A Better Life New York
Steve "The Judge" focuses on the art of enjoying yourself through food, fun and frolic. Steve conducts live Interviews on many popular and controversial topics. Steve has candid conversations about fine dining to BBQ, cigars to cars, history making events and everything in between. Recently, we added a special monthly addition ion collecting Antique Phonographs with experts Wyatt Markus, and Collector/Dealers Joe Hough and Tracy McKinney. Sponsored by Premium Botanicals the maker of Herbal Spectrum a line of full spectrum Hemp based CBD products. http://www.mypbcbd.com
A Better Life New York
A Conversation with the Dyslexic Genus Hurt! Brett Hurt's Antique Phonograph Odyssey and Online Success.
CLICK HERE! To send us a message! Ask us a Question or just let us know what you think!
Wyatt Markus, Joe, Tracy and I, discover the captivating journey of Brett Hurt, affectionately known as Dyslexic Genius, a passionate luminary in the antique phonograph community. From stumbling upon a Victrola in an antique shop over four decades ago to producing 2,000 YouTube videos, Brett's story is a blend of dedication, trial, and triumph. Through hands-on learning and a genuine love for restoring vintage machines, he became a trusted resource for fellow enthusiasts, turning his hobby into a professional vocation that champions the preservation of mechanical skills in our digital world.
Brett’s journey through the world of YouTube began with a friend's simple suggestion and evolved into a comprehensive library of repair tips and phonograph concerts. Transitioning from California to South Carolina, Brett navigated the challenges of filming and built a community eager for his knowledge. His stories of discovering rare phonographs, negotiating deals, and fostering friendships reveal the rich tapestry of experiences within the phonograph community. Brett’s channel not only offers practical advice but also celebrates the enchanting stories behind these timeless machines.
Join us as we explore Brett's humorous anecdotes, heartwarming encounters, and insights into the phonograph market. From the art of negotiation to the joy of community connections, Brett’s tales offer valuable lessons for collectors and newcomers alike. Whether it’s an unexpected encounter on Facebook Marketplace or a memorable road trip to secure a treasure, Brett's experiences capture the essence of this fascinating hobby. Embrace the world of antique phonographs where passion, persistence, and camaraderie create lasting bonds and unforgettable stories.
Hello everybody and welcome back to A Better Life in New York. This is another one of the antique phonographs editions. So I'm back here with Joe Tracy and Wyatt Marcus, and today we have the specialist guest of the phonograph world, brett Hurt, better known as and Wyatt corrected me when I said it last time dyslexic genius. I got it right, hurt, and I happen to be severely dyslexic, by the way, just in case it's just serious. And also Cheryl is there in the background taking care of the cats. If anyone has watched his videos, they are a mainstay of the entire antique phonograph world. There isn't anything you run into a problem that you can't find a phonograph video on whether it's cleaning, whether it's oiling, whether it's refinishing, whether it's chemicals, whether it's a spring, whether it's all the things that I have no idea how to do, even when I watch the videos. But he does a great job doing it and he's just had his 2000th video, if you can imagine, on YouTube, which is quite an accomplishment for anyone. So welcome, brett. Thank you.
Speaker 2:We just hit a million views too.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:Nice.
Speaker 1:That's where it's at, so to speak, Last week.
Speaker 2:I don't know, Wednesday or so we hit a million views.
Speaker 5:Congratulations, that's a lot, that's a lot for a small niche community. I think I account for 100,000 of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've watched some of them again and again.
Speaker 5:We liked your one video, if I may, about the alligatoring. I think you were doing the wooden horn, yeah, and that was. I probably watched that five or six times. So we've actually applied that process to a couple of our machines and it worked just like you said it would, taking off the alligatoring yes, and the shellac.
Speaker 3:Yeah, every situation is different.
Speaker 1:I have a stand-up patrol. I look at it all the time and I'm afraid that I'm going to ruin it if I touch it and it's too big and heavy to take anywhere. But maybe I'll think about it. All these other experts here me, I'm just a moderator, brett. Maybe you can give us a little idea how you got into this.
Speaker 2:Roughly 40 years ago we were antiquing and lived in LA. I found a photograph it had to be fun to have. I had a radio and it played the wrong music and I thought, oh, that'll be fun to have one of those in the house. And the guy told me that it still had the original bailing wire on it and I had a hacksaw and file and tools. So I got the thing home and it didn't run. So I thought, well, maybe I can fix this. I started taking it apart and got the spring in backwards and all that up. Lo and behold, it was missing a governor weight in the spring and they wired it together, the governor together to run. And then I met Ray Phillips at the Rose Bowl swap meet. This nice guy was looking at record stuff and he goes oh, you know what you're looking at. I go yeah, I have a Vic Trolley and I thought it was the only one and he goes.
Speaker 4:Here's my number.
Speaker 2:You ever got a problem and I called him up because he lived in the LA area and I go where do I get parts? And he introduced me to Dwayne at Musical Americana and that's how it all started and that back in the day with duane you could go, yeah I have an exhibition.
Speaker 2:I need the gasket material, I need the isolator for the back. I figured all that out. He'd mail it to you and you'd send him a check. It was fun back then. That's how I started. Then I thought, hey, that was fun, let me find another one. So I went out and I think I found a junker mine and I spent a long time working on it cleaning it up and I go wow, this is fun. I'm going to print business cards and go to antique stores and tell them I know how to fix Victrola's. I had no idea, seriously. And then another guy, another collector, burt Paisley. I met him through Solvang Antique Center and I went to them and said you should go work for these guys. I'm doing motor stuff. So I started. That's how I started. Wow.
Speaker 2:Pretty much self-taught. Back in the day, the photograph guys would hey, man, how do you do this? Soak it in gasoline. How do you rebuild or reproduce or give it to me, I'll redo it for you. And I go no, I don't have the money for that. So I got to tell myself to run a lathe in the middle and it just snowballed from there. So when I was going to college I worked in an automotive restoration service and they were like rebuilding Duesenbergs. I was a flunky in Duesenberg engines while I was going to college and I learned a lot about chemicals and stuff they used and how they polished things. It was fun, but that's pretty much my life story right there.
Speaker 5:Can I ask you a question about how many machines do you think you've worked on or repaired, restored, roughed?
Speaker 2:I have no idea, but we do have a receipt book and I think I'm in my 15th receipt book. Cheryl kept them all. We have them all upstairs in a room. I'm going, I'm trying, and then when YouTube came out, I knew Ron Devil said he says oh, you should do YouTube. And I go, man, I don't know how to do YouTube. I'm not a tech guy and I have 10 machines to work on for people in the garage because I was working full time.
Speaker 2:And then down the road a buddy of mine bought an Army Navy and he said you really need to do YouTube. And that was really the first point we did. We didn't know how to do YouTube. So Cheryl got it, because we've moved to South Carolina from California, and she got on the town we're in, in Simpsonville. So she went to the Simpsonville Facebook page and said hey, man, do YouTube. And this nice lady said Meet me at Starbucks, I'll show you how to do YouTube. I didn't know you had to download the app to do YouTube and we fumbled through it.
Speaker 2:First we were filming this way and then somebody said we better film this way. So we were filming this way. And then somebody said we better film this way. So we started filming that way and then I thought, okay, we'll do friday night and sunday night concerts, try to build up a repertoire. And then the tip for the day thing. At the end, like I do videos, we're having wine in the evening and she says you need to do something for friday night concert. I said, okay, let me pick out a record, we'll play something. And then I did and that's my tip for the day. I just grabbed my class. It went over real well, but we've been real busy.
