Very Tiny Horn

[gramophoneshane]

That's a very interesting find.
I wasn't aware of any other soundboxes apart from those used on Perophones machines, that used the auxiliary horn.
Perophone used parts bought from Thorens, and I'm fairly certain their soundboxes were supplied by Thorens too.
Both Shane's Harmony & the Add-a-tone soundboxes appear to be made by Paillard.
Pictured below is the Grippa soundbox, which is constructed differently to the other two, and shares components used on other Thorens boxes I have.
Then there are 2 pictures of an Apollo-phone soundbox made by Paillard, which shares the same needle bar pivot configuration, and rivetted body that cant be taken apart.
I wouldn't mind betting that Shane's machine has a Paillard (Marque Deposee) motor.

[larryh]

What do you suppose the downside of the extra weight on the reproducer might be if any? I wondered if it could cause premature wear of the grooves?

[Sidewinder]

What do you suppose the downside of the extra weight on the reproducer might be if any? I wondered if it could cause premature wear of the grooves?

Do you mean caused by the extra weight of the horn? The horn is made of aluminum and is very very light, so I doubt that it has any effect.

More of a problem I have seen is the pot metal of the tone arm impacting the flexibility of the arm at the joint.

[larryh]

Yes I was just considering that later on very tiny amounts of pressure on grooves became the norm so anything even fairly small but of this design would seem to add stress on the grooves. I agree with the joint problem, especially at the rear pivot as so many of these type of portables suffer from an arm that won't track as it should due to expansion of the pot metal or just plain wear.

Its a bit odd that some pot metal held up pretty well though all these years such as Brunswicks tone arms which can get tight at the slide out joint, but the basic pivot area stays fine in most cases. I wonder if there are various grades of pot metal as in other products that caused the early failure of so many?

[Shane]

I had never heard of add-a-tone before, but it certainly looks as if the horn is the exact same part. The Harmony soundbox that came from this machine certainly was an amateur job... the front of the thing had been ripped off, and all sorts of crazy parts were soldered on and spray painted black.

There are indeed various grades of pot metal, as every different company seemed to have a different "recipe" to make it. Sometimes the recipe varied as to the materials on hand at any point in time. Some contain mixtures of metals that decay very quickly, while others are quite stable, even 100 years later. Of course the environment of the phonograph's storage (specifically moisture in the air) has a lot to do with it also.

[Shane]

Thanks to G-Shane and everyone else who helped identify this horn. As I said, I obviously have no use for this thing, so up for auction it goes. I'm curious to see where it ends up.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0340188660

[gramophoneshane]

Shane Shane Shane!!
WHY have you got it listed under RECORDS?

[B.B.B]

Shane Shane Shane!!
WHY have you got it listed under RECORDS?

He probably did it out of old habit.

Look at all the great stuff he has appropriately listed under "records"
Hmmm, I think I just got bitten by the vinyl bug...again

[Shane]

Doh!! Thanks... I didn't catch that. It is out of habit (and a default setting in Turbo Lister), as 90% of what I normally sell is records.

This begs the question of something I wonder about... do people ever actually browse by category when surfing ebay? I know I don't... I just type in some search terms and go from there. The whole category system, at least to me, seems a little unnecessary.

[gramophoneshane]

I thought that might be the case Shane. I think you'll get a much better result with it listed under phonos.

I don't know about other people, but I always browse by categories myself.
I usually type in what I'm after, click on the first picture/listing that interests me, then click on the category at the top of the page.
This seems to work well for me "here" but our categories are completely different to you guys. We go from "Radio, Telephone & Gramophone" straight to "Gramophone"...and that's it.
If I look at USA Ebay & type in phonograph, you've got about 10 different breakdowns of that one category, like Edison, Victor, Parts, Accessories etc etc.