Hi John.
Congrats on the new acquisitions, particularly on the Tallent Concorde. As Mike mentions above, it does look to be in good condition. Hope you are able to power it up soon.
Tallent Engineering is the company that either a) acquired the rights to the Rolls design twin tubs and continued building them for a while or b) bought up the stock of components and unsold machine and continued to sell them until the stocks ran out.
As to which it is, I don't know, but your machine is definitely a Rolls Concorde although I have noticed something a bit different about your machine when compared to every UK based Concorde that I have ever seen - your machine has 2 buttons, whilst every UK based machine that I have seen an image of has 3 buttons.
Not an expert on these machines at all, so is anyone able to confirm what these buttons do and what the third button on UK machines is for?
I have attached two images of a spreadsheet (yes another one!) that I have been working for the last couple of years, showing details of Rolls and Tallent machines with the years based on when they were being advertised in the press.
Somewhere along the way I have seen described the existence of a 'Concorde' and a 'Concorde De Luxe' and presumed that all the regular UK based 3 button machines were the standard models and that there is some fabled de luxe model that I have yet to find an image of.
Could it be though that the 3 button machines were/are the deluxe version, whilst the 2 button model that you have found John is the standard? Would be interested to know peoples thoughts.
Re the Tallent image, there were apparently three models offered in the UK - W151, W152 and w153, the latter with rectangular lids - presumably our W153 will be the 'de luxe' version of your W172.
Thanks for introducing us to your W172 - very interesting that Tallent made models for export.
Regards
Paul
