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Vintage Audio (record players, hi-fi etc) Amplifiers, speakers, gramophones and other audio equipment. |
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8th Jul 2022, 9:44 am | #1 |
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Behold, the mighty Dressola
I showed my daughter some pictures of my HMV 109 and she got glassy eyes and I could tell she liked it.
So later this year she is getting married and I have got a Dressola Gramophone from the Dressola Sprech-Apparatebau-Bau GmbH as a gift. I got a really good offer of 130 Euros from the grammophonwerkstatt.de. It needs a bit of work, but not too much and I think it will be well worth it. This thing is huge, it dwarfs my 109 and the sound coming out of it is absolutely on another level. Just been playing some 20ties jazz and the brass highnotes almost hurt your ears, but I suppose it is to be expected if you are by now used to 256 levels of stodgy digital music and are suddenly exposed to the full gamut of analoge music. I will have to re-furnier the lid as the Furnier has cracked and is peeling and it is missing the doors to the funnel. Perhaps I can find some, or have some made or just leave it as it is. I have spent some time trying to find more about the Dressola Sprech-Apparatebau-Bau GmbH, but there isn´t much on the web, except for a few pictures. So I presume that this is a rare beast indeed. I think it is from around 1925 to 1928, but if anybody can correct me I would appreciate it. The wind up is smooth and it takes about 90 turns of the handle to fully wind the spring and the entire unit has a solid and expensive feel to it. I can well imagine it as the Bang&Olufsen of the 20ties.
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8th Jul 2022, 10:25 am | #2 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
That's a bit special. What a nice present.
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8th Jul 2022, 10:27 am | #3 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
The autostop looks an interesting mechanism.
Peter. |
8th Jul 2022, 10:28 am | #4 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
I havn´t quite figured it out yet.
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8th Jul 2022, 12:08 pm | #5 | |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Quote:
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8th Jul 2022, 12:24 pm | #6 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
It maybe didn't have doors (volume control), I can't see any hinge marks on the woodwork - the woodwork in front of the horn looks darker than the rest of the cabinet. The grille cloth looks very bright, so the machine may have had some restoration, although just looking on-line I see there's a picture of a table model with quite a 'bright' grille cloth, so perhaps it's original. There's nothing else about the 'brand' that I could find with a quick search just now, but the name does somehow sound very German. It probably has a large multi-spring motor. It looks to have a quirky auto-stop device. The good thing is that it falls just into the era of the change in tone arm design that vastly improved the tracking angle of these machines. Use it with medium or soft tone needles to limit the volume and better protect the records.
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8th Jul 2022, 12:41 pm | #7 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
The Mighty Dressola indeed - what a superb beast!
I'm sure your daughter will be thrilled with the present. One small point though: That's 8 bit audio you are talking about there, CDs are 16 bit so that's 2^16 which is 65536 'levels', not really stodgy at all. Steve.
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8th Jul 2022, 1:25 pm | #8 | |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Quote:
I think that the grill cloth is rather new as Michael gave it a service before putting it for sale, as he is a perfectionist I would expect any cloth to be as close to the original as you can get. You were probably looking at the one with the neon green cloth, I like that too.
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8th Jul 2022, 1:32 pm | #9 | |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Quote:
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8th Jul 2022, 1:36 pm | #10 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Certainly DAB (digital) radio can leave a lot to be desired in terms of its sound, in spite of salesman initially telling everyone it's "CD quality".
The red cloth looks slightly wrong to me, but I suppose we're all used to seeing these things as they are now, after 100 years of sunlight, as opposed to how they were when they left the factory, and were meant to look. |
8th Jul 2022, 6:24 pm | #11 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
It's all much more than 8 bit. Rather than the bitwise resolution, with broadcast systems the quality is related to bitrate and hence ultimately to the available bandwidth for the signal. It's the compression algorithms that make DAB sound a bit lacklustre but it does sound much better than the 1.8(ish) kHz of bandwith it uses when compared to, say AM radio.
Sorry, this is drifting massivley off topic. I'll shut up! Steve.
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8th Jul 2022, 8:55 pm | #12 | |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Quote:
But back to the Teutonic Turn Table. I asked for a quote to re furnier the lid and I hope to have it by early next week. I´ll keep y´all informed.
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8th Jul 2022, 10:02 pm | #13 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
I have just had an Epiphany!
As the lid needs a new Furnier.... why not a chessboard?
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8th Jul 2022, 11:20 pm | #14 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
I've just realised that furnier is veneer!
Yes a chess board wold be a great idea, two things to think of: 1) Your daughter must like to play chess And... 2)She doesn't want to play it whilst listening to records Whatever you do please let us have some pictures of the finished result. Best wishes, Steve.
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9th Jul 2022, 8:42 am | #15 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Oh yes, so it is. Sometimes if the English word doesn´t come I tend to replace it automatically with the German one.
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9th Jul 2022, 9:12 pm | #16 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
I spent this rainy afternoon comparing the HMV and the Dressola. That was fun.
I can say that the HMV has a warmer sound with the highlights in the midtone range using the standard needles whereas the Dressola tends to (bare with me) over steer the highlights with these needles, for me they sound a bit harsh. With a thin needle in the soundbox on the other hand it is perfect. However speech seems to be clearer on the Dressola than it is on the HMV, I wonder why. Perhaps the clue is in the name Dressola Sprech-apperat bau, or speech apparatus build and it is designed to convey speech rather than music. Hmm!
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15th Aug 2022, 11:45 am | #17 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Whelp, the mighty Dressola is ready to become a gift.
I took the lid to a carpenter to get the veneer done, the old one was broken and cracked and peeling, evidently water had gotten into the layers. He has done a magnificent albeit expensive job, with a thick oak veneer glued on in the original way using fish glue. I decided not to try and match the color but I have left it as it was and used a light woodoil and wax, it has come up with a beautiful honey colored finish and I am very proud of it. During the process of taking the old veneer off some of the original surface of the wood was removed, he did however give me a ProFix correction pen, like a sharpie only it uses a waxy substance, it fit the color perfectly and you can no longer see that anything was missing. Apart from the lid there is no other veneer on the machine and it is made from 100% oak. I first cleaned it with soap and water and when it dried I gently rubbed it down with a dish sponge, then polished it with my car polisher. Never again, the arthritis in my thumbs went absolute „Karen“ on me and demanded to see the manager. I got a tin of dark oak firnis and painted the cabinet to bring the patchy lighter tones where the wood has been scuffed to a nice even finish. Then waxed and oiled and polished and waxed and oiled and polished and waxed and oiled and polished and waxed and oiled and polished. You get what I mean. In its finished form it now has a nice warm silky smooth, almost dark reddish finish that shows the wood grain beautifully. I am so pleased with the result and can’t stop looking at it. Do admit though that the horn looks like it was built by a plumber.
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15th Aug 2022, 11:46 am | #18 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
And another two piccies.
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15th Aug 2022, 1:57 pm | #19 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
Sorry to bring in a note of doubt, but shouldn't this have legs? It looks a bit odd!
Barry |
15th Aug 2022, 2:53 pm | #20 |
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Re: Behold, the mighty Dressola
It has four little round feet, you just can´t see them from the angle.
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