Speaker 1:We moved and I had to move the shop and everything and then it was really I know the other day when we spoke to check out the technology, you showed me a couple of your phonographs and you showed me which I know you rebuilt because I watched all the videos is the amberola 5 and I couldn't get over the the finish on that when you were opening and closing it. It was just amazing and I could probably search long and hard for a very long time and never find one with that quality of a finish on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like them because they have a flywheel in them, like an opera. They're totally gear driven, no belt. It's literally a baby opera. And I would buy one of those over an Amarillo 30 or Amarillo 50 because it runs so much better and it has a lot better sound on them. I think they're really good machines. They're underrated.
Speaker 3:Oh, they're terribly underrated, yeah.
Speaker 1:So for everybody's edification, that's never have any idea. This is Wyatt's thing. He always stops us so we can explain what we're talking about.
Speaker 3:Oh, right now you want me to explain things For everybody's edification that's never have any idea. This is why it's thing you always stop system. We can explain what we're talking about. Oh, right now you want me to explain things? Yes, for those of us that are uninitiated into what we're talking about, brett is a.
Speaker 1:YouTube phenomenon Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And what I love about Brett's videos is, if I have, I have a small phonograph business too. If someone asks me how do I do this, how do I do that, I'm like go to YouTube. There's this guy and he'll show you how to do it. And what I love, you've got 2000 videos covering a lot of different subjects. It's going to be on YouTube as a world reference for doing a lot of these repairs. And as we go into the cell phone, deeper into the cell phone and iPad era, people are becoming less mechanically inclined and it's awesome to just say this guy has a video on it. Sit down for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, watch him do it and you're going to learn something new. And everyone that knows me personally knows that I always encourage the teaching of these skills because that's how they get passed down and our skill set is slowly falling out of public favor. But we're doing everything we can to keep these skills out in front and it's important.
Speaker 5:The other thing to point out, if I may, is it's not like these machines require mostly require constant repair and attention. Right, you're bringing machines that have been sitting around for 80 years back to life. And there's a lot of them out there that have been sitting in attics. People pass away grandma, grandfather, and then oh, what's this? And people like Brett bring them back to life. Once we get these machines running, they're pretty solid. The thing is, they just need to be brought back to life.
Speaker 1:My point is that when we talk about an ambrose hive and this is what why it did last time we spoke on it is that ambrose five is a edison thomas edison phonograph that's made to play ambrose four minute cylinders. It is one of the more complete, more fancy, more.
Speaker 3:It's elegant.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and I have a 30 and a 50 and a DX and I've always wanted. Matter of fact, I have a diamond disc, which is another form of phonograph for Edison, where he made these regular discs, and a chalet, and when they showed me the picture of it, I thought it was an Amarillo 5, because it wasn't that great of a picture and I wanted it. And, the worst part, I go. I absolutely want it. I don't care, I'll be there. I got in my car, drove two hours into Connecticut to go pick it up. When I got there it was a chalet. I still wanted it, but it just was a lot heavier than I expected it to be.
Speaker 3:That's part of the experience. When I was very young, when I just started out in this, I put out this little tiny ad in the paper. It cost $15 a week.
Speaker 3:It only came out, I think in the Saturday edition, the weekend edition Wanted antique wind-up phonographs, because that's what a $15 ad gets you and going out. First of all, people didn't know how to explain to me what they had because it was such a foreign thing to them and with that chalet that you went out and bought. This is before sending text images with our cell phones you just went off of whatever they told you, and sometimes I would show up and, yeah, it would be a 220 pound machine that I couldn't move all by myself.
Speaker 4:And they said, oh, it's light, it's simple.
Speaker 3:And then you get there and they're like oh, I don't remember it being that big and heavy, and that was back in 1940 when you put it in the barn, when you were a strapping young man, right now. Yeah, and mice were living in it. That's another show entirely, but it's a learning experience for sure.
Speaker 2:Back in the day I couldn't afford them. They were expensive. So I was buying junkers, barn machines and redoing them. And I got a call 25, 30 years ago, this guy in Vegas Did you guys know Slim in Vegas? He was a big photographic guy. I had done some work for him in Vegas and somebody called him and he says he had two phonographs for sale and this is when an opera was going for $7,000. Yeah, back in the day and he goes I have two Edison machines, I want $2,000. And I'm thinking, holy crap, I don't have $2,000. And I'm thinking holy crap.
Speaker 2:I don't have $2,000. I'm paying the house off working hard. That's a lot of money to me, to us. So I go, Cheryl goes, let's go to Vegas. And look, I said, okay, we'll drive out to Vegas. I go out to Vegas. See this guy. And this is a long shot. What am I going to find? A junker home. I had a nice drive to Vegas.
Speaker 2:So he goes in the garage, he comes out, almost drops an opera on the ground, the horns in five pieces, the cabinets crushed and the paint's falling off of the reproducers there. And I'm going okay, I'll pay two grand for this. Then he goes in and he brings out a Triumph E with a signal in the same condition, and I'm going, wow. So then I get him home and I called Ray Phillips and I said could you come over and look at this? And he goes oh sure.
Speaker 2:And he came over and he brought Ron Devilsen and I showed him the opera and sitting on the dining table, I'm real proud of it. I have very few phonographs at the time and don't know as much as I know now. And Ray goes oh, two grand for that, you can put that all back there. That was a real good price. And Ron's standing there and I go no, I bought both of them for two thousand dollars and they went. Holy crap. Yeah, you know, I had it stripped down and taught myself to pinstripe and I did all this stuff to it, but they came out one thing about ray phillips is that he taught people never to take the first offer, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's what I learned from him. I feel like even it's a fine line when you're out there buying in the world If someone, yeah, brings out a $6,000 machine. Yeah, you did the right thing.
Speaker 2:And I did a video on that called walkaways. You walk up it's in the videos, say you go, this guy has a ton of 78s, you want to go buy them, you want to go through them. And this is all personal experience. So I go over there and the guy goes yeah, I went through it, I grabbed 30 78s, let me see what they sell for on eBay. It wouldn't give me a price. So I let him sit in his house and go through eBay and I said, yeah, it changed my mind a little bit. Yeah, you have to do it. It's like buying photographs. You see a Vic 11 and the guy goes yeah, I want $1,200.
Speaker 2:Yeah a little high five. There's another one out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's another one out there. Yeah, oh yeah, praise experiences with people, brett. Did I ever tell you there was? I got a call. This is 17 years ago. This elderly man called me and he said he had an edison phonograph. He doesn't know what it is.
Speaker 3:Joe and tracy may have heard story before, but they said we have a steamer trunk full of cylinder records that go along with it. And I said, great, I drove four and a half hours out to their house. I walk in the door. On the floor is an Ambarola 30, which is the small, is an Ambarola 30, which is the small, little inexpensive Ambarola that they had back in the day, and it was positioned on the floor in front of a microphone. And what this couple would do is they would take a cylinder out of this huge travel trunk full of cylinders and they would play it through the microphone and amplify it through the stereo system so they could hear it.
