines, persnally i restored mine, rarely play it because it is rare, the pot metal repoducers can be fragile so i never rebuilt it, i suggest as long as the reproducer sounds good, leave it as is, too hard to find these reproducers. i dont think they are very well built like a good victrola vv 2-55 or vv 2-65. i definately would try carsten out in california he knows alot about them.