RCA 63EM Phonograph (1947)This is a very "mod" (at least for 1947) record player. It plays only 78s and has a cool on/off switch that works by releasing the tone arm from its cradle. When released, the tone arm pops up and the unit turns on. To turn it off, you move the tone arm over its cradle and push it down. A latch catches a hook on the tone arm and its off.This was another ebay purchase for me; this time I spent a whopping $1.99. The unit was so cheap because it had some serious problems, despite the fact most of it was in really good shape. First, the fancy brown swirled bakelite tone arm had been broken and was missing pieces, including the font and back portions. That meant no cartridge and no means to hook the arm to the rod coming out of the main housing. Also, while the unit powered up, there was no sound at all coming out of the speaker. My experience in the past was that this meant a bad output transformer, but in this case, the leads from the voice coil had somehow opened. Unfortunately, I had to take the speaker apart, remove the cone and voice coil to get to the problem. The idler wheel also had two flat spots from sitting against the platter and the drive shaft for many years.
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This is the tone arm in process of re-fabrication. The pink areas are bondo. I glued the two parts that I had back together with superglue and built up bondo for the missing parts. The underside is hollowed-out like a dug-out canoe. I ground out the excess bondo with a grinding wheel in a Dremel tool. The bondo is heavier than the original bakelite, but I think I got enough of it out so that there won't be too much pressure on the records and needles. I followed up with several coats of primer and then applied a brushed brass Krylon color. I rubbed out the finish with rubbing compound. While the color is no where near the original gold color on the case, it doesn't look too out of place. The original tone arm is a nice swirled bakelite with "RCA Victor" written on the center of it. Beggars can't be choosers and I think my result looks pretty good, albeit not original. I replaced the missing cartridge with one that I had picked up a couple of weeks earlier and just epoxied it to the underside of the tone arm. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best. |
Here it is done. I decided to do noting with the case because the original paint isn't that bad and because the bakelite is in great condition. All in all, this is a very cool unit and stylistically ahead of its time for 1947.
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