Turn arms are mostly damaged on the open top machines the two little ones like the Victrola four and the Victrola six. Other than corrosion tone, arms are protected by lids for the most part they don’t get dented up. They just might turn green sometimes. Mostly this will be useful to me for the elbows as occasionally people bend them trying to get reproducers on or off, and sometimes if they get too carried away, they could snap off the end of the tone arm, but that’s pretty rare.
Great find! I would have bought them, though probably would only ever need a very small number of them. I did manage to buy a box of about 16 reproducers and a few handles, including a gold plated HMV 5A which wasn't even in the picture (ebay), and its worth more than I paid for the lot! 😅 Thanks 👍 😀
A gold plated five a that was in good condition? Now that is a find the last chrome five a in new condition that I bought cost me 200 bucks and change off of UK eBay.
@Rockisland1903 Unfortunately the gold plated 5a was in rather worn condition, but plays fine. I have picked up a boxed chrome HMV 5b in great condition in an antique store for about the equivalent $50 US. I think they are easier and cheaper to find in the UK, though I have never seen another boxed one. Exhibitions and No.2s, are much harder to find in my experience.
No, at the end of the tone arm is the reproducer that’s the round part sticking out and you attach the needle to the reproducer sometimes called a sound box. The reproducer has a mica or aluminum diaphragm inside, there are other materials used for this, but those are the two most common. Attached to that is a needle bar, and that is the part the needle actually attaches to. Vibrations from the grooves of the record, travel up the needle then the needle bar until it hits the diaphragm that is sandwiched between two rubber gaskets in the reproducer body, and this is where those vibrations are turned into recognizable sound. The reproducer is the heart of the Victrola. Without the reproducer all you have is a machine that spins a platter at 78 RPM. The tone arm then transmits the sound from the reproducer to the horn.
Thank you yes I have been reminded that this was a Sonora arm. I have never owned a Sonora other than a small portable, least I think it was a Sonora, but I have seen plenty of these machines around over the years.
Some eBay sellers get carried away, they think everything old is worth $1 million never mind the fact they made hundreds of thousands of them. Well, they can crap in one hand and wish in the other and see which one gets filled first.
