La Voce Del Padrone Italy-specific portable gramophones.
Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 10:05 am
As lately a noble interest to dig and better understand the production of European gramophones in general - and of portables more specifically - has risen on this section of the board, I feel almost in duty to write few words to summarize what is known about the production of Italy-specific, original and unique models made by La Voce Del Padrone, HMV's Italian branch.
As mentioned in earlier posts here and there, in the late '30s and early '40s La Voce Del Padrone released a group of models, preminently portables, that were specifically designed for Italy and seemingly had no counterparts in other countries. This happened mainly for two reasons, related to each other.
On one hand, supplies by the mother factory in Hayes, England became very limited while WWII was approaching and the relations between Italy and England were becoming progressively strained. La Voce Del Padrone then begun to seek around parts made by third parties in order to keep the production going. Most of the models that will be described below were made with a mix & match of hardware commonly found on HMV gramophones, as well as motors and tonearms produced by Thorens in Switzerland, which of course was a neutral country and could supply Italian factories.
On the other hand, the fascist government with its "autarchic" campaign (please note that the word "autarchic" as used by the fascist regime had implications which differ by the sctrict meaning of the phylosophical term) prized products which were engineered in Italy and produced with Italian parts and craftmanship, and conversely put import limits and duties on foreign products, which were also depicted as unpatriotic, and as such blemished.
In this scenario, a small serie of models which were Italian-specific sprung up. I would like to stress out once more that - while each collector is free to like them or not, and to consider them desirable/collectable or not - these are absolutely legitimate and absolutely official models, by no means crap-o-phones or frankenphones. They were regularly marketed and advertised. Today, at least in my experience, they are fairly rare and, as a matter of fact, I don't own any of them nor have ever seen one in person (all pictures come from internet sales, or previous posts on this board).
What follows is the list of models that I could track by consulting all the sources that I could think of, and that - to the best of my knowledge - have no correspondence in HMV's standard production:
- 103 and 103A
- 104 and 104A
- 116
- 137
- 139
- 144
I will try to describe each in a separate post, accompanied by drawings and pictures when available.
As mentioned in earlier posts here and there, in the late '30s and early '40s La Voce Del Padrone released a group of models, preminently portables, that were specifically designed for Italy and seemingly had no counterparts in other countries. This happened mainly for two reasons, related to each other.
On one hand, supplies by the mother factory in Hayes, England became very limited while WWII was approaching and the relations between Italy and England were becoming progressively strained. La Voce Del Padrone then begun to seek around parts made by third parties in order to keep the production going. Most of the models that will be described below were made with a mix & match of hardware commonly found on HMV gramophones, as well as motors and tonearms produced by Thorens in Switzerland, which of course was a neutral country and could supply Italian factories.
On the other hand, the fascist government with its "autarchic" campaign (please note that the word "autarchic" as used by the fascist regime had implications which differ by the sctrict meaning of the phylosophical term) prized products which were engineered in Italy and produced with Italian parts and craftmanship, and conversely put import limits and duties on foreign products, which were also depicted as unpatriotic, and as such blemished.
In this scenario, a small serie of models which were Italian-specific sprung up. I would like to stress out once more that - while each collector is free to like them or not, and to consider them desirable/collectable or not - these are absolutely legitimate and absolutely official models, by no means crap-o-phones or frankenphones. They were regularly marketed and advertised. Today, at least in my experience, they are fairly rare and, as a matter of fact, I don't own any of them nor have ever seen one in person (all pictures come from internet sales, or previous posts on this board).
What follows is the list of models that I could track by consulting all the sources that I could think of, and that - to the best of my knowledge - have no correspondence in HMV's standard production:
- 103 and 103A
- 104 and 104A
- 116
- 137
- 139
- 144
I will try to describe each in a separate post, accompanied by drawings and pictures when available.