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A Not Often Seen Lyre Puck Phonograph
by Jean-Paul Agnard
Every collector knows that collecting
is a passion which, sometimes, is
close to madness. I used to say that
in my case, with more that 250 cylinder
machines, it is just a soft madness as I have
never yet bitten anybody. Maybe one day....
Nevertheless, each collector is hooked to his
collection like others are hooked onto drugs,
the only difference being that instead of being
damaging to both your health and your purse,
in most cases it is only damaging to your
purse.
Collectors have a tendency to react as follows:
"I don’t have it, so I want it". Sometimes,
however, they already have it and they do not
know it.
This was the case with this rarely seen
German Lyre Puck cylinder machine, a scarce
one that can play Standard and intermediate
size cylinders, a machine for which I have
been looking for a very long time.
I saw the first one two years ago, when I
came to the phonograph show of Rudesheim
in Germany while visiting a German collector.
Up until then, I had seen them only in the
Carette catolog of 1911.
It is only when I got back to Quebec and I
started to correspond with this collector, that
I asked him to measure the space between the
mandrel axis and the top of the baseplate, in
order to make comparisons with all the ones
that I had in my museum and in the pile of
wrecked lyres that I have in my basement. It
was then that I realized that I had not one,
but two naked Lyre Puck bases with an extralong
mandrel shaft-to-baseplate post. Both
of them have the same base design (see the
NOTE below), different from all the other
ones that I have in the collection, even if
I have found one in the pile with exactly
the same design, but for playing only the
Standard size cylinders. In fact, the hole to
receive the mandrel axis is at 58 mm above
the base for the combination model, when it
is at 48 mm for the average one with the same
base design.
(NOTE: regarding base design. Not all the
Lyres have the same drawing design. Not
taking into account the special bases, like
the Mermaid, the Nymphe, the Harpist, the
Lion facing or the Lion profile, the average
lyre shaped bases have different leaves
arrangements)
With this in mind, I measured the same
distance for all the different Pucks in
my collection and was very surprised
to realize that, even if they were
never advertised as being able to
do so, the two different Lion Pucks
are able to play intermediate size
cylinders with their mandrel to base
plate distance of 57 mm. In fact, for the
other different models, there are no two with
the same measured value, ranging from 42
to 52 mm. In fact, any Puck with a distance
measuring above 48 mm (like the Mermaid,
at 49 mm) is able to play intermediate
size cylinders. More precisely, it is able to
accommodate an intermediate size cylinder,
but we cannot determine
if the spring would
be strong enough
to drive it during
the two minutes
of the cylinder’s
playing time (the
larger the cylinder, the stronger the spring has to be).
With this new discovery in my collection, I
have now 12 different Pucks and 8 different
Kastenpucks (Puck mounted on a base).
Recently on eBay-Germany, I bought a repro
base for an original Lorelei, being 99,99%
sure that I will never be able to buy a real
one. Its transformation into a complete
classic-looking machine might be the topic
of a future paper.
Jean-Paul Agnard
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