Speaker 3:And I'm looking at this a little crestfallen. I drove four hours but I said oh, okay, I see the machine that you've got there. I know what that is. With conviction in his eyes, he looks at me eye to eye and his wife is in a rocking chair in the corner just knitting and rocking away and he says, should we sell it to him? And the wife says, yep, we'll sell it to him. I don't need to keep these things. We're getting on. I'm 87. He's 89. We don't need it anymore. I'm like, okay, that's the first phonograph that Edison ever made. I'm like, oh, all right, what up, keep going. She's like we won't let it go for anything less than $12,000. Oregon buy it.
Speaker 3:And I said I don't think I'm a buyer at that price, but gosh, I sure have driven out quite a way to get here. So this guy, who is 89, he grabs a fiddle and he starts. He sits back, he says we've come all this way, you might as well get a concert. So he sits back and he plays me all these songs using this technique that he calls double strings. He's playing two strings, two different notes on two different strings. It was memorable and amazing. I'll never forget them. I did not buy the machine, I didn't even bother to negotiate, I just sat and enjoyed. And then he grabs this banjo with a resonator on it and he starts playing the banjo. And I'm just blown away. This guy's been playing since he was 10 years old. And that's the hunt. That's what I love doing. I like the chase, not so much the kill, but the chase is fun the chase is better.
Speaker 1:Go look at something yeah, yeah, it's always an adventure yeah, I had a woman reach out to me on facebook and said she had some 78 records from like the 20s and 30s and she wasn't far from my house and she wanted 50 bucks for them or something. And she had about 100 or something records and they're all acoustic. And I said to her, just out of curiosity, I'm walking out. And I said, by the way, what were you playing this on? She goes oh, I have this old phonograph and I'm like you don't want to show it to me. I mean, if you're not going to have any records, no sense of having the phonograph. So she calls to her son do you want to sell that thing? She brings out and it was a 50, vv50, the portable one with the crank in the front, the earlier model, and she goes I go what do you want for it? She goes 50 bucks. So it was great, jeez.
Speaker 3:I am just over, and it works fantastically. By the way, they were so well built and so well engineered. They usually just need a little bit of grease and a little bit of oil and they just keep running. It's amazing, you just you had me thinking, since we're talking about ambarolas and small machines, oh, there was this guy that called me. His father had passed away. Sorry, I'm full of stories. I'll make this one very quick, but they had an Ambarola 50.
Speaker 3:I walk into the house. He shows me this Ambarola 50. And while I'm looking over the records, there's about 200 records on the table. There's some great stuff Jazz, foxtrots, all the good stuff is on the table. And while he's showing me the machine, his cantankerous mother starts creeping down the stairs. She's stomping down the stairs, creaking on the stairs creaking, and you can hear she's upset, you selling your father's machine and he's Mom. We agreed that we wouldn't be keeping it. That's one thing that he really enjoyed. And she goes up to it and you can't make this stuff up. She starts stroking the top of the cabinet and she leans over and she plants her big lips right on it and kisses the cabinet.
Speaker 3:And now I feel like I'm the bad guy and I said are you sure you want to sell this to me? And they're like oh, and the mother has a tantrum and just walks off. The guys tell you what? It's $710, which was a lot of money for me at the time. And he's like why don't you just look at the records? And I'm going to go talk to her and cool her down and talk about the machine.
Speaker 3:So I took, of course, I got all the good records and I set them aside and I said, okay, I'll give you $100 for all these records here. And the mother looked at them and then she just nodded, yeah, and I said this way you can keep the machine a little longer. And she smiled at me, gave me a little box for the records and led me out the front door. And the sons will talk in the future, I'll call you. So I'm going down the front steps, I'm going down the driveway to where my car was parked and she started screaming at him and it started. I heard everything. Single pane glass window.
Speaker 6:She said he took all the best records. You should have never invited him over here. Well, this machine's never complete anymore. Your father's looking down at us and he's just weeping right now I can feel it and then she starts grabbing her pearls and I'm like, oh god, now I feel horrible.
Speaker 3:You take it. So what happens next week? I felt so bad. I lost sleep over this. I called them in five days. I said hi, does your mother still want to sell the machine? Yeah, so what happened? I went back and I paid $710 to her for the machine with the remaining records, and that's the story.
Speaker 2:My best story and I've told very many people about this was an antique store in Englewood and I'm in there.
Speaker 1:I know that store In North.
Speaker 2:Jersey, in Englewood Emerald 30?.
Speaker 1:No, I know that store you were in an antique store in north jersey 30. No, I know that store you were in, antique store number. Any guy wants a thousand dollars for everything yeah.
Speaker 2:So I go in there and they have an amber all 30 apart. Okay, and I've probably been playing with phonographs over a year and I look at this thing and it's an Amber old 30. This is great and this is when I have my little business cards and having fun, mostly to hunt, like Wyatt. But the husband's gone, the lady's gone, the husband's here and I go what do you want for all those parts? He goes 100 bucks. Okay, everything's here. I go what do you want for all those parts? He goes $100. Okay, everything's here. I go home. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I rebuild this whole thing, put it all back together, I make it run, do everything. I think I know what to do. So I take the machine back to them and go this is the work I do. Here's the phonograph, they're both there, I play it. I said this is the work I do. Here's the phonograph, they're both there, I play it. I said this is the phonograph work I do. People come in and want the phonograph, I worked on it and they send me the business. And when people would send me business, I'd always take the antique store. Whoever a bottle Max, I appreciate this. I go in there and I'm happy and I'm good, I crack it up. It plays Patsy, does you? Screwed me.
Speaker 2:Never went back to that yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she was nuts that happens oh yeah, these people are just like okay, I'm out of here, most people are fine. When we moved to South Carolina, I put my cards out and stuff a little bit and these people called me and they're about 45 minutes away. So we drove out to look at this phonograph and tell them what they had. They had an early Victor. It was like a 16 with a door in the back that opens up. And I said, oh, this is a nice Victor, three spring motor. It's a real nice machine, I said, but it has a door in the back. I said it's against the wall.
Speaker 2:If the house gets robbed, nobody's going to walk out the house with a big trollop, unless they're really strong. I said you can just open that door and put jewelry or money in there. And the lady's sitting there, these two people are like in their 80s and she goes yeah, I've been putting money back there for a long time, saving money for a long time. And these people are like in a mobile home. And then the husband goes you're putting money back there. And she goes yeah, he says so am I. So we turned around and there was like tons of cash in the back of the snake. That's awesome.
Speaker 4:Joe and I have bought a couple of junkers just in hopes that there's money in there One of these days we're going to find one with the stash of cash in there, but we haven't found it yet. But you find these ones even in antique stores. You just got to look. Make sure there's nothing hidden back there. We found one with the original stuffing shipping stuffing in there and I was so excited because I thought, for sure there's something under there. Nothing.
Speaker 2:I bought a I think it was a Victor V a while back and I opened it up and you never see these, the little wooden piece that fit under the motor for support when they ship was still in there. Wow, that's pretty impressive yeah.
Speaker 3:The best thing I ever found in a machine was an uncirculated 1914 penny. That was about it.
Speaker 2:Any of you guys know Burt Paisley. He's out of California. Heard the name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was over at his house, marina Del Rey, once, and on a shelf in his house he had these flapper silk nylons with a line up the back and I'm going, oh okay, he pulls them out and he goes yeah, I had them cleaned. And he points over to his credenza and he goes, yeah, when I took my, my credenza apart, those were inside the credenza from 1920 animal droppings I did, though I got a machine in.
