I've come to that conclusion also as per the pipe fittings, I think they were piping sound from elsewhere into the horn. In fact they'd tacked on another extension onto this pipe so it had TWO "input connections". Or perhaps some input/output combo of some sort. Really strange to see this tinkering being done with pipes instead of wires. I've read that this horn was one of the best sound-output devices at that time, and that some enthusiasts wished they could buy the horns separately.Kirkwood wrote:The hole in the horn and the "acoustic piping" sounds like someone's attempt to use the Orthophonic horn for their radio amplification.... Radio guys were great tinkerers back then, and maybe one of them got the bright idea to do the same thing at home, probably with less than stellar results. It saved forking over a few bucks to Victor for the same feature. It's just a thought.......
That big ol' 6-inch hole cut into the lower half of the wooden horn bell (right behind the horn grille) is what still puzzles me. Maybe they were trying to achieve some reverberation/accentuating of the bass within the cabinet, like what we got later when speakers were mounted into cabinets? BUT there were a couple of screw holes around it like something had been mounted there. As if a speaker might have been there. Maybe later on, someone wanted to keep the look of the old cabinet but routed their amplifier to a little speaker mounted there. If I was dumb enough to do this mod, that would indeed be the best place to mount the speaker to get a nice deep mellow sound from that big cabinet.
I also can't figure out what the extra 120v wire was for. If I remember right it was added at the first connector after the cabinet socket, so it was juiced as long as the machine was plugged in. Maybe some 70's goofball plopped his little tuner/amp under the lid next to the platter, then routed the output to the speaker he'd screwed onto the horn? TOO weird! I'd lay odds it was the same 'tinkerer' that left the bare wires dangling under the motorboard >: \