The Ancient Mix Master is a Fidelitone model P-3, designed and built by George K. Culbertson, who started making these these in the late 1930’s to provide soundtracks for home movies.

There are 2 turntables and 3 tone arms. All three tonearms can be played at the same time. The center tone arm can play on either turntable while each turntable’s tone arm can be dropped as well. The resulting sound(s)  are multiple sources – 2 – from one record and one from the other, back and forth. These are the Rimes of the Ancient Mix Master. One of my favorite descriptions of a performance was: “This sounds like the cartoon music in my dreams.”

I got mine in the late 1990’s and it is a model P-3 built-in the late 1940’s. The video below is a collection of ads and images that were sent to me from the Culbertson family recently. There are even pictures of George K. Culbertson at work on these amazing and neglected pieces of turntable history.

The audio is a track from a recent recording called Home Taping Is Killing Music.

It’s on cassette and available from gojohnnygo.wordpress.com. All the mixes, what I like to call sound collages on the tape were recorded live with the Fidelitone and records. The video below is a good example of this and what you can do with three arms. This one starts with a few versions of Caravan.