Wood Horn Vs. Metal Horns (Internal Machines)

[Victrolacollector]

We know that Edison and Victor mostly used metal horns in their internal horn machines. I own a Magnola Talking Machine, its horn is wood and sounds really good. Are these superior? Should Edison and Victor used wood horns on all of their internal horn machines?

[CarlosV]

We know that Edison and Victor mostly used metal horns in their internal horn machines. I own a Magnola Talking Machine, its horn is wood and sounds really good. Are these superior? Should Edison and Victor used wood horns on all of their internal horn machines?

Most of the Victor orthophonic machines had wood horns. In my experience there is no intrinsic benefit of wood versus metal. The design and manufacturing are the differentiators. Some machines also utilized others materials like paper (e.g. the EMGs) and early forms of plastic.

[bigshot]

I think the molded Spruce horn is what makes the Brunswick Cortez sound so good. The shape of the horn makes a big difference too. My Cortez throws out the sound ahead and slightly upwards, which is perfect. Orthophonics tend to have a diffuse direction, and Viva Tonals throw the sound to the sides I'm told.

[startgroove]

Most internal horn machines made later had wooden horns in them, or mostly wooden. The popularity then of those horns might be an indicator of public preference, or it might have truly been that they sounded better.

Is there truly a difference between a wood horn and a metal horn sound reproduction? To test that, I chose a spear point Victor wood horn and a paneled Victor metal horn to compare, both the same over all length and using the same phonograph and record.

I think my ears detected a slight difference in the quality between the two. The wood horn seemed to have clearer mid to high tones and less resonance to the sound. I didn't think the low notes were much different between the two.

At the same time, I wanted to know what the sound was doing to the horn. I decided to test the vibrations of the horn material and compare the two horns again. By placing my fingers on the surface of the horns, at various places along the sound path, I could feel the horn material vibrating in sympathy to the sound, but not to all of it. With the wood horn, it seemed that I could not feel the lower tones as well as the mid range tones, and those were rather mild vibrations.

The metal horn seemed to vibrate a slightly more than the wood horn when testing the lower tones. However, the mid's and higher tones caused a much stronger vibration of the metal compared to the wood. Both horns seemed to vibrate the most at the throat of the horn, and less at the outer edge of the horn, with the wood horn vibrating less at the outer edge than the metal horn.

I concluded that wood resonates less in sympathy with the sound than a metal horn does. Or to put it another way, the wood horn does not sound as "tinny" to me as a metal horn.

[VintageTechnologies]

If the walls of a horn are thick and rigid enough not to resonate on certain frequencies from the sound, then the horn's composition should not matter, the sound ought to be neutral. Thin enough metal probably does color the tone, like a musical instrument. The surface texture and surface hardness inside a horn might also have some effect on tone. The horn's cavity shape should be what primarily determines a horn's performance. Edison made experimental horns from plaster and concluded that metal or wood was immaterial to tone.

[bigshot]

Another thing that affects sound related to the horn is how high the horn is related to the ear level of the listener, and the placement of the horn relative to the walls in the room.

Later cabinet machines have horns down on the floor, and if they don't direct the sound upwards, your knees get all the sound quality. I think that is a big reason why people favor external morning glory style horns... they are almost always perfectly aimed at the head of a standing person. And as we all know, in order to change records, you spend most of your time standing up.

The Victor manual recommended putting your machine a few feet from the wall in the corner of the room. This made the walls into an extension of the horn and kept the sound very directional. The big difference between speakers and a horn is the directionality of the sound. It's better with a horn to use the walls to channel the sound than it is to bounce sound off walls like a ping pong ball.

[Henry]

I think that many of the Victrolas of mine's vintage (1917, XI) used a combination of metal (connected to the taper tube) fastened to wood, in a more or less continuous flare to the cabinet opening at the horn's mouth.

[bigshot]

Does anyone think it depends on a machine made to play acoustic or a machine designed to play electrical records? Perhaps acoustic records have a narrower frequency range and are louder, so the horn has less of an effect. With a flatter broader response and lower volume level, the composition of the horn might make more of a difference. It does seem that wood horns are more common in the electrical era.

[PeterF]

I think thin metal external horns, with their hard smooth surfaces, tend to magnify the high end...including what we would call "needle scratch" or hiss. If the recording and reproducer doesn't have sufficient output in that range, the scratch can overwhelm the program material. So wooden horns would cut some of that effect, but at a higher purchase price for curved external horns.

But then, the simpler internal horns, combined with better high-end in recordings and reproduction, could give a better result at lower cost - using wood horns in simple (cheap to build) configurations.

And next, with the orthophonic revolution, high end response got even better but the horns also got more complex and expensive to produce. Victor's last ortho horns were metal. When you compare the top end wooden orthos to the later big metal ortho horns (both US and HMV versions), the metal horns win in my opinion, with super clear and defined highs without loss of the bottom end.

[bigshot]

What about Brunswick with the thin wood molded horns?