The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Between the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island there are many little islands called the Gulf Islands. Galiano is one of them.

My goodness, what a wonderful photograph ! Is there a story surrounding it that survives ? The EMG seems to be an Export model Xa and would have sounded gorgeous in the wood-panelled room. Is anything known about Mr Scoone(g) ? I have sailed past the island but never thought to disembark and search for a gramophone ! Thank you very much for posting.

Even in monochrome the photo shows how spectacular EMG's horn finishes must have looked when new.
Alastair and I are visiting Frank James today, so I will make sure he sees the photo.

Out of interest are there any close up pictures of the original finish on these horns? Is it a marble type look? I have often wondered as many of them either look very dark today of have been painted.

Thank you for posting this unique photo of the impressive EMG. Very interesting to see how this beautiful machine has found its way to a remote island in Canada.

phonosandradios wrote:Out of interest are there any close up pictures of the original finish on these horns? Is it a marble type look? I have often wondered as many of them either look very dark today of have been painted.

EMG and Expert horns sported many different cosmetic finishing papers which could be specified by the customer. Quite often the outer and inner papers were different. Age and ultra-violet degradation have not been kind to the original colours which tend to have faded and are now reduced to varying shades of a relatively unattractive brownish hue. Patterns were chosen, sometimes with a marble look, which have sufficient complication so as to confuse the eye in terms of minimising the impact of the joints on the three-dimensional surface. The papers were often torn (not always) rather than cut to further assist the trompe l'oeil effect. Unfortunately colour photography was not mainstream in the nineteen-thirties and I do not know of any original pictures but the images below are taken recently from the inside of Expert Senior and EMG Xb Oversize horns. In these cases the colours are black and gold but would have been far more iridescent eighty-five years ago. In the absence of specific customer requests, I think the companies would have supplied standard reptilian and/or leather type finishing papers which were comparatively easy to lay.

Magnificent modern papers are still available here and with other suppliers :

https://store.bookbinding.co.uk/store/c ... r-Printed/

Thanks for those photos as i've never seen one of their horns close up - only distant photos - and it is difficult to make out the pattern on the covering paper.

Really, really fabulous to see that old photo, as others have said - thanks so much for posting!

Here's an EMG Mk IX horn which I recently completed restoring over a long period of time. It had the usual droop, the start of a breakage, had once been painted silver and had then had much of the outer layer stripped away in an effort to remove the paint. Having got it back in shape and built up the weak areas with many layers of kraft paper and dilute PVA, plus two coats of gesso between paper layers, I decided to re-paper the exterior in a carefully chosen marbled paper from Jemma Lewis: https://jemmamarbling.com/. Admittedly we don't know of any original horns that were marbled outside but plain inside, but it's difficult to find reptilian-textured paper that isn't 'plastic-y' nowadays, and anyway I had nothing to lose apart from the cost of the paper and the time spent applying it - I could always re-paper over again. As it turns out I'm very happy with the results and have no plans to do so!

To the left of the photo is one of Graham Rankin's fabulous restored/remanufactured Mk Xb Oversize instruments - a superb blank canvas for similar treatment! I know one or two other people are thinking of papering theirs having seen my results with the Mk IX horn.

Superb result Andy and absolutely in keeping with the design imperatives of the nineteen-thirties in my humble opinion. A very fine achievement---well done indeed !

Here is an example of use of modern paper on an EMG Mk Xb Oversize. Same paper in and out in this instance.

Click on image to enlarge.