The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This brochure is undated but the firm was at Soho Square from 1933 to 1936. I have had to post this in two parts as ten is the maximum allowed number of photos per post. I am sorry the file sizes are small and indistinct---each photo was 4 MB prior to uploading. I had not seen this brochure until yesterday---a very rare beast I think.

Wonderful! I hadn't seen that particular brochure before. Many thanks indeed for posting!

This is brilliant, thank you so much. It includes the answers to so many questions.

There is also so much marketing spiel!

What was the difference between the two different kinds of sound boxes listed on page 35 (apart from price)?

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I don't want to be rude, and I really don't want to sound ungrateful, but a scanner is still the best way of digitally capturing flat documents, however good a camera you bring to the task.

The two main varieties of soundbox were four or two spring---see photos.

Regarding the spiel---yes, Michael Ginn never missed an opportunity for publicity and had quite an ego to maintain !

Thanks for your thoughts about scanners. I am sure you are right in general but you have not met my particular example---believe me, my camera is vastly superior !

I just thank the stars that I've actually got an Expert gramophone! Otherwise, after reading that, I'd be forced to sell my granny into slavery and go out and immediately buy one of these incomparable instruments! E M Ginn in full flight! As well as being entertaining, it's a useful information source to have on the forum.
Thanks for your usual generosity in sharing Graham.

I just thank the stars that I've actually got an Expert gramophone!

I'll second that!

Mr Ginn was usually a man of great bluster and hot air but with the Expert Senior machine I do believe his rhetoric was, for once, entirely justified! Blimey, I'm beginning to sound like one of his adverts in The Gramophone magazine!

This is veering off topic, but that four spring sound box has a very wide rubber ring in front of the diaphragm. I have seen one like this once before, and wondered at its purpose. Do you know, or have any good guesses?

Frank thought it might be some experimentation by D Phillips to cope with louder, more "modern" records, though previously the post-war developments he had seen to this end were far more extreme. On the specific example I've seen it wasn't very helpful as the diaphragm was too small to provide an air-tight seal with the rubber, so I always wondered if it was some bodge that failed. Seeing you example has made me think again.

Cheers,
David.

Yes, this is an interesting and, to me, moot point. I have other examples, some of which have the wide (and solid but very compliant) rubber and some with the (perhaps more normal ?) thinner hollow tubing. Clearly David Phillips experimented with both and may, as you suggest, have found different suitable applications with reference to various recordings or even types of music. I think the wide rings were a later development as the soundbox on my Senior has such a ring and Frank told me it was tuned by DP late in life. The sound is first class. There was also at least one other size (smaller) of four spring Expert soundbox that I have come across.

Others may well be able to throw more light on this ?

emgcr wrote:Yes, this is an interesting and, to me, moot point. I have other examples, some of which have the wide (and solid but very compliant) rubber and some with the (perhaps more normal ?) thinner hollow tubing. Clearly David Phillips experimented with both and may, as you suggest, have found different suitable applications with reference to various recordings or even types of music. I think the wide rings were a later development as the soundbox on my Senior has such a ring and Frank told me it was tuned by DP late in life. The sound is first class. There was also at least one other size (smaller) of four spring Expert soundbox that I have come across.

Others may well be able to throw more light on this ?

It would be fascinating to compare them across a variety of records Graham!

Any time you are this way.....the pleasure will be mine.