I’ve put together some information below about the use of Gramophones and Typewriters for Oaky Doke Vintage Home customers.
How to use Gramophones
I love vintage gramophones; just look at the shop logo! How better to listen to music of the early decades of the last century than how they used to, on a wind up gramophone.
Buy a gramophone and gramophone records here.
For any customers who have already bought one but aren’t sure how to use these great vintage pieces, here’s some tips…
Winding.
You’ll find the winding handle depending on your make and model either folded into the front or side, or clipped into the body under the lid. If the latter, you’ll find the connection to screw the handle in most likely to the right side.
From a stopped start with no turning power, most gramophones need around 30 turns to reach full wind. There’s no fixed number however, they all vary, but you just need to notice as you’re counting and reach around 20 turns, the moment it starts to really tighten. It’s not easy to overwind these players. If you’ve found you don’t get to the end of a side of a record before it slows down or stops playing, you’ve been a bit too cautious with your number of turns. It should always easily reach the end of a record side before you need to wind again.
Gramophone Records
Place a record onto the turntable inserting the central hole over the spindle on the turntable, ensuring it lays flat. Gramophone records are made of shellac, and are thicker and more brittle than vinyl records. They can be 12″ in diameter like their more modern vinyl cousins, but are usually 10″. Occasionally you will find smaller ones. Do not attempt to play your vinyl records on a gramophone – they will be destroyed!
Fitting a needle
The soundarm, normally shiny chrome, will come tucked into a clip at the back left. To use it, unclip and rotate it forward (towards yourself). There is a soundbox on the end of the chrome arm, which is round and often quite ornate. This will have a small, round thumbscrew at the end which will need undoing before you insert a new needle into, blunt end first of course. Tighten the thumbscrew to fix it in place. There are usually needle pots built in either to the front right top or front right corner. With the vast majority of needles, it is expected they will be changed every side of a record. This may sound excessive, but the shellac records are very fragile and the needles are made soft enough that they don’t damage the records surface. To get the best out of your records, don’t let a deformed, overly used needle scratch your record. They don’t make gramophone records anymore (they stopped mass production in the 1950s), so we’re on a finite supply!
Setting the soundbox arm down to play.
Release the turntable brake by pushing the lever fully. The brake lever is usually found to the front right or back left of the turntable. After a couple of rotations or so it should be rotating at full speed.
Rotate fully the soundbox so that the needle is pointing at 60° which is a diagonal direction, the needle pointing towards yourself. Don’t think of it like a vinyl record player, whose needle comes down vertically, Gramophone needles only play properly at this 60° angle. It’s where the soundbox will naturally sit when twisted all the way clockwise. Rest it on the beginning of the record, before the grooves begin. There’s will be some crackle even with a new needle. These are acoustic instruments that work purely on mechanical contact, there is no electric sound processing!
Change the speed of the record
During play you can speed up or slow down the music to your taste – originally likely used to suit the dynamism of your foxtrot… There is a speed lever usually to the front left of the turntable, which has a central default position of 78, (as in 78 RPM which is the speed they were intended to be played at, and gives them their nickname 78s, so they rotate at well over double the speed of a 12″ 33RPM record). You can push this lever to the left through to the right of this central position and you will clearly hear the music go from slow to fast.
At the end of the record
At the end of the side, the record will keep rotating while the spring still has power, at which point you can pull the brake lever to stop the turntable rotating, and flip the record or change it. If your player has an auto stop feature, the record/turntable will stop rotating at the end of the music. This happens when a the tonearm hits a bar which is placed at the correct angle before the record begins. Setting these up can be slightly fiddly but it’s well worth figuring out how it works if your player has one, as it’ll save noise, record wear, and wasted winding.
Volume
If you find your gramophone to be too quiet or loud, different hardnesses of needles are available. The soft tone (quieter) needles are smaller and narrower, the hard tone (louder) wider in diameter. I supply a packet of 100 new medium tone needles with every player, as these tend to give the best, moderate volume with most players. If it’s really too loud, with one particular player I had I used a sock or fabric cloth at the opening of the acoustic chamber to dampen the volume, at the gap at the back which the tonearm folds away into.
Enjoy your wonderful, electricity-free music machine!
Buy a gramophone and gramophone records here.
Find videos demonstrating numerous gramophones in use on the Oaky Doke Vintage Home YouTube channel, here.
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How to use Typewriters
I have bought and sold more than 50 typewriters over the years, and counting. I only sell fully functional machines, checked, oiled, cleaned, and fitted with a brand new ribbon so they are ready to type the moment they arrive on your doorstep.
