Question about the small Victor wood horns...

[Jerry B.]

I've enjoyed the thread about the Vic III and noticed several photos showing one with a small oak Victor horn. I believe the small wood horns were offered several years after the large wood horns and almost late in the horn era. If you inspect one carefully, you'll notice that the pieces of oak fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. By the time these horns were introduced, was Victor making the majority of their Victrola cabinets? If so, they must have had a great quantity of scrap veneer. Do you think it's possible that these horns were an attempt to utilize some of the excess pieces of scrap veneer? Thanks for your comments, Jerry Blais

[gramophone78]

Jerry, I was looking over some of my Victor cats and both horns small #30 "smooth" @ $10.00 in oak or mahogany & large #31 "spear tip" in oak or mahogany @ $15.00 were offered at the same time.
The #31's were made of cross banded veneer construction in order to achieve the "spear tip" pattern. There was no need for this with the #30's.
I would have to think the small "smooth" horns were not as popular(sales wise)as the spear tips. I say this because, they turn up far less often. In fact, the mahogany #30 turns up very infrequently as it would have been for the Victor four in mahogany or a custom order machine.

Maybe your thinking of the "smooth" large horn made for the school model that was made well into the 1920's??.

[Jerry B.]

Perhaps I'm wrong in thinking that they may have been offered on an overlapping time span but the spear point was offered several years prior to the little smooth horns. Jerry

[Steve]

The British Gramophone Co. was certainly offering 'smooth' oak and mahogany horns, both large and small sizes into the 1920's as the HMV Models of the immediate pre-WW1 period were carried over into the 1920's range and offered for at least a further SIX years. I'm not sure about the 'spear-point' pattern though. Over here we refer to these as 'fluted' by the way so if you see this reference you know that it means 'spear-point' to you guys across the water.

Surely HMV would have imported these horns from Victor, which further begs the question that Jerry asked?

[Silvertone]

As I understand it, Victor did not make any of their own horns, wood or metal. The wooden horns were, I'm told, made by two different companies, and I believe that the smooth ones were made by the company that made Music Master horns. The construction of these smooth horns looks very much like the wooden bells on Edison Cygnet horns to me. The Victor horns shown in the catalog in a previous post are the Spearpoint horn (#31) and the small smooth horn (#30). Not shown in that catalog is the large smooth horn (#41).

[Jerry B.]

Music Master horns were made from solid wood glued on edge. I think I've read that construction was similar to a sound board in a piano. Advertising claimed that the similarity enhanced the quality of the sound reproduction. Victor horns, both small and large, were constructed from overlapping layers of veneer. The large spearpoint horns appear to be made from uniform pieces of veneer while the small horns appear to be made from odd shapes and sizes of veneer. The horns are functional but they don't have the appearance of quality like the spearpoints. As the sale of horn machine dropped, the sale of Victrolas skyrocketed. Victor advertising wanted potential buyers to believe that true status was achieved by buying a Victrola. I wonder what percentage of Victor's advertising budget was spent on promoting horn machines. I suspect it was rather small. Victor's initial Victrola was a very expensive machine. Then they gradually offered less expensive Victrola models. I suspect that the advertising department would argue that an inexpensive Victrola offered better sound quality than a comparably priced horn model. If the horn machines were considered budget models, it seems possible that appearance of the small wood horns was not a top priority. The end result were horns that appeared to be made from scrap veneer or at least a lesser quality material.

Jerry Blais