So, I picked up this empty Victrola cabinet at an antique shop a few weeks ago while on vacation with several friends. I was disappointed that such a nice cabinet in good condition would have had all of its Victrola innards missing, so I didn't think much of it. However, a friend with me thought it was just marvelous and suggested that I should get it and make it into something. I considered, for a moment, cobbling my Rega P78 into the top with a Rek-O-Kut phono stage and preamp in the middle and some full-range speaker in the base, making an attractive modern-quasi-Victrola-esque thing dedicated to playing 78s. However, this same friend thought that it would make a swell cabinet for my record cleaning stuff, which was an ice-cream maker sitting on a table with a little shop-vac sitting under the table, fluids and brushed laying all about.
No further discussion was needed - it was stuffed into my car and I drove back to the rented vacation house trying to figure out how I was going to get all the rest of my things packed into the car to return home that weekend. (The cabinet took up most of the back seat of my Buick, which previously had been full of vacation items. Solution: Another friend with an SUV transported it home for me.)
No cosmetic changes were made to the cabinet, save for a few holes inside to allow for hoses and wiring – nothing visible. Next, I removed the motor from the ice cream maker and mounted it to the underside of the original turntable board, adding plastic risers to bring the hockey puck up high enough to pass through the original hole. Then I added "hidden" switches for motor and vacuum control just inside one of the small top doors. Lastly, I modified the wand with a plumbing elbow I found in the basement and stuffed the vacuum in the bottom. There are enough holes and other leaks to allow it to be kept closed while in use. It is MUCH quieter than before.
Not a single trip to the hardware store was needed for this project - all junk box parts and work shop tools were utilized!
(The original RCM project consisted of a $3 ice cream maker, a $20 shop vac from Sears, and $18 Nitty Gritty replacement suction pads on a Dremel-modified vacuum wand.)
Future plans include replacing the vacuum wand with a VPI 16.5 vacuum assembly, obtaining a slower motor, and re-wiring it to be a less Frankenstein-like.
The results? Well, I cleaned a handful of records that had been sitting in a pile awaiting attention. Having the vacuum wand coming up through the hole is a little more convenient than just holding it there, as I previously had done. Also, mentioned above, the vacuum is much quieter now that it is contained in the cabinet.
No further discussion was needed - it was stuffed into my car and I drove back to the rented vacation house trying to figure out how I was going to get all the rest of my things packed into the car to return home that weekend. (The cabinet took up most of the back seat of my Buick, which previously had been full of vacation items. Solution: Another friend with an SUV transported it home for me.)
No cosmetic changes were made to the cabinet, save for a few holes inside to allow for hoses and wiring – nothing visible. Next, I removed the motor from the ice cream maker and mounted it to the underside of the original turntable board, adding plastic risers to bring the hockey puck up high enough to pass through the original hole. Then I added "hidden" switches for motor and vacuum control just inside one of the small top doors. Lastly, I modified the wand with a plumbing elbow I found in the basement and stuffed the vacuum in the bottom. There are enough holes and other leaks to allow it to be kept closed while in use. It is MUCH quieter than before.
Not a single trip to the hardware store was needed for this project - all junk box parts and work shop tools were utilized!
(The original RCM project consisted of a $3 ice cream maker, a $20 shop vac from Sears, and $18 Nitty Gritty replacement suction pads on a Dremel-modified vacuum wand.)Future plans include replacing the vacuum wand with a VPI 16.5 vacuum assembly, obtaining a slower motor, and re-wiring it to be a less Frankenstein-like.
The results? Well, I cleaned a handful of records that had been sitting in a pile awaiting attention. Having the vacuum wand coming up through the hole is a little more convenient than just holding it there, as I previously had done. Also, mentioned above, the vacuum is much quieter now that it is contained in the cabinet.
