[jeibner]

It's a Glaser Sears changer which Philco's engineers thought was an upgrade over a VM, but in retrospect I'd prefer the reliability of a VM over any advantages this one has.   The unit really had awesome sound, so the changer may have a lighter tracking weight and better cartridge than a VM, but it turned out to be very unreliable.  The turntable stopped when it was about to drop a record, so the turntable isn't part of the drive mechanism like a VM.   Even when it wasn't so old it often needed a helping hand to get going again, and since the turntable was disengaged, you had to squeeze a finger under the deck and give the mechanism a push.  It only has one device to sense what size the record was.  It works on the same principle that the 12 inch sensor on a VM uses, but the horizontal part is long and slanted so that a 10" moves it a little and a 12" moves it all the way.  You can see it in the photo, but because of the angle it's hard to spot.  It's silver in color and directly in line with the spindle.   It could change speeds from 33 to 44 for a 7", but You had to turn a knob to enable that feature.  I tried it a couple of times, but never had any occasion to want to intermix a stack of LPs and 45s.   In truth, we only used it to play 12" LPs, so all those extra bells and whistles gave us no benefit and just added to the reliability issues. 

I still have some of my own 7" 78 RPM children's records, and I have a few 10" LPs from the late 1940s or early 1950s.  I just recently purchased a newly recorded 12" vinyl and I was surprised to find that was recorded at 45 RPM for improved fidelity on the inner grooves. 

I fixed up my wife's old GE portable stereo for my grandson who likes old things and wants to play vinyl.   It has a VM changer that I needed to take completely apart, clean and lubricate (I learned how on YouTube.)   My friend 3D printed a new capstan with a groove for an O-ring and so far that seems to be working.  I replaced all the capacitors, and the vacuum tube amplifier is now working fine.   It had a crystal cartridge, and like the old capacitors, those don't survive.  I wasted some money on a new old stock one, but it was shot too.  Finally I put a ceramic in and made a little transistor pre-amp to bring it up to the same output level as the original crystal.  The whole thing works now.  I hope it holds up.

I have no desire to fix up the huge Philco.  Nobody in my family has any interest in it, and it will end up in the trash when I'm gone if I can't find it a home.