The Masspro lives, after all these years of sitting broken in its case. My first impressions? Far more positive than the general opinion is on these guys. The action feels solid, and is very much like a Corona 3.
My only real problem that will, likely, take quite some time to deal with is the primitive carriage. This machine is one of the first produced, (you see, its a 1932 machine rather than a 1932 machine) and rather than ball bearings to support the carriage, it has a rod on the front of the carriage that rides through 4 small hooks (like a reverse Underwood 5), and a teensy weeny wheel in the back that glides along. Somethings causing it all to slow down, and I'm afraid of putting anymore tension on the motor lest I break it. I can repair a broken mainspring, but I would love to avoid that little problem.
And I need to raise the front feet a bit more. The spacebar is hitting the table. But! Outside of those issues, I am actually very impressed with this little machine; I think all y'all who dis on it are just spoiled with newer, higher end machines. I love the look of it, too. It's actually quite graceful despite being a super cheap machine.
Nice to see it in action!
ReplyDeleteIt's always satisfying to bring a machine back from the dead, and into working order
DeleteBravo! taking a wrench to #45 of an issuance would make me nervous :D
ReplyDeleteIt was the only way to make it work again in any decent manner. Not only was the carriage completely frozen in place due to the drawcord being a tangled mess, but it needed to be scrubbed pretty well for it to work properly. I had to rebuild the carriage a second time so that I could hit the rail hooks even harder than I had previously. Very good design for it though.
DeleteWith all the shiny trim it looks great, not cheap at all. (Even the spacebar!, never minding keyboard glare :)
ReplyDeleteJust also looked at your pictures of the taking-apart; that's a very impressive design. Must've been hard to create such a simple machine - simple is often surprisingly difficult ;-)
I was actually pretty surprised at how much nickel they used for what is supposed to be a poor-mans machine. I love it when the spacebar on a machine is shiny, as well.
DeleteI quite agree with you; simple designs that work well are incredibly hard to create. Its always easier to just add more mechanisms and components to eventually get something to work, but to do so with a minimum of parts takes true engineering skill.