is everyone getting all the pic's of this thing ? I must have put to many in a single post.
Joe it's sewing of to fair at this point, That tensioner is homemade, it's not getting the take up spring action it needs, after the link you posted I now know it should have a 201 style tensioner.
with the LA s/n it should be made in philipines according to web sites. a call to singer USA and I get " we have no records of that number " but looking at singers web site sometimes at the very bottom it will have LA made after 1959. Then look an other time and thats not there.
I should have taken the face plate off this and a 66 and shown that, inside again it's half and half
last night I did find pictures of two of these, one is on needle bar, The other was some blog, those could have been the same machine, both looked unused. but both don't show the face plate well enough to see the bent over top section at the take up lever. The blog say it's made in Hong kong, neither give a S/N
now every part has the word singer on it, under the bed singer is cast into the bed.
now go to the nostalgic machines ( there all 15's) a friend has one , she got in the early 80's and had never been plugged in. That machine has singer cast in the bed and singer on every part.
now on this site, in the past any time arguments came up on these nostalgic machines. There words was if it has singer cast in and on the parts. it's a real singer. with no singer then it's a clone. ofcourse this would be over the sphinx design .
Then some would bring up the RAF design, only a few knew about those. some would say the RAF's were 66's
this came from the FRED stash, Mrs fred was a wd 40 user, most all the gold is gone, there is no silver backing.
As soon as I saw the cabinet I knew what part of the world used the door design, it was falling part and tore up, plus the top painted gold and had a 15 clone inside. This was the very first machine to leave that trailer. next was the black singer with the small red S badge.
In the weeks of researching this thing, I looked many time at Philippines web sites.. I did find cabinets like this, but with what they call a 15ch 179 machine (15 clone. 179 = drop feed)
The day after calling singer USA, I went to singer philipines web site and bingo as soon as the site opens, up pops a red screen Basically saying any machine under the names used there as in sewmaster ect and 15ch was a fake / bogus by day 2 the red screen no longer pop'd up. There was something on that screen giving the impression that it came from the real singer co.
I kinda wonder because of there employee using the terms fake / bogus , those just don't come off as a legit term LOL.
something odd is the paint job, in the pic's you see it very rough/scratched up each area has a whitish look. This was primed then painted black
on top the arms the words are " The singer company "
anyway I'm hoping it is a fake, It's not a clone, so would it be called a fake ? I called it a half breed, but is more like a 3 breed. so far it uses parts of 3 different singer design's.
so in todays world after this singer sell out, it could be that different singer co's don't get along to well.
O today, you can buy a brand new singer treadle in a cast iron stand for $235 USD