Speaker 2:today I got a victor of 420. I have to do total ground up thing on and we're pulling it apart because I got to strip it down and refinish it. And Cheryl found a letter the machine's from El Paso Texas and there was a letter inside, mailed from Mexico to El Paso Texas, with a nice little 10-cent Mexican stamp. It's on video already and it was oh, my dear sister, I'm feeling better. Yada, yada, yada. It's all in Spanish. You can see it in the video, but the handwriting is unbelievable. The cursive writing is just fabulous looking. I have to give that to my customer.
Speaker 1:I had a friend that bought a captain's desk from an old sailing ship and it spent a fortune sailing ship and when they spent a fortune of money and when they got it home they were cleaning it out and they opened the drawer and stuck in the back drawer was a stamp and they took the stamp out and it turned out that the stamp was an original handwritten stamp by the United States Post Office. Oh my gosh, and it was worth a million dollars. So things like that happen.
Speaker 4:Just not to us.
Speaker 1:Obviously. That's why we're doing podcast.
Speaker 2:My camera associate producer gets mad. Yeah, he goes. Brett, if I don't understand what you just said, nobody out there in YouTube land is going to understand what you said. You need to dumb this down. So I understand and everybody else understands, and sometimes we have three or four.
Speaker 1:So what? I have great editing software, so I edit things. I I had somebody on once a while ago and we were talking and I make and sell CBD and I had somebody on and I couldn't understand anything they said about explaining it. I literally took it apart sentence by sentence and pieced it back together so it made sense. It's easy to do if you know how.
Speaker 2:I don't write a script on the videos how people set all this stuff up. I just want to come in three or four minutes and I want to be out and I just do it off the top of my head what I'm doing, but it's in little segments. Like I'm doing a Columbia machine right now I have the whole run of the Columbia machine. This is the Columbia four-spring motor. Okay, let's start taking this thing apart and I show you how to take it apart and then how to put it back together and how to grease it. I do a whole string of videos now on things you can do it anywhere in the world. I do it chemically and everything else on how you can do it, like in India or Brazil or South Korea or any place. And I have FaceTime a few people. I FaceTimed a guy in Brazil once and he had an idea. They speak Portuguese, he has a friend of his who speaks English and we're doing translation over FaceTime.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is how you fix it to make it work. I've done a lot of that. I do all that for free. I get no money off youtube because it's all for free and I've done a lot. I just did a guy in switzerland. I think I helped him. He had a. He had a problem with the machine. I said, okay, this ain't set. You send me a picture and then I can tell you how to do it.
Speaker 1:I. I think that's what's impressive about all the videos and everything you guys do is that it's dedication to the hobby, to make it live forever, to give people, um, whether you don't know and we talked about this the other day a little bit is that and and the three of us have talked there are four of us have talked about it too is to try to make this available to others who don't want to be, who are on the outside and don't really know. They know you crank it up and you put a cylinder on, but they don't know if it's a black cylinder or a blue cylinder or what difference is or what the reproducers are, and they have a lot of simple questions and some people just don't want to help others, as a matter of fact, criticize people for asking basic questions. I won't say stupid questions, but basic questions, and I think that's important that we all do that. I don't know much.
Speaker 1:There are a few things I know. I know the difference between a C reproducer and an H reproducer. I know the difference between a diamond and a sapphire. I know the difference of things like that. So there are things to say and we all have had problems and figured them out or had somebody figure them out for us, and that's what's great about your videos is that you're constantly explaining things in a way for anybody, even me, to understand how you do it. Whether I can accomplish a task, that's another story, but I find it interesting just to learn how it is together, and I find that the technology of these phonographs are so basic and complex all at the same time. It's pure genius excuse the expression, pure genius of how these things are put together in the simplest terms, and that's why they still run. Of how these things are put together in the simplest terms, and that's why they still run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the biggest thing I get is my Victrola. I'm just using that as nomenclature for all of it. It doesn't run. I had a guy email us and he had a D and I go, okay, great, it's not running. It's slowing down three quarters of the way in. I go, okay.
Speaker 2:I said it can be a lot of variables. I said the problem with the D is you've got one little spring in there. And the guy goes the guy I bought it from said they put a new spring in it. I'm thinking, yeah, I go, why don't you crank it all the way up until the crank gets really tight? I get an email back. Wow, this thing plays. I go, yeah, I know it plays. Those little single spring motors you got to especially like on Vickers, you got to crank them up. But that's the biggest thing I get is the OCD. I bought it from this guy and he told me to crank it 15 times and now it won't play a 78. And I go, yeah, why don't you crank it all the way up and always let it run all the way down?
Speaker 1:and people put modern records on these things they put and all kinds of things, even just electrical, electronically recorded ones. They're not necessarily, though some play them. They're not really made for them and there's many that don't. And it's not that they don't run right, it's just that they're not made to play those things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it all comes down to education, with these having to educate the world. There are several resources on the Internet, and I haven't been to antiquephonoorg, which is the Antique Phonograph Society in the United States, but last I was told there are supposedly resources on there for people to access so they can learn. What is my record worth? What type of record should I be playing on my machine? Stuff like that.
Speaker 1:There are, but I think they're a little dated. I found them not easy to use. I didn't find them that. There are, but I think they're a little dated. I found them not easy to use. I didn't find them that, at least for me. I think you learn more from just talking to everybody and I thought, going to Wayne's show, which is the only show I've ever been at now I've been there three times that I've learned a lot from people. In the beginning people maybe not have been as receptive because I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Maybe people maybe not have been as receptive because I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Maybe I was shy about it. But as time went on and this time especially because I was with these two gentlemen, so that was a help People talked to me and I learned a lot more and I negotiated a lot more.
Speaker 1:Because you don't really it comes to a point you don't really need anything, right. You see something you want. You know that there's another, it's not. If it's something special that you know you're not going to see, you never saw before, you're not going to see for a while. But when you average everything like I bought a Victor IV, not the Roman numeral IV, the V, whatever, it is Victrola IV, yeah, victrola IV. And it came with a matching cabinet, and I have one already. But it didn't have the cabinet and I couldn't buy the cabinet without buying the machine. So I dragged my feet and dragged my feet, and dragged my feet and I got it for half of what he had offered to me when I was there.
Speaker 1:So oh, that was at the Wayne Show, that's right, and that's why now I have one in my office and one in my house.
Speaker 3:Oh good, can't have too many the VV4, it's an excellent wedding present for a young couple. If you want to just surprise everyone there, oh, here you go, I've got you this.
Speaker 1:I have a hard time with separating myself from a photograph.
Speaker 5:I may have purchased.
Speaker 1:Or, stephen, you did mention the other day that it's getting close to the time where you might consider selling something there are two only because I'm ready to take the next step, like I bought. So I bought my first Triumph and I bought it at auction. It was rather cheap, except it was a little bit needed work. We're lucky enough to know somebody who's very good at Edison, ed Warner. He loves the project and the more difficult it is, the more he likes it. He'll call me five times a day oh I got this done, oh, this broke, but I got this. I got another piece, I put a thing and then I had a Fireside that had a which is another Edison model, just so everybody listening knows and it had this beautiful signet wood horn on it. And I said, man, I bet you that would look pretty good on my Triumph. So I brought him that one. I had him take everything off of it and put the wood horn on the Triumph, and then I bought a regular black horn that I haven't put on yet for the fireside.
Speaker 3:This is the psychology of phonographs. Yeah, I can see it in your eyes while you're talking about it.
