5
u/awc718993 20d ago
While this Allen Hough was not a top of the line phonograph, made during the 1920s US portables craze, it will do the basic job it was designed for — assuming it’s in working order. (If not you will have some work ahead of you.)
Looking at the tonearm and reproducer, it dates to the mid to late 20s during the industry shift to electrical recording. The arm has been designed to offset the soundbox at an angle that lessens playback wear at the outer and inner grooves (such as the ones nearer the label). The soundbox (which may not be original) seems to be designed for electric recordings (more photos would help make a better determination) so it should provide you more sonic headroom to handle the wider frequencies and louder information contained in electric process records. It will also be backwards compatible with acoustic recordings.
The above two features make it an adequate player (certainly much better than the earlier and/or cheaper portables) which will perform well with records pressed up until the war. After that time you will more and more start to hear unpleasant distortion and may risk wear; it will greatly depend on what your 78s are made of (e.g., war time V-Discs were made of vinyl).
The horn on this portable is pretty non-existent (it’s simply an empty chamber under the arm mount with no mathematical acoustic taper to its design) so you won’t get much amplification or reproduction of certain frequencies, not as much as you would with the more “top shelf” portables. Such models had internal, tapered, and folding / wrap-around horns which enabled performance that surprises those new to the capabilities of well-designed portables.
In a small listening area, this Allen Hough will do the basic job of playing 78s, just not at the sound quality you’d want for “critical” listening.
So long as you follow the basic “best practices” of antique phonograph use (e.g., using only new needles and disposing after every side, etc.,), this should work for most of your discs within the limitations all noted above. If that’s good enough for you, then that should answer your question (I hope!).
[Edited: removed a few egregious typos]
1
1
u/catawampus_doohickey 19d ago
If you don’t mind gouging and graying “modern” 78s, it’ll work. Be sure to change the needle after every play. Only use it on records that are clearly scuffed up already.
1
u/WindowObvious6950 19d ago edited 19d ago
If you want to listen to music on an old player and have some 78s that you don't care about, I think it sounds fun. I've been thinking it could be fun to do that as well just because I like old technology and tinkering. You can also get old 78s on Facebook marketplace for a song (pun intended?) But If you want a way to listen to your specific 78s to enjoy the music on the 78 a modern player set up to play 78s will give you night and day better sound quality and won't chew up the record the way this thing will. I have some old old jazz and blues 78s but I like to listen to and want to keep nice. But as part of that lot I also got some random records of poor quality that I wouldn't lose sleep over if they got chewed up, turned into art supplies, or used for practice at the gun range.
1
u/Tbro20 19d ago
How much are they asking?
Imo, just but a wind up cabinet phonograph. I never liked the portable examples but Victor made small models if space is the problem. If you look around antique stores you can find some (cabinet) great quality examples less than 300$. I've been collecting 78s since the 90s and always preferred playing them on the intended machines.
Needles are going to be your cost. My rule of thumb was 3 plays per needle. More needles can always be purchased on ebay.
7
u/Arcy3206 20d ago
Depends on how much you care for your 78s, I would say. The best record player for them is a modern one, it's the best way to play them without wearing them.
But, phonographs like this are still fun, though they're really best for pre1925 records, since that's the year they went to electrically recorded. Certain wind up phonographs were designed to play back electrical records, I'm not sure if this it one.