Beloved by many of the great writers over the past century, and loved by many now for their tactileness, the immediacy of striking a key and a printed letter appearing, the look of the text, the romanticism, the sounds.. especially of that bell which dings at the end of the line, when it’s time to swipe the carriage return lever and start the next.
Though every office up and down the country was chattering and clattering with typewriters up until the 1980s, these can seem daunting to the new user, and so here I attempt to answer the questions you may have as you try to figure these blessed machines out!
Buy Typewriters here.
Carriage lock
If your typewriter has a carriage lock, it will be in place for transport. This stops any damage being done in transit by the carriage being free to slide around. It is usually a lever to the bottom of one side of the carriage but can be a key on the keyboard. I will send a note with your typewriter to tell you how to locate it.
Set Margins
A pair of small metal adjusters which run along a metal bar to the back of the carriage can be set to where on the page you’d like your line to begin and end, and then every time you slide the carriage return across, it will return precisely to your preset typing position so that every line starts at the same location on the page. The second adjuster is where the bell will be set to ring to announce that the end of the line is nigh. Finish your word and return the carriage to start the next line. Should you be only a few letters away from finishing your word and hit your right margin, most typewriters have a ‘margin release’ key which you can hold as you type to finish your word.
Loading paper
Always load two sheets of paper into a typewriter, one behind the other. This helps protect the platen (horizontal rubber roller) from indentations from the type slugs (ends of the typebars with the letters on). Place the bottom of the sheets into the gap at the back of the platen and the panel behind it. Pinching them gently in one corner, use the knob on either side of the roller to advance the paper so it protrudes 1 or more cm at the front. Slide the carriage all the way to the right with the carriage return lever. You are ready to start typing.
Features
The majority of typewriters share certain features as standard. Once you have loaded your two sheets of paper, you can set the line spacing, usually with a small lever on the left of the carriage, to either one, two, or sometimes three lines of space between rows of text.
Should you want to move the carriage to or towards the end of the line, a lever to the top of the carriage, to the right side, or sometimes to both sides which will pull forwards or push down, to release the carriage so it springs across to the left. These can be let go of at any point to stop the carriage in a desired location.
A paper release lever, usually on the right of the carriage, is by pulling forward, for easy paper removal.
Modern keyboards (computer or phone) use features which were first established on typewriters. These include shift (found on both sides) for capitalisation or alternative characters, and shift lock just above it on the left side. Line spacing as discussed previously is present with a lever to the left of the carriage. Later typewriters also may have a tab button for advancing several spaces at a time.
A backspace key, represented by an arrow pointing to the left brings the carriage back by one space. This can be useful to delete a misspelt word using multiple letter Os then going over again with Xs to completely obliterate the word. Tippex sheets may originally have been used to delete the offending letters.
Only the most recent typewriters had separate keys for 1s and 0s. Previously it was deemed perfectly acceptable to use the capital letter O for zero and capital letter I for 1.
Ribbon colour selector
The majority of typewriters are able to print in black or red, selected with a toggle lever, usually situated to the right side of the keyboard. For some machines, other colours such as purple or green are also available. Most models of typewriter will automatically switch spooling direction once the end of the reel of ribbon has been reached, but for older models a button may have to be manually pressed on one end, beneath or in front of the carriage.
Certain typewriters have a typing pressure lever (usually under the hood to the left side) to adjust how much pressure is required by the typist on the keys. Someone more used to typing on a computer keyboard may wish to set this on the lighter side.
Avoiding dust
Try to avoid dust getting into the typewriter. Return it to its case after use or use a cloth to cover it. If you like to have it on display and don’t want it covered, dust it fairly regularly. When dust combines with oil and grease present for lubrication of the moving parts inside the machine, it can start to get clogged up and not work as smoothly.
Oiling and cleaning
If you are using the typewriter a lot, you might want to add a small drop of sewing machine oil (which is nice and thin) to the carriage rails, shift lock mechanism and other moving parts every few months. However, you should never oil the typebars, as over time these will clog and go sticky and not work efficiently. If a typebar is sticking they can be cleaned on both sides with white spirit on a cotton bud. If the type slugs get clogged with dry ink and the letters print unclearly, you can use white spirit or meths with a wire brush to clean them out.
All of the above has been done to any typewriter you buy from Oaky Doke.
Instruction manuals
Occasionally the instruction manual has been carefully retained by a previous owner and they are still present with the machine, but where they aren’t, they can usually be found for free in PDF format online, usually containing diagrams to show the location of the above features on your particular machine.
Buy Typewriters here.
If there are any other aspects of gramophone or typewriter use that you think should be added to the above, please get in touch using the contact form.
Thanks for reading. Hope it has been useful.
Tim,
Founder
Oaky Doke Vintage Home