The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here are some photos of a large Model K cabinet machine I have (currently in storage) showing various unusual and interesting features.

I also have EMG Mk Xb for which EMG themselves converted a customer's near-identical Orchorsol cabinet, as they sometimes did with various large free-standing gramophones.

So in Class 2 (no price limit) the Algraphone came first? That wouldn't surprise me as the Algraphone is clearly better than any early EMG (Magnaphone) I've heard or indeed anything else not made by Pathé prior to 1925.

Orchorsol wrote:Here's an advertisement of the time, referring to their success. The baby's head logo is the stuff of nightmares - ??!!

Looks a lot like the Fry's Five boys logo , first boy desperation

And in these competitions neither HMV or Columbia competed because as Compton Mackenzie pointed out later, it would have been disastrous if one had bested the other in any class.
The judges were quite respectable performers and critics. Marie Novello is an interesting case...she was just beginning to be recognized as a major artist when she died prematurely in 1928. She must have been an early audiophile, like Sir Edward Elgar.
Here's a pic of her in the Edison Bell recording studio. I love this pic because it shows a real acoustic set up, not something posed for the camera. One can barely see Novello!

Jim