Speaker 5:He also had to change the carriage configuration for that other horn.
Speaker 1:Because it only had two minute with a C-reproducer and now has a two and four minute and has what is it? The horizontal top with an H. Is that what's on it? An H.
Speaker 5:I don't remember, or K, no K, k Would have K, you got the insert, so it would fit the K.
Speaker 1:So now I have this beautiful thing that I love to just sit and play.
Speaker 2:Triumphs are great. Two-inch springs, three of them, wind them up. They run forever. The only thing is, if you have more than two springs, people don't wind them all the way up. And then when they wind them up, if they have never redone the spring barrels, then the graphite and stuff in there that sticks together and then you'll hear this thump sound On Tri tri-amp shaft wind them all the way up. They need to be oiled more than normal because of that. The only downfall of a tri-amp the whole motor is the pop metal pull. They're starting to deteriorate right now and usually they're locking down on the shaft where they go between the two parts of the casting.
Speaker 3:You mean one of these?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Just happen to have one with you, huh I happen to be at thephonographshopcom.
Speaker 3:I am their guest today.
Speaker 2:I just happened to find this.
Speaker 3:when I came in. What did you say? I'm sorry, you're at Brian's, I'm at Brian's.
Speaker 4:Tell Brian, we all say hi, hi, brian Well he's out in the shop making springs right now.
Speaker 3:I would be out there cutting steel with him and winding him up. But I saw this little pulley sitting on his table here, so I figured I'd grab it.
Speaker 1:So make sure he knows he's next on the agenda, okay, why?
Speaker 3:oh sure, my microphone's, here I'll be right back.
Speaker 2:You guys talk okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, now we can talk about brett now that he's gone. Okay, so I was. The thing is so I'm I'm spending the night at Brett's house. Okay, I get up in the guest room. What'd you say?
Speaker 4:Brett's or Brian's.
Speaker 3:Brett, okay, yeah. So I'm there in the guest room and then the next morning I wake up, I look on the wall and there's this full color photo on the wall of him in a karate robe costume. It's called a gi. It's called a gi and he is in the air doing a flying kick. What did I do? And I'm like what in? So I go downstairs, we talk about it and after a few glasses of wine because you can't hang out with Brett and just drink water, a few cups of wine.
Speaker 3:He stands up, we're in his den and he's come on, punch me. I'm like what, no? Of course not. I don't want to know and he's come on, do it. I do a slow motion punch at him. It lands on his chest In half a second. He had me immobilized. He is a walking Harder when I was 10.
Speaker 5:Same time as collecting.
Speaker 3:But it's fascinating. This is part of the phonograph community. You get to meet different people and you get to learn about them personally, and that's one of the things I love about Brett and Cheryl. One is the shrimp and grits that they make. I love shrimp and grits oh yeah, and just learning about other people's lives and, of course, sharing as well. It's part of the community aspect of this little hobby of ours.
Speaker 4:The interesting thing about the fact that you're at Brian's house is we talked about it in the last show. We used to live what 15 minutes from Brian. He's the first person we met in the phonograph community when we bought our first phonograph and he told us how to do the basics and what he was doing to fix our first machine and then showed us his museum, if you will, in his house, and at that point we were hooked because we'd never seen a cylinder and we're just like what is that? What is that? And, of course, got bit by the bug.
Speaker 4:And then after that, when we were trying to look at things, I believe he's the one that told us about Brett's website. So we would call Brian about stuff and then we would look at Brett's website and I'm pretty sure Joe called you a couple of times about things way back when we started. And then somehow we got hooked up with Wyatt. We are collecting and repairing and selling, and doing all that we do is because the three of you shared your knowledge so willingly that it welcomed us with open arms, and now we've made friends and are in the community and meeting new people. We haven't met you in person yet, Brett, but we feel like we know you and Cheryl your angel, if you will.
Speaker 4:I believe that's what you call her. Yeah, Thank you for all you do and make sure you give Brian a big hug for us and tell him we said hello because that's how we got started. You need to try a pulley in 6061.
Speaker 3:What, oh, you're turning them out of aluminum? Yeah, they never. Well, uh, somewhere here there is a small inventory of pulleys out of turned aluminum. I don't know if he knows where they are or if they're on his website, but they're solid. They don't have the holes drilled in them or milled into them, but easy enough to add. But I'll be. I'll be looking through parts all day tomorrow, maybe even later tonight. I'm so hopped up on coffee I'll probably be out in the shop with my headlamp until about 1230.
Speaker 1:What do you need? Parts for something Wyatt?
Speaker 3:It's funny Every time I want to get away from work I end up driving somewhere that is phonograph related, like last time I went to Joe and Tracy's and now here I am. I drove 11 hours to get down here to look for parts, and it's to keep my business running. I need oddball. Reproduce your parts.
Speaker 3:Springs, clips screws all these little things that I don't know that I'm going to need them, but if I see them and I use my imagination, I'll be like, yeah, I should probably get that because someone's going to send me whatever to work on a re-producer.
Speaker 5:While you're there, can you find those tiny little screws? Hinge blocks. That plus those tiny little screws that hold the Columbia spring barrel have clamshells together. Those little tiny ones. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the only place we're going to get those is off of a parts motor. At this point I don't even think Ron had those in stock. I think he just took them off of parts motors.
Speaker 4:So they're the same as the Grafinole.
Speaker 3:I forget the spring, it's the threading. I think they're 440.
Speaker 5:Why they ever went to that design I don't know, but they used number six of them, and you can get away with maybe missing one or two, but not four, right? I'll see what I can find.
Speaker 3:Another thing that, since this is about Brett, I don't want to talk about myself anymore. I don't want to talk about myself anymore. What I really loved watching when I was at Brett's house is that his wife is part of the show. I showed up one day and there she is polishing this horn very skillfully in his workshop and doing an amazing job, and she seemed to enjoy it. It's like a thing that couples do together and it was really great synergy. There's wonderful energy there and I admire that. Couples that can I just I did too, yeah and joe and tracy are another example.
Speaker 1:They really you go in the downstairs, you see her workbench and whatever else goes on and you know that there's a division of labor there she does one thing and he does the other and I do neither. So it works well for me, because I, I'm just gonna give, I'm just gonna give this to you. I'm not even gonna take it home, I'm not gonna look at it, I'm not gonna see if I can get it to run. I, I'm not going to do any of those things.
Speaker 5:I'm just going to give it to you. I can't remember if it was Wyatt or Brett who pointed out that there are so many different talents in repairing these machines, because you have woodwork, you've got nickel plating, you've got spring motors, you've got grease, you've got oil, you've got all sorts of different things.
Speaker 3:It's a multidisciplinary art.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so Tracy and I, as you mentioned, stephen Tracy works on the reproducers and she does a fantastic job at them and I do the other stuff, and we both clean cabinets and stain.
Speaker 4:Shellac.
Speaker 1:You did a great job, by the way, on my Sonora. I love that thing.
Speaker 5:That was a fun machine. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:I don't know what model is that. Do you remember I do beautiful. I don't know what model is that.
Speaker 5:Do you?
Speaker 1:remember.
Speaker 4:I do not. I forget, it was a tabletop.
