It's a work of art, congratulations!  

The beauty of standard typewriters is not only that they're better than portables, but as Tom pointed out, also a lot cheaper to buy (on average). I would love to get my hands on an Ambassador, but I've yet to see one come up for sale in my area.

Thanks for your comments!! First of all, keep in mind that spanish is my first language and I´ll try to write technical english to the best of my ability. I hope don´t make big mistakes 

thetypewriterman wrote:

Congratulations on your purchase.  All the internet attention seems to be on the Hermes 3000 and Baby/Rocket.  The Ambassador is under-rated and consequently cheap.  It will only be a matter of time before people realise just how good the Ambassador is.  Probably the best office manual typewriter ever made (the Olympia SG1 comes a very close second).

Comparing the two typewriters, I believe the Ambassador inspired the Olympia designers in a few features in the SG1, like the paper injector. There is a paralelism between them in some aspects. The Ambassador design comes from 1948 while SG1 is from 1953.
It has interesting features like a easy way to dismantle the platen with two handles, and all the carriage system, only with two bolts














I´m not a typewriter expert, but in terms of high end features, the Ambassador is the most overengineered typewriter that I have seen. As a mechanical engineer, is amazing to see the quality, the details, the top end finishes of both of this '50s creations... About the typing experience, I find the Ambassador a little softer and a little pleasant than the SG1. Not big differences, but in this aspect, I can observe that the Ambassador comes with little segment mechanism and shorter type-bars, that means low inertia and less effort to acelerate each type-bar on each pulsation. (Really short type-bars for a standard typewriter of this size). I believe this is the decisive factor that incline the scale in favor of Hermes...



On the other hand, I'm experiencing escapement mechanism issues. I read another post in this forum with similar problems in the Ambassador, and prior to buy this typewritter, I saw another in Spain with this issue in a more serious way. In this typewriter, sometimes when you hit the space-bar it runs for 4-5 spaces. Not very frequently, but sometimes happens. When I opened the package box, I found the carriage blocked, surely from a lateral impact... Firts I saw that there was a misalignment in paralelism between the rack in carriage and pinion in scapement. I corrected it and got better results, but the problem persists with less frequency. I´ll apreciate your help.





Comparing the 3 big Europeans, you can see in the first pic Ambassador vs SG1, and in next pic the Olivetti Linea 98 vs Hermes. Next to it, the Linea 98 looks like a portable 

Uwe wrote:

It's a work of art, congratulations!  

The beauty of standard typewriters is not only that they're better than portables, but as Tom pointed out, also a lot cheaper to buy (on average). I would love to get my hands on an Ambassador, but I've yet to see one come up for sale in my area.

Thanks Uwe, it´s curious how cheap are the standars.... I believe people could pay you in order to get the standard out of his homes  If you can get an Ambassador, I believe that you'll loved it. 

Pete E. wrote:

Thanks for posting...it's a lovely Hermes.

This is the first electric-version of this Model of which I have seen photos.
.

Thanks Pete, sincerely for me, the electrical system reduces the purity of this marvel of mechanics, but it is a precious testimony of an era where manufacturing times didn´t matter, nor the prices of materials, when each factory competed with the rest to have an excellent product and the best in its class. Now, while cleaning and adjusting the machine, I remove the electric carriage return system to protect it. In any case, this machine was manufactured for 110 volts and in Spain we have 220... 




 

In Spain I only remember a transformer from 220v to 110v for a very old fridge at my grandparents' house when I was a child (I'm 39 years old). We haven´t legislation for 110V in power tools, but I´ll consider to buy one to test the electric carriage return. This Hermes was originally selled in Italy, the "qzerty" keyboard layout is an unequivocal clue. I don´t know if in Italy, in the decade of 50's they had 110volts.

And talking about standard typewriter prices, I got this Ambassador for 50 euros, and a few months ago a Olympia SG1 from Germany for 20 + 20 (shipping cost) euros 

Dear Pete, Hermes made three Ambassador models.  A purely manual one (the most popular here in the UK)  A manual Ambassador with electric carriage return, and A fully electric Ambassador.  The fully electric model should have been good, but wasn't.  Instead of a rubber power roll and cams to drive the typebars, Hermes used a peculiar wax-coated power roll.  It wasn't terribly reliable and if you attempted to clean the power roll with solvents, chunks of the wax would disintegrate and fall off !