READER Hector Hill knew exactly what last week’s curiosity, sent in by Bill Rhodes, was He writes:”It is an electric gramophone pickup of the type made from the late 1920s to the 1940s. It enabled the buyer to convert an acoustic gramophone into one which played records through a radio. The outer casing is missing. It is possibly a J B Woodroffe model of the 1930s.

“From the end of the gramophone’s acoustic tone-arm, the owner removed the ‘sound box’. The electric pickup was fitted by inserting the collar into the tone arm.

“The two terminals (at the top) are at the ends of a very long length of thin insulated copper wire wrapped in the form of the two coils (in the centre). The buyer connected one end of a twin-core flex to these terminals, and the other end to two ‘gramophone’ terminals found at the back of many radios of this era.

“The replaceable ‘needle’ was vibrated by the record groove passing under it at 78 rpm, and vibrated an iron armature near the open end of a U-shaped magnet on which the two coils are fitted. The fluctuating voltage electro-magnetically induced across the pair of coils would be amplified by the radio; and the record reproduced through the radio’s loudspeaker.

“The armature was mounted to vibrate freely, but the manufacturer had to use a rubber material to dampen resonances. The 80 year-old rubber is probably hard or crumbling away, considerably impairing performance; and the coils may well have developed breaks in the wire and short-circuits due to failed insulation.”

We can all see what this week’s curiosity is about, but does anyone know its history, suggestions, or if you have a curiosity, send to news@cravenherald.co.uk