Niles Essanay SilentFilmMuseumCame home and found a box of junk waiting for me on my doorstep, and I'm really happy about it!
#RecordPlayer #CylinderPlayer #EdisonCylinder #Amberola
#RecordPlayer #CylinderPlayer #EdisonCylinder #Amberola
I've been working on a nother cylinder player with an issue that had me stumped. It had a warble that was a variation in volume. Finally traced it to this screw on the hinge of the reproducer. (The reproducer has the actual stylus, and makes sound by a coupling of the stylus to a diaphragm). It was screwed on way to tight. Which meant the stylus could move up and down, but not laterally. It needs to have some slop so that it can follow the groove. So the stylus was riding up the sides of the grooves instead of the trough, "where the sound is" (cylinder groves are cut with up-and-down oscillations, instead of side-by-side like a mono disk). #CylinderPlayer #EdisonCylinder #Amberola
Music for intermissions in our (free) program of Nickelodeon screenings this Saturday (1:00-4:00), part of our Chaplin Days festival. Full schedule here: https://nilesfilmmuseum.org/?tv=6391263150735360&to=5297718814834688
#SilenfFilm #CharlieChaplin #EdisonCylinder #RecordPlayer #Amberola
#SilenfFilm #CharlieChaplin #EdisonCylinder #RecordPlayer #Amberola
14missionThis is an Edison Standard cylinder #RecordPlayer, which belongs to one of our board members. Not currently working, but I'm planning to get it singing again.
(This is a generation earlier than the #Amberola I fixed earlier).
As I've documented here, I've restored an Edison #Amberola #RecordPlayer. 100 years old and still making music.
Meanwhile, in my professional life.... I can't rerun software I used 6 months ago because all the "cloud" infrastructure it runs on has changed in the meantime.
Haven't posted any videos here of the #Amberola #RecordPlayer since I've gotten it properly working, so here goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bcPObsjLFE (The file is a bit too big to actually post on Mastodon).
William Tell Fantasie (Xylophone) Blue Amberol Cylinder #1730 on restored Amberola 30
The #Amberola #RecordPlayer was starting to get stuck. I had to unpack/clean/regrease/repack the spring canister *again*. White lithium grease is apparently not the thing to use. This time I followed the advice of an expert and combined modern chemistry with Edison's original recipe: A modern grease called "Lightning Grease" + graphite powder and a few drops of "Lubit8" oil. Crazy-looking stuff but it works. (Lightning Grease and Lubit8 are from a company called Fluormatics). Playing smoothly now--I actually had to readjust the speed limiter because it was running way too fast.
After months of tinkering, multiple tear-downs, thorough cleanings, rebuildings, and correcting a few of my own goofs, I finally got the #Amberola #RecordPlayer working at about 1:30 AM this morning.
Huge thanks to Charles from the FB Amberola page for a ton of advice and encouragement!
Some progress on the #Amberola #RecordPlayer. First, happy to report that I've found some online support from the record-player restoration community (which doesn't seem to congregate in Mastodon much--yet!).
Anyway, I was a bit befuddled because the machine was definitely playing slower than it's supposed to (160rpm), measuring the speed with a strobe light (well, strobe light app--one called "Strobily"--there are others, but they have issues--for example, not being able to turn *off* except by restarting your phone!).
I found that I couldn't get it to go faster than 120rpm. It wasn't that it didn't *want* to go faster, it was just that if I adjusted it to run faster, the weights of the centrifugal governor would spread out so far they'd start to smack the baseplate. I think over years of use, the springs that hold the weights just stretched out.
I was able to remedy this by disassembling the governor and bending the springs back. I reassembled everything and now can comfortably hit 160rpm.