Circa '46 Utah 78 rpm record player

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Captainclock

ok, well I didn't notice that it was such an old thread.
But anyways, if those old crystal cartridges are supposedly "always bad", then hows come I came across one that was still functional after 50+ years in storage?

Either it is not really crystal, someone had it rebuilt in the last 25 years, or you should play the lottery...

I've owned easily 20+ pre-1950 78 RPM machines, and only 3 had good carts (one has since died). Some do survive, but the rate is miniscule....I've had more (and I reckon a better % too) pre-1950's radios work with original caps installed than I've had phonos with good crystal carts. Not 100% are bad, but I would not bet on any random untested pre-1950 crystal cart being good....
Your one good cart is in a Philco 46-1203 right?...One of mine is too so perhaps Philco had an especially good design cart in those units.

[Captainclock]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Either it is not really crystal, someone had it rebuilt in the last 25 years, or you should play the lottery...

I've owned easily 20+ pre-1950 78 RPM machines, and only 3 had good carts (one has since died). Some do survive, but the rate is miniscule....I've had more (and I reckon a better % too) pre-1950's radios work with original caps installed than I've had phonos with good crystal carts. Not 100% are bad, but I would not bet on any random untested pre-1950 crystal cart being good....
Your one good cart is in a Philco 46-1203 right?...One of mine is too so perhaps Philco had an especially good design cart in those units.

Yes my fully functional Crystal Cartridge was in a Philco 46-1203 Radio/Record player unit, but I've long since scrapped it out because the radio no longer worked on it and no amount of repairing and replacing parts would bring the tuner on that thing back to life, I salvaged the cartridge off of it and installed it on another old 1940s vintage radio/record player unit that had a dead cartridge on it and it still works fine my guess is that it was a higher quality crystal cartridge than some of the previously made crystal cartridges from Astatic, because the cartridge used in the Philco record players from the mid- to late 1940s were made by Astatic just like the prevoius crystal cartridges, so yes, its a real authentic Crystal Cartridge, just a better made one, in fact I'll bet you anything that all of the astatic crystal cartridges that were from the model series that they used in the old Philco M-5 Changers and other 78 only record changers from that time period are more than likely still good because its a higher quality cartridge than the ones from the previous model series of Astatic Crystal Cartridges.