Thursday, March 31, 2016, 2:40 a.m. — Yes, I know …. you’re thinking to yourself, “Self, why the hell is Zed Man awake at this hour — and NOT chasing rare DX or shacked up with his Sweetie?”
Good question!
I wanted to take time to scan the illustrations above to illustrate for my wife the precise benefit of collecting Vibroplex keys … I sure as heck don’t want to look like the OM on the left, pounding brass with a straight key. As long as I acquire, say …. one Vibroplex every six weeks or so, I’ll continue to maintain my handsome looks as well as my hair (and I won’t be sweating all over my copy as is the guy on the left).
These pages are from a Vibroplex sales booklet circa about 1944. Its a really neat snapshot of the company’s war-time line-up of keys.
The line up of keys is what you would expect — Original, Blue Racer, The Lightning Bug, Champion and Zephyr. By this time, Vibroplex had dropped the black jappaned finished bases and gone to black wrinkle (or “crystal” as Vibroplex called it).
There was no Presentation key yet, and no jeweled pivots; the plated parts were now chrome instead of nickel; the Standard finish was black crystal, the DeLuxe finish was chrome.
Zed BK: The brochure never specifies that the DeLuxe keys have jeweled pivots on any of the key descriptions. But the inside rear cover has the art of the Lightning Bug DeLuxe, and in the caption it mentions it having the “Patented Jeweled Movement.” The parts list in the back also offers trunion screws in standard and jeweled versions.Â
From the way it looks, the Champion and Zephyr were marketed to the radio crowd; the brochure notes they are for radio use only since there’s no circuit closer.
The operators pictured above help tell the merits of the Vibroplex, and those are two of the largest illustrations in the booklet. The other full-page illustration is one of a DeLuxe Lightning Bug on the inside back cover — the key has red trim on the wedge plug, and the finger piece and triangular thumb piece are depicted in RED.
Did Vibroplex sell its DeLuxe keys with red finger and thumb pieces? I know it did when they changed the tooling for the cast parts on the Original and Blue Racer, but before that? I have never seen a red triangular thumb piece on a key, and my guess is they never made them. While the illustration has a red thumb piece, the parts list in the booklet lists replacement finger and thumb pieces, and the triangular thumb pieces were only available in black. The parts list has both oval and triangular thumb pieces, but black is the only option for the triangular ones. The oval is available in black or red.
I plan to scan the entire booklet, just to save it from being swallowed up and lost in my shack. On the back cover, there’s a note that states: “For the war’s duration, all DeLuxe Model bases will be finished in crystal gray instead of chrome plating.”
The art cuts of the keys always have something I thought the actual keys did for years; the keys all have their model name on the side of the base. For years, I thought that was on the actual keys. Go figure.
BORROWED SLOGAN? Check out the last line of the text on the right side image. Doesn’t that sound like the old Packard slogan, “Ask the man who owns one”? The slogan dates back to the early days of the Packward company; apparently, the Vibroplex version of the line didn’t get on the company’s radar screen.
That’s all for now, time to QRT.
73 es GN de KY4Z SK … dit dit …