Alba wind-up gramophome... Help Please!
Sun, Mar 18 2012, 10:03PM
I've just found and bought myself a beautiful Alba wind-up cabinet gramophone but can't find any info to help me date it... if anyone knows more than me please help! It has two doors to the front which have decoration to the top which open to sort of heart shaped carved wood covered speakers, it stands about 25cm from the floor on turned legs, inside the lid it just says 'The Alba Gramophone' I'd really appreciate any help... Cheers. Lou
Wed, Jun 27 2012, 5:58PM
#2
RE: Alba wind-up gramophome... Help Please!
Oh thank you for your great feedback!
It's in fine working order and now that the family have increased our interest in gramophones, we are becoming experts in maintaining their quality sound (my dad has almost 40 gramophones, some portable, so we are becoming quite the expert!)
We have lots of 78's, our favourites are Al Jolson's Mammy and Artie Shaw's Beguine the begin, but my dad has some excellent picture discs that look superb.
Thanks again for your reply!
I would think your Alba gramophone probably dates from around the mid 1920s to the early 1930s. The company was formed around the end of the first world war to make gramophones and moved into radio around 1930. By the 1920s more sophisticated console gramophones with acoustic chambers in wooden cabinets with door covers had replaced the basic HMV logo horn gramophone.
With the advent of electrical recording in 1925 the vastly improved recording quality led to better reproducers which also became more popular with the advent of dance bands whilst the use of microphones led to the rise of the crooner. Many early radios still used batteries (as many houses still didn't have electricity) and the electrical reproduction of records only took off in the 1930s when mains radios would often have pick up sockets for the connection of an external record player or the radiogram was the thing to have for the more well-heeled.
Is your machine in working order and do you have some 78s? Good luck with it!
Latterly Alba became an importer of badge engineered imported budget electonics buying up trade marks of defunct companies such as Bush, Goodmans & Grundig. I believe the Alba & Bush trade marks are now owned by Argos.