This section of the website is being hosted for Carsten Fischer.  

My heartfelt THANKS to MOO, WJW and PATHEPHONE for helping me with this project.

Repeating Phonographs and Repeater Accessories

An interesting, early low-tech solution of playing a record repeatedly are the various Repeater Devices. These allowed unassisted repeating of the record until the spring motor wound down.

While decidedly low tech, these devices work nicely, and are an interesting early attempt to get over the 3 min limitation of a 10" disk.

Floating Repeaters: Geer, Core, Gold Seal

These devices float on the record on three felt pads. The device is held stationary by the needle resting against a bar. When the record reaches its end, the needle slips past the adjustable bar, and the repeater device rotates once with the record, picking up the needle and guiding it outside on a spiral path. Once the revolution is complete, the needle drops again in the slot, held by the bar, and the record plays anew.

These devices work quite well, the additional drag on the record is minimal and is no problem for a good 3 spring motor.

Geer - The nicest one

Please click on the above picture to view movie. If movie does not play full length, right mouse click on picture -> "Save Target as" -> download movie on your computer and play from there.

The Geer repeater is the nicest of the bunch:

Gold plated brass in solid construction make the Salvador Dali-like shape of the repeater extremely appealing.

Here are the instructions:

Gold Seal Repeater

Not quite as esthetically pleasing, and made cheaply of celluloid, another repeater of the same principle: The Gold Seal Repeater

Encore Repeater

An interesting variation of the floating repeater is this Encore. Instead of using the spiral throwback, a worm gear is linked to the spindle, allowing the repeater to gently travel back.

Stationary Repeaters

While the above Repeaters are removable accessories, stationary repeaters were sold for installation on Victrolas. Below are the schematics for such a device. The worm gear driven return mechanism allowed for a more controlled tone arm movement.

Disadvantage was that the unsightly mechanism was screwed in permanently to your fine, $300 Victrola.

Built-in Repeaters

Brooks Manufacturing Company of Saginaw, MI
Automatic Repeating Phonograph

As presented by Matt Brown on  the Old Victrola Board here, this US wind-up phonograph from the early 1920s, will repeat a record automatically.

As a unique feature, a feeler arm senses the size of the record, while moving the tone arm for the repeat play. This is the first occurrence of a device used later in other intermix changers, which allowed to play records of any size, for example the Lincoln Series 50 changer.

A knob in the right front corner allows to preset the number of  repeats (from 1 to 8, or indefinitely).

MAMMUT Coin-Operated Phonograph

As documented on the Swiss "André's Phonographen-Kabinett" site (from where I took the information presented here), a notable feature of some rare early German and European Coin Operated Machines for use in bars and cafes was their automatic tone arm return mechanism, built into the machine. When the record had played, the tone arm would automatically return to the rest position, and stop for the next play.

The machine shown was manufactured probably in the early 1900s by  the Austrian firm Mammutwerke K.von Wildburger Wien.

Please check more information on this early Mammut machine here:
                                                           Mammut Details
                                                           Mammut Info
(Sorry, No English Version Available).

If you have examples of other repeaters, I would love to hear from you, perhaps to post photos and videos of your example on this site.

Please contact me at sgimips1 "at" yahoo "dot" com.

  Again my great thanks to Chuck Azzalina for his great help in creating these pages.
Pleases check out his other web pages with even more fascinating early audio and TV tube electronics. One level above this page, you can find more fascinating changers with video clips.