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Although sought after (by some) today, the 202 and 203 were soon rendered obsolete by radiograms. HMV slashed their prices in an attempt to clear unsold stocks, but rumours persist of unused cabinets being broken up at the factory.

epigramophone wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 6:19 am Although sought after (by some) today, the 202 and 203 were soon rendered obsolete by radiograms. HMV slashed their prices in an attempt to clear unsold stocks, but rumours persist of unused cabinets being broken up at the factory.

Yes, that was at the start of the creation of the EMI monolith. Nothing would surprise me.

Its perhaps also worth reminding people that these giant horn gramophones were introduced in 1927, some 3 years before an Expert Senior arrived and 6 years ahead of an EMG 10B. Earlier EMGs were noticeably inferior to the them too so they were in a class of their own for a few years. Nothing bettered them.

Were it not for the rather niche market for EMGs in the 1930s, the technology they used was also long obsolete by the time the contemporary radio-grams were introduced.

That all makes sense as the target market for these machines could easily be sold the radiogram as the most modern thing and since the record market fell to 10 percent of its 1928 level by the end of 1929 I would expect the demand for a high quality acoustic playback machine for records must have become rather niche very quickly. Indeed the EMG was the machine that filled the niche later.
I have the 157 which is sometimes excluded from this family of machines for some technical reason, but it performs very well.
Current owners of these late period high performing acoustic machines do have access to something that is more sustainable than a radiogram of the same period when it comes to parts and repairs etc.
With a slight variation in circumstances there could have been an even shorter jump from all mechanical playback to amplifiers and loudspeakers with out these machines as an impressive transition.
The merger with Marconi to form EMI would of course move all things in the direction of electronics and of all things television!

I know of at least one guy who has a 202 oder 193 complete but without the horn. Sure he is not the only one - but shipping and that sort of things…

Steve, or anyone else who might know:

What is the length of the 202/203's tone chamber? I seem to remember reading that it was nine feet long from the sound box to the horn's mouth, but can't find any reference to it now.

I believe that the 163 was fitted with a six foot tone chamber (the same length as the Victor Credenza's) and the 193 had a seven foot tone chamber. Is this correct?

OrthoFan

I honestly don't know because I wouldn't want to remove my grille for fear of damaging it but also because in all honesty I wouldn't have a clue how to measure a curved, multi-folded internal horn with "invisible" inaccessible areas.

But with that said I thought it might be at least 11' long. Its quite a lot larger than the 163.

I believe this info was given by emgcr or someone else from the british wing in an old thread. Let's see if I can find it...

Hi Steve/Inigo:

Many thanks for your responses. I had time to do a little more searching and found information about the horn lengths here -- viewtopic.php?f=11&t=11766

HMV 157 -- 5 ft. folded horn -- two partitions
HMV 163 -- 6 ft. re-entrant style horn -- four partitions
HMV 193/194 -- 7 ft. re-entrant style horn -- four partitions
HMV 202/203 -- 9 ft. re-entrant style horn -- four partitions

Turns out, I had posted this information ten years ago on this forum in response to a question about the various HMV Re-Entrant models. I vaguely remember that I scoured the archives of the (long gone) original Old Time Victrola Music Message Board (via the Internet Archive) to find the post I had remembered specifying the horn sizes. If it still exists in the Internet Archive, it's probably buried in one of the pages going back 20 years or more.

OrthoFan