Speaker 1:It's a low profile and it's a little bit wider than the others and I haven't seen it around hardly at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I bought that and the B80 that Brett saw the other day when we were talking and back at me at an auction and strangely enough, joe had bought something at that auction too. So I was able to go upstate and get it all, pick it all up and it was like walking back in time. It was an old barn in this auction house. They're all talking. I I couldn't even. They had such accents. You know, in rural new york I couldn't understand what they were saying and I pop in my mercedes, a city slicker, and like you guys, just you know I'm like I grabbed a kid. Here's 20 bucks. Please carry everything out and just put it in my car.
Speaker 3:I showed up at a country auction once and I bought this. They had an Edison standard there and to further illustrate how country this place was, I bought a little graphophone for $250. I think I paid $400 for the standard and I got a round of applause and as if that's how it is in this little one horse town. But I grabbed my stuff, I turn around and start walking out and this dude walks after me. Start walking out and this dude walks after me and he follows me out of the tent and I'm at my car and he yells at me from the tent he's this, here's my territory. Who do you think you are? You see, this is almost 20 years ago and I remember it as if it was yesterday that's haunting you a little bit, but.
Speaker 3:But when I leave an auction you know a country auction where I'm the only guy that buys the phonograph stuff that image, that mental video, keeps it's rewind and play over and over again in my mind because it left a little fear in me and it also made me self-aware of exactly what I was doing and it's have I offended anyone? I'm always concerned about offending other people there, but if you want something a bit more than me, yeah, so it's also difficult when you're doing estate sales and estate auctions.
Speaker 4:Right, because it's emotional for some people. If it's there, if they're doing it and you don't want to offend and they think something might be worth more than it is, you don't want to offend them by saying it's not, but to them it's, the value is different. Right, it's tough when you go to certain places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the stuff is still out there. Definitely, most definitely. I have a 78 major collector in town. He went to a yard sale last year. A buddy of his called and said they have 78s. This is a guy with 200,000 78s and he goes in there it's 50 cents a box and he flips through it and he comes to a brown vocalion, ooh, ooh, and he pulls it out and it's Charlie Patton. Nobody knows that's major money.
Speaker 3:Major money.
Speaker 2:Like 10 grand. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is it our job to educate the seller and say oh yeah, by the way, I just pulled an Edison disc out of your collection worth $800. Tell you what, to be fair to you, why don't I give you $775? Why don't I give you $7.75? I've had to deal with it. I guess it's an education on how to deal with people when you're the buyer and they're the seller.
Speaker 4:It was my great-grandfather's.
Speaker 3:I have to say breathe in, breathe out. I deal in dollars. I don't deal in sentiment and emotion, just trying to get a price out of someone.
Speaker 3:One of my tricks that was taught to me almost 20 years ago as well Everything's 20 years ago, I guess I've been in this a while Was when someone has something that you would like to purchase, you say how much is it? And what we usually get I know everyone else here has may have experienced this the seller says I don't know. And this is a very dangerous spot because if I know that after I fix a machine up it could be 1500 bucks, I obviously want to get it for 500 or less, and I said whatever price I give you isn't going to matter.
Speaker 3:If you don't have an expectation in your head, why don't we start here? You have a number in your head that will satisfy you. If I say $2, you're going to say no immediately, so why don't you give me the price that is going to satisfy you and we'll start there?
Speaker 3:And that about 90% of the time works and most of the time it's a price that's way below what I'm willing to pay and I'll have to boost up a little bit, because if they find the crank to the machine, if the crank's missing or if they find the record collection that originally came with it, I want them to be comfortable knowing that they can call me when they find that and not feel like they got screwed on their family's antique. There's a very fine line when you're the buyer. But yeah, at the same time, if I found a Charlie Patton 78, I might hey. They called the price 50 cents a box. That's what it's worth to them. They stated that, but obviously every situation is different.
Speaker 2:Right now is a great time buying phonographs, because the prices have just cratered. This used to be $1,200, and I spent that back in the day. I'm on my 50s. I'm on my sixth credenza.
Speaker 3:I have a cool leather.
Speaker 2:Look at credenzas $350. I'm going, damn, if I was a collector, starting over just into this hobby, I'd buy it. You could get really good deals on these. Do research, call people or ask questions online about what do you think this is? It's like eBay. People call us or mostly email us what's this worth? I'm going to put it on eBay. I go. You can put it on eBay for $20,000 and it's going to sit there forever. You can sell it for $30. What you do is you go to eBay and you go, let's say you look at a Vick 11. I go go to eBay and there's that little thing up there at the top and you go what have they sold for and how many haven't sold at this price? And you go oh, so this thing is really worth $200.
Speaker 3:There's this technique when I used to sell Volkswagens. I call it the snake. So you say so, mr Smith, this Victrola 11 that you have I know you're asking, you know, $250 for it, but on average they sell for about $100. I mean, wouldn't you agree that's a good price? That's the snake. They see you nodding in their head and you ask open-ended questions what do you tell you? What, mr Smith? How do you feel about selling it to me for $100? Because then they have to sit and think in words in their head instead of. Will you take $100? No, because no is easy to say. There's another thing salesmanship of the talking machine Horse trading is what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's what it is, but I love it. I do something different. I routinely end up with people whose family member love this, whether it's a husband, whether it's a father, whatever. I go on and on about how I'm a collector, not a dealer, and I'm going to treasure it like they treasured it and it means a lot to me and they feel that this treasured phonograph that was a part of their family is going to be in a great home with someone who's going to treasure it, and then I always walk away with it.
Speaker 3:I have friends that go in. They're choir boys, I call them. They're major collectors.
Speaker 6:But they go in and say oh, I've never seen anything like that before. Oh, I wish I could afford it. It would look so good in my collection Next to my VV50 and my Victor 1. It would be so perfect there, and I don't know if I have the money and oh, I can see you really want it.
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, you can have it for $200 or whatever for some people. I've seen it all. I have seen it all oh, some of these stores.
Speaker 2:I bought my Beethoven, sonic. I have both versions. All oh, some of these stores. I'll tell you a story. I bought my Beethoven, yeah, sonic. I have both versions, schubert and Beethoven and I love Beethoven. It holds a gazillion records, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I drive to Alabama to pick this thing up. My buddy Howard wanted to go. Cheryl came, we all drove down in his pickup truck and I got there. I paid $350 for the Beethoven yeah, and he had two worker guys because they were getting rid of grandma's stuff. So I paid him $20 to throw that massive 300-pound thing in the back. And then he had some other parts. He had the elbows to a Victor Horn outside horn machine the elbow, and I looked down at him. A side horn machine the elbow. And I looked down at him and Ron Sitko's old elbows he had done have two little pins sticking out. So I'm looking down at these and he has one that's not the nickels off of it, it was brass. And I thought, oh, this is nice, I'll just buff that out and I'll re-nickel it. So I set him down, thought, oh, this is nice, I'll just buff that out and I'll re-nickle it. So I set it down and he goes. What? Do you give?
Speaker 2:me, I give you $50. That's a fair price for it. He goes hey, you're trying to screw me. Talks to the wiper. This guy just starts going off.
Speaker 1:I hope you had the photograph on the truck already. I hope you had the photograph on the truck already.
Speaker 2:The other story is my buddy, Taylor Sherrill in Kentucky. I hope I get this right. I always get confused with Tennessee or something where he lives. He texts me and he goes Brett, an Amarillo 1A in your neighborhood. So I call this guy, I get on Facebook Marketplace $700. And I go, okay, hey man, I'll pick it up right now at 7 o'clock at night, let's go, I'll get back to you. I said, okay, the guy goes dark. And this guy's a whack-a-doodle. He goes dark and I say, so what can I pick this up? And they do go dark on you. So he goes. He's an estate salesman.
