The Columbia 33 "LP" record changer.

While the picture isn't of mine, I do own two of these, one still having the origional paperwork on the turntable. The origional documentation that came with one claims that it's a model 104. Both were stamped on the inside with a production date of 1950, so I assume this was one of the first model 33 players. I have yet to see another 33 only model, but that doesn't mean there weren't any, just that they weren't common. I also ended up with a Voice of Music 3 speed changer that used the same case, and because I know that Voice of Music made changers for other companies, I suspect that they made the Columbia as well. Further, I suspect that my 3 speed player is newer than 1950, so I think that the 33 player is infact a 78 machine that was modified to play at a lower speed. I'm not certain, though. It's interesting to note that this player plays 12, 10, and 7 inch records. I believe Columbia adopted the 7" size once RCA anounced the 45, so RCA wasn't the only one with a small sized record as a selling point.

Theses record changers were produced in the earily 50s and mine both have Astatic ceramic cartridges that are still functioning well, and still have the same stylus that they had when I got them. Remember this is well before the introduction of stereo records, and often older mono cartridges are not able to track a stereo record due to their vertical motion. Despite this, I've had fairly good luck playing stereo records on the Columbia. Of course there are some records that are better than others, but in general they seem better than other machines of that era in that regard.

After writing the above, one day I finally decided that I would see what sort of stylus preasure I had with the Columbia. I measured 10 grams! This seems to be a bit much, even for 1950. My RCA 45 changer was only set to about 4. I'm going to try to get the preasure back down to a more reasonable level and see if it still tracks okay.

Another thing to note is that these machines leave the idler wheel in contact with the motor and turn table even when the machine is not being used. This can leave flat spots on the idler when the player is not used for a long time. This is more typical of cheaper record players because they chose to leave out the extra parts needed to put the idler in a neutral possition when switched off. Despite this, I am not able to detect any distrotion due a flat spot on either of my machines....both of which I'm sure were stored for a long time before I got them. This might be due to the fact that the motor shaft is a very small diameter, and the idler turns at a farily low speed, or it may just be dumb luck.

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