‘ADD-ON’ PICKUPS FOR EXISTING GRAMOPHONES.

The images below were upoaded haphazardly, just to make them immediately
available to hobbyists. Arranging them in something like chronological order
will take some time – please bear with us! 

1925

THE WOOFROFFE. The ‘Wireless World’, beginning strongly in late 1925, informs us that the B.B.C. had been playing records elecrically since the Spring of that year. It is probably this pickup they were using. We believe that Woodroffe was the name of the manufacturer, rather than its designer. Anyway, it is a splendid job, and Woodroffe are to be congratulated. Moreover, it is commonly assumed that electric playback of records was probably quite some months after the advent of electrical recording. In the U.K. at least, we now know that they were rather contemporary events! (HMV were the first, in the Spring of 1925; while Columbia only really got going (as regards domestic recording), in November of that year.)

Here is the ‘reverse’ of it. The thick orange rubber damping has perished & cracked. (Though it would be easy to renew.) The top of the armature is secured to the damping band by a small screw. Like several early pick-ups, the pivot of the armature is purely mechanical, using pointed pivot screws. This means adustment is critical. Too loose, & the armature will rattle; too tight, and record wear will become severe – and in both cases the audio output will be distorted! 😥 This is a handsome device; the horseshoe magnet is nickel-plated; the arm adaptor is polished aluminium. It is one of the very few pick-ups to display its gorgeous interior so freely! 😀
See & hear it at – https://youtu.be/j8ZhZE4o4eQ – sorry fuzzy ten-year-old video!

 

1926 – 27.

IGRANIC. IIRC, the Igranc ‘Phonovox’ was also one of the three pick-ups reviewed by ‘The Gramophone’. Igranic’s works wasin Bedford, but they had branches in most large cities. However, this device was not designed by technical bods at Bedford, or indeed anywhere in the U.K. Igranic licenced it from the Pacent Electric Co., Inc. of New York.

Their boss, Louis Gerard Pacent, had concluded a deal with Igranic, and an article in ‘The Talking Machine World’, a U.S. Trade magazine of July 1928 tells us that Igranic had been making the Phonovox in the U.K. for two years. The photo. above was taken before we replaced the rubber suspension; you can see that the armature (often referred to as the ‘fishtail’), has clicked over to the right-hand pole piece – it should of course rest upright in the middle of the gap. You can see the pick-up in action here : https://youtu.be/ixQVZfYi64E – but some of the description in that video is in error. We also have a crumpled 4-page leaflet that came with the pick-up, so it is reproduced here.

 

 

The AED Company were advertising a ‘self-winding’ gramophone motor in January 1930.