Speaker 2:So he's in Anderson, which is like a little over an hour away, and the lady's house is in the gated community. I'm like, okay, I'll meet you there, I'll put in a nap, drive down, I'll pick this thing up. There's your money, cash, let's go. So I get there, but with the electric gates open. So I pull in and there's a parking place, a parking lot across from this house by the pool area. So I parked there and Cheryl texted and said yeah, we're here in front of the house by the pool, the gate was open.
Speaker 2:This guy pulls up the side of my car. So I parked here and he pulls in like this, he rolls down the window and this guy is screaming at me. It's coming out of his mouth and I'm thinking, okay, I'm taking a beating for this guy, but you gave me a price $700 on an A1. I'm going to take it. It has both reproducers. So we're climbing the stairs. It's upstairs. My poor angel had to help me do this. So we climb upstairs and the guy's screaming at me and the old lady who's selling off the estate of the house tells this guy calm down. I go, okay, Cheryl goes. What are we going to do? I says, okay, I got a plastic bag.
Speaker 2:We'll pull all the cylinders out of the machine, put them in a plastic trash bag that's the way to carry them and I'll pull the motor. So I pulled the motor, took it back to the car, got the cylinders out and I started to roll it to the staircase. It wouldn't help us. And I started to roll it to the staircase it wouldn't help us. Oh, I have a bad back, you can't roll it. So we had to pick this thing up and Cheryl's not that strong. So I rolled it and we did the ass bump down these staircases Right and I got it to the down and the guy's still screaming, spit's coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 2:And I got to go from the bottom of the staircase to the front door. I just pushed it on hard floors and the guy's screaming at me. What happened was he had a jukebox and he wanted a jukebox was like three grand and then when I checked the price, the jukebox was probably worth $500. He had his prices split and it was fun. But my, it was great help helping me get it down and we got it into the Prius and drove home. But sometimes you have to take the screaming to get what you need. And it was crazy, the guy coming out of the mouth. I'm up, I'm walking up the staircase and he's just going. I'm going. Okay, brett, be calm, don't yell at anybody. I'm not really a yeller guy Scream, but we got it out the door.
Speaker 5:Tracy and I must be doing something wrong.
Speaker 2:Nobody has screamed at us, not yet the first and only one that ever screamed at me.
Speaker 5:Maybe we're paying too much money. That's why.
Speaker 2:And then Cheryl was going to go. He sells on Facebook Marketplace. I'm going to give him a bad review Before we got in the car and drove out he blocked it.
Speaker 1:I saw another Sonora tabletop in Facebook Marketplace and the guy couldn't sell it or whatever he said. So I said no, I'll definitely take it, but you gotta ship it to me. It was up in someplace up by the adirondacks and I said ship it to me. And he's I, I want to find a cheap way, cheapest way to ship it. And I said he goes, I think I could do it for 25. I said I'll give you 50. I don't just pack it up extra, buy whatever, do it the easiest way. I don't care, just make sure it gets packed. So the guy goes dark. So I'm riding him and I'm like I guess you're not going to sell it to me and I'm being polite but a little stern. Then I found out the guy passed away. He sold it.
Speaker 1:And I felt horrible because I was really not nasty yeah.
Speaker 5:That's a legit excuse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's pretty legit and I ended up getting the one I really like anyway, which is I like better than the one he had for sale.
Speaker 2:You always have to be nice when you're going. There are some a-holes like this guy screaming at us, but most of the time I try to be just like real nice and real friendly. Yeah it, I'm trying to be just like real nice and real friendly. Yeah, it's like on the phonograph forums you get on the forums and there's people in there that are just yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm always going. You've got to love what you do. You've got to love what you buy. Enjoy what you want to have as a phonograph and be nice to people. Somebody will go in there. Let's say, buy a Vic-11 and they'll strip it all down, they'll refinish it. But they're stripping it down and refinishing it to what they like and then you get people that go. That wasn't all. Original Made a million Vic-11s, nine hundred and some thousand, probably over a million People don't realize it, like you were saying. That's why I was saying, saying that's the only Edison they ever made. Oh yeah, on an Amarillo 30 they made millions of these things. And it's just like when I'm on a farm I got somebody does a restoration or something or does some work.
Speaker 2:oh, man you did a great job because you can always learn from everybody. I'm still.
Speaker 3:There was this one, edison, that I did not buy, but I had to restore it for somebody, actually unrestore it. It was owned by a doctor who did all of his own restoration work and he stripped the cabinet of all of its finish, all of its finish, and then he put on a really thick coat of urethane. It looked like a bar top, it was so it looked almost plastic. And if that wasn't bad enough, on the inside of the cabinet, the entire inside was also brushed with this thick layer of urethane and so that it would float in the ocean, because that's the only reason why I think he did this.
Speaker 3:he took silicone caulk and on the no, this is not, I'm not making this up On the inside of the cabinet, he put caulk down all of the seams between the boards so that it was completely watertight.
Speaker 3:They were on a houseboat. I don't know All of his machines. He had about 75 machines. They were all restored like this and all the nickel was stripped and redone. All the felt was ripped off and replaced. They all looked over-restored. They looked like they were made out of molded plastic. That's how much urethane the guy put on these, and to get urethane off a cabinet you have to have a really strong furniture stripping uh solution. But I put on three coats of this stuff and let it work for an hour.
Speaker 3:It barely touched it it was something it maybe was marine urethane, I don't know, it was strong Story of machines. People are going to buy them, as you said, do them up as they like. There are several phonograph dealers out there now that only sell things that look shiny, with new nickel and new finish, and they're perfect and they're priced accordingly. And then you have folks like me. I like them dirty and you clean them up and they look original. That's me.
Speaker 2:everyone's different I agree yeah, like original finish, like four, three, I'm going to do it. You guys, take a look at the video. I got spilled paint. I got finish missing off the top. I got a rag door. Yeah, I'm going to do it. You guys, take a look at the video. I got spilled paint I got finished missing off the top. I got a door. Yeah, I'm gonna have to bring it back, but when I do bring him back, I I try to make it more looking original.
Speaker 3:It's not going to be there was this british guy that he I don't even know if any of his articles are still on the internet. I read almost everything that he wrote and it wasn't about antique phonograph restoration, it was about furniture restoration.
Speaker 2:And this was back when I was learning about finishes and the one thing that stuck in my mind he said if anyone looks at your work, and they say wow, that's really well preserved, then you've succeeded, yeah you know, the best thing I ever learned from anybody in the photograph world was ron devilson and I was working on a motor and I'm a young guy. You know I'm 30 years old starting in this stuff and ron said your name's on that when it goes out the garage door.
Speaker 3:I like that.
Speaker 2:And I go and it hit me, I'm going okay. So in 40 years I've had one comeback and one no pay. When they leave the shop they're going to run. My philosophy on motors are try to get one a little better than it did originally. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like Victor. I'm not going to pick on Victor, but I'm going to talk about Victor. When they drilled the spindle holes the last of production in the 20s and stuff, the top casting and then the spindle shaft goes in the early ones were real nice Right, they were reamed out. The later ones they just drilled it and popped it. They're just laminates. So I try to in the videos I say, okay, we need to fix the burrs inside and stuff so that runs a little bit smoother. But the killer is nobody ever oils their motors.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:That's the killer. I got nickel, I did a guy's 10 and I prepped my nickel and I sent it to this industrial plating company here in town.
