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Construction and Variants :
With the exception of the original Maelzel Metronome
construction or very early Victorian variants of his design, two
London based companies cornered the market throughout the
Victorian era. Robert Cocks & Sons and the Cramer & Co firms. The
actual exterior or case designs changed very little, with
modifications to the door emblem motifs and slight changes to the
door hinge size being the only obvious alterations. The mechanism
however differed hugely, to the point of being unable today, to
simply swap or mix donor mechanism parts from one to another.
These mechanisms were hand constructed and fitted by skilled
workers and small differences in the tolerances or year of
manufacture makes each metronome virtually unique, not only that,
years later and with each mechanism we service
acting like a finger-print, we are able to relatively accurately
date each unit simply by the construction techniques employed when
assembling the mechanism.
Throughout the Victorian era production, the two firms consistently used
only the highest quality materials, solid brass mechanism cogs and
parts, chrome plated screws, bronze cast or chrome plated bells
and polished steel escapements. The Keith Prowse Company was
another London based manufacturer who retailed a metronome very
similar to both Cocks & Cramer offerings and may have even been a
distributor for the two larger firms. We have observed Cocks
mechanism's numbered into the 9000 serial number range, Cramer did
not appear to number theirs and Keith Prowse metronome's with a
serial number as low as 651 based on a very limited number of
surviving examples.
Below are pictures of a Robert Cocks mechanism that dates to
around 1890, by this point and at the height of production, many
of the parts had become standardized and quite similar so that
hot swapping was made a little easier. However the quality
remained unaltered. This page is offered as an example of a
typical late Victorian production Robert Cocks mechanism and the
components employed, and what made them tick !.
Hold your mouse pointer over a gallery image for an
enhanced zoom.
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Have one destined for the skip?
We are always interested in
purchasing Antique metronomes considered beyond repair or
destined to be discarded. We do require that the mainspring
operates and this can be determined by dropping us an email for
instructions or help on how to confirm this. The metronome would
also need to be salvageable, i.e not run over by a truck. Please
do not expect us to pay silly prices due to the work involved in
restoring poor quality metronomes, we will require quality
pictures to include the mechanism and a brief description of any
known issues or faults if possible. We do not purchase metronomes
post 1940. Thanks for reading!.
Brass Polishing:
We also offer a brass polishing service, where we remove all exterior brass fittings and polish to a high sheen which seems to be popular when matching a metronome to a piano for display purposes. We do not clean the fittings by default unless we feel the unit warrants it and any item shown on the website without cleaned brass-work is sold as viewed. We will however, under instruction polish fittings once a unit has been purchased for a standard charge of £9.95. Occasionally metronomes can be fitted with nickel silver or copper metal-work and in most cases these are best left to develop a deep handling patina. We will advise if we do not think that a unit would benefit from this service.