HMV small wooden horns - 2 sizes?!

[Steve]

It's sometimes strange how we discover things we were not previously aware of. Yesterday whilst prepping an Intermediate Monarch for sale, I sat it next to my other Intermediate Monarch, both with mahogany cabinets and with the same identical small size, smooth mahogany horn.......or so I initially thought!

Imagine my surprise then when I spotted that one horn looked slightly bigger. Well, lo and behold, upon further investigation the bell of one easily slipped inside the bell of the other. One measures exactly 1" bigger in diameter, being just over 18 & ¼" to the other's 17 & ¼". To my mind that is a significant difference! Checking online it appears that the 18 & ¼" seems to be the "correct" size most often referred to so what happened to the slightly under-sized one? It appears to be untouched from original and certainly does not appear to be a cut-down horn. A mistake?

Curiously, they are both sat on identical bases of the same age fitted with the double-spring motor (normally single), produced when wartime shortages necessitated the use of whatever was available.

Is this a common anomaly or do I have an odd horn?

P.S. - to be technically accurate, I should have said "No. 2" instead of "Intermediate Monarch", as by the time of WW1 that was how the old I.M. model was known and catalogued. However, I always think of them in terms of how they were originally referred

[Lucius1958]

'You can't get the wood, you know'...

I'm not experienced at all with HMV; but I should imagine that wartime shortages might have made such 'economies' more frequent.

- Bill

[Steve]

'You can't get the wood, you know'...

I'm not experienced at all with HMV; but I should imagine that wartime shortages might have made such 'economies' more frequent.

- Bill

I believe the horns were imported from Victor anyway so I'm not sure saving material would be an issue here. I suppose the question should be if Victor offered a 17 & ¼" smooth "wooden" horn at the same time?

[wrichard]

Not sure horns could be imported from the US during the war. Books were forbidden as imports too. If you look up the story of Books Across the Sea it's a good example of how to overcome a prohibited import. I just can't see gramophone horns being permitted.
I think the measurement anomalies are wartime shortages and economies