ELAC Miracord XA-100
Four pushbuttons, a spindle that drops records without a pusher arm, and a pause timer you could set up to five minutes.
Overview
The Miracord XA-100 doesn't look like a compromise, and that was the whole point. ELAC's American distributor, Audiogersh Corporation, sold it as "2 Precision Instruments in ONE" - a pushbutton automatic record changer and a pushbutton manual player sharing one chassis. Pull the "Magic Wand" spindle and drop in the short single-play spindle, and the changer becomes a manual turntable. Reverse that short spindle and a record repeats indefinitely. It's a party trick with real use behind it, and it's why the XA-100 turns up in collections today when plenty of its contemporaries have vanished.
The Magic Wand is the headline. Changers of the period used pusher arms and stabilizing plates. The Wand instead holds a stack balanced on a small spindle and releases records one at a time from the center hole. That's the way 45s were handled, applied to 78s and LPs. High Fidelity (November 1954, p.33) ran the unit under its "outstanding 3-speed automatic record changer" billing and singled out the Wand and the Pausamatic as the features that set it apart, alongside the absence of wow and rumble. The Wand is actuated from below and sits in place only during a change cycle, so you can lift it out to clear a played stack. The one caveat the reviewer flagged: everything in the stack needs to be the same speed and stylus type.
The Pausamatic is the feature nobody expects on a 1950s changer. Push the Pause button and the unit waits a preset interval between records. The setting shows in a window above the button. The intervals scale with speed: at 78 rpm the range runs from about five seconds to roughly 140 seconds, at 45 from nine seconds to four minutes, and at 33⅓ from twelve seconds to a bit over five minutes. Audio (1956) noted the manual doesn't say so, but a toothpick judiciously placed in the slot alongside the record-scanning lever will make the changer repeat 12-inch records indefinitely.
Control is four pushbuttons - Start, Pause, Filter, Repeat. Start also advances to the next record mid-side. Filter engages a built-in network to suppress surface noise on old records, which tells you who ELAC expected to buy this: people with 78s and worn LPs in the same collection. Repeat does what it says. The tone arm is built from a noise-reducing plastic with ball-bearing suspension, and the plug-in head accepts any standard cartridge. A spare head was a $2.50 accessory, and it fits the Miraphon XM-110 as well. Cartridge weight adjusts by thumbscrew, no tools. The turntable rides on ball bearings under a white rubber mat, driven by a four-pole motor in a hum-free mounting, and ELAC guaranteed constant speed whether one record or ten sat on the platter. The changer holds eight 12-inch records or ten 10-inch records, or a mix, and intermixes the two sizes at will.
Speed selection covers 33⅓, 45, and 78 rpm. The 45 rpm automatic spindle - ELAC's No. "38," holding ten records, maroon plastic, with clips to stow it on the base - was a $4.50 accessory, not standard equipment. The unit shipped fully assembled with leads and plugs attached. Electrical spec is AC, 110 or 220 volts, 60 cycles, with 50-cycle versions available on request. Chassis measures 12⅛ by 10⅛ inches, with roughly 2⅛ inches of height above the mounting plate and the same below. Clearance runs about 4⅛ above and 2¼ below. Net weight is approximately 11 pounds, gross approximately 14. Finish is burgundy with surf-white trim, straight from the documentation. A matching finished base was offered at $5.95, and a burgundy leatherette carrying case at $24.50 for people who moved the thing around.
Price was $67.50 audiophile net, or $74.50 with a GE RPX-050 cartridge fitted. A brass turntable was available for the XA-100 only at $10.00, and a kiln-dried mounting board with all holes drilled ran $2.50. ELAC backed the XA-100 and the companion Miraphon XM-110 manual player with a six-month guarantee against defective materials and workmanship. Audiogersh handled U.S. distribution out of New Haven and later New York. The advertising ran hard through 1954, 1955, and into 1956 in High Fidelity and Audio, the same campaign that introduced the Miraphon and, by early 1956, the Miratwin cartridge.
The surviving record doesn't give production dates, a serial range, or a service history. The documentation confirms the model was actively advertised from late 1954 into 1956. Collectors note the Wand spindle and the 45 rpm accessory spindle are the parts that go missing, and a unit without them is a manual player with a very complicated center hole. The plug-in head takes standard cartridges, which helps, since nobody is hunting a proprietary mount. The plastic tone arm is the piece to inspect closely on any survivor. It's the component most exposed to age and the one that determines whether the changer still tracks properly.
The period press treated the XA-100 as a machine built around one good idea. High Fidelity called it the most sought-after changer of its moment, in the manufacturer's own campaign language. The independent Audio write-up was more measured, but it came away impressed that the Wand "works, too - consistently and reliably."
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