Speaker 2:He does crap for NASA, cia crap, and he nickels it. But when it comes back to me, it's the dull nickel, it's just gray. So when I re-nickel like on this 10 I did there's three things. I had to re-nickel Speed control and a couple of screws. That way you can buff it out to match the nickel that's original. And the trick is with nickel I experiment all the time. Videos, a hundred videos. Ago I'd tell you to polish nickel out with flint. Right Now I'll tell you I use four-hot steel wool and Windex.
Speaker 2:I was doing some work and I'm always experimenting. Seriously, I'm always. I'm not stuck in the mud. This is the only way to fix a foamer right. A gazillion ways to fix your own. But me I'm thinking okay, how would I fix this crap in Russia? How do I polish the nickel out? They don't have flicks, they don't have brass, so they don't have whatever I go okay, let me experiment. Put some four-ounce steel wool and spray it with Windex, started wiping down the toner and wiped it off with a towel. Damn, this one's really good.
Speaker 1:A little cheaper too.
Speaker 2:I'm always experimenting like how can I do it better? How can the motor run better? What I've gone to now is I pack a spring barrel. I like green grease because it's a synthetic polymer. It never hardens, never goes away, it's good and I think this is really good. So back in the old days when I was first going out I don't know why I did this I just said maybe I can just thin that grease out just a little bit. I want the grease to be a little bit thinner. So I give it a shot of WD-40, and everything works well. I've never had a motor bit thinner. So I give it a shot of WD-40, and everything works well. I've never had a motor come back. So now what I do is I'll pack the barrel and then I'll put a wee bit of run of WD-40 in there after I pack the barrel with green grease.
Speaker 2:And I thought I figured this out because I make graphite grease. You have a brass gear to a steel gear, like on a Triumph, like Edison cylinder players. How can we protect that brass gear from wearing out against that steel gear in the Triumph, where it has a lot of power through the spring motor? So I did research. I called my niece, who's a chemical engineer used to work for Lockheed.
Speaker 1:Houses Resources. Come on I have Houses, resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I go I have a brass gear to a steel gear. She says, well, I'll talk to you guys, you know, and we have the $2,000 we spent on the gears or something. No, I go. How about graphite? And I was thinking graphite, because that's available anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2:So I took graphite and I mixed it into a little tub of green grease and then it turned into dough-making bread. I'm thinking, okay, that thickened it up. Okay, so I added a little bit of STP and I thinned it out. And so then I was looking at a spring barrel and it was some of them are bent this way after you pull them out, and then some of them are really bent this way, and then you have these marks right down the center of the spring. I go, I think it's going to drag because you'll rebuild a motor and then you'll get the thump still. Why did I grease the barrel and I still get this thump that's sticking on that high spot of the spring. I don't want to have to redo a spring. So, instead of STP, put a little bit of STP. Works there every time Smooths it right up.
Speaker 2:The key's not going away and the green grease isn't going away and you're good to go. And then when the shaft goes through the spring barrel, you don't know how to use STP because you're never, ever going to go back to that shaft. It goes through everything. You can tell. If a motor's run hard, you pull that shaft out, say a Victor. You pull that thing out, see where it marks on that shaft. You go okay, they ran this thing, they re-greased it. Some of them. You pull out. Be nice, stp, it never goes away.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love this I'm really better at if you ask me a question, I can answer it.
Speaker 1:The trouble is that we're all interested in everything that everybody wants to say. I'm not quite sure my listeners are, but that's you know, I don't really care. Part of it is I have my original listeners and then who all seem to have loved when we spoke last time, and then there's a lot of phonographed people that listen. I got emails from New Zealand and people that knew Wyatt, a guy in New Zealand or whatever, and I get them all over. There's two things going on here.
Speaker 2:I did buy a new toy.
Speaker 3:You did. What is it? Nickel-plated triumph. I will not show any jealousy whatsoever.
Speaker 1:There's a video on it. When he got it, it was a birthday present, right, and it is just. It's mahogany with.
Speaker 3:Mahogany with nickel is just amazing.
Speaker 1:With nickel-plated and it is glorious. It's like the Super Bowl trophy. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:All of those plated ones. They came with a little ID tag, the signature tag, with the umbrella-style Thomas Edison signature, and that's what makes it very special.
Speaker 2:I'll say one thing about buying photographs before we all disappear, because if you're collecting photographs, sometimes money gets in the way, like the nickel-plated triumvirate. Luckily we had the money to buy that. Yeah, if you're starting out, find out what phonographs they made Poor people, middle class people, and then they made the Bezos stuff which was custom from the factory. Yeah, they built crap Like in 1917, you could spend $45 to $1,750 for a Victor phonograph. You walk in to look at a phonograph and you say, okay, that's a VTLA with an electric motor, fairly unique and rare. Rare doesn't consequent money, but that's very fun. So you've been spending $300 for a phonograph. And now that guy, now this. You look at this thing and this guy wants, oh my God, $100. Yeah, and it's a little old in there and it's clean. All you got to do is clean the cabinet. Okay, I'll gamble on that. That's what you do, that's what I've always done. But I started out with junkers and redid them all. But I started out with Junkers and redid them all.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I like the cheap ones, it's something I don't know the everyday ones and I'll post them and people will say that's not very collectible. I'm like it's a part of history, it tells a story about it. I love it. The first, I think phonograph three, four and five I bought at the first Wayne show for $150 each and I was happy as hell to get them in my car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the horn and stuff that phonograph five. Maybe it was a five. No, it was a four. Maybe I was sitting looking at the marketplace in the morning with Cheryl and I looked at Cheryl and I go do you want to go to Savannah Georgia today? No, I go. Vic Phi Apogony Horn $700. No way she goes. Oh yeah, let's go Text these guys 730 more. Oh yes, phil, I'll be there with cash. It's like my. They made phonograph record cabinets. They have. They made a two drawer, four drawer and a six drawer, but you could order a 12 drawer Special order. One.
Speaker 2:I'm on Facebook Marketplace this thing's in Savannah too and I go hey, honey, you want to go to Savannah today? $300.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what I'm saying is snooze.
Speaker 1:I agree, I'm always all over it. I'll be there today. I'll be there today. I'll be there in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:That guy sent me a green oak standard. He had it. He goes listen, I don't have the horn, it's in my office, I just want to get rid of it. A hundred bucks. It was a dentist in Long Island. I'm like I'm getting in the car, I'm going up. It was perfect. I haven't done a thing to it. So I know why it's going to crap out on us and I thank you, brett, for all your time, no problem.
Speaker 2:Anytime.
Speaker 1:You're welcome to be on anytime you want. I appreciate all your time and telling the stories, brett, as well as I appreciate everyone else. I look forward to other conversations with everyone and I hope people listen as many to this podcast as the other one we did the four of us Tracy.
Speaker 2:I always appreciate you. Yeah, questions, I'll answer them All, right, great.
Speaker 1:Anybody want to put your contact info on it? I did it again.
Speaker 2:You want to know about Fixin' Phonographs? It's on YouTube. It's Dyslexic, genius, hurt. All right, thank you everyone, Everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. I appreciate all of you. I am so addicted to this hobby I'm like in withdrawal every day.
Speaker 2:I'll see you all and ask my tip for the day Good night everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you all.
Speaker 3:Take care Bye.
