The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I assume most of you have seen the 203 currently for sale on eBay? It appears to be in fine unmolested original condition apart from two aspects of the sound-box: the front bezel has split due to pot metal expansion of the back-plate and during its life I note the diaphragm has been replaced with the 5B type. Both of these issues can be dealt with but at a cost! Personally if it was my machine I would just get a better gold plated 5A. Unlike the harder to find silver 5A's, the gold versions do turn up albeit fairly infrequently as they were also used on the early deluxe 102's and possibly some other machines?

It seems nice to my eyes, too, at least from a quick glance via pictures!

If I may ask, what does a good gold HMV 5a soundbox run these days?

I can't find it on ebay. Can someone please post a link? thanks.

I have a question about the cabinet key: Is this am HMV key? The reason I ask this, is because it looks like an American Brunswick key. Thanks for any information on this key.
Harvey Kravitz

We went through this on another thread.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... &hilit=key

Yes, the key shape is correct for HMV, althogh there are variants. I got a Brunswick key for my HMV and it looked almost identical, but wouldn't operate the lock. For display purposes it would certainly pass, though.

OK... I looked at the listing and understand that this is considered to be a rare machine. It looks like a Victor Credenza, but the price seems way out of line... £4,001.00 = $6,274.83 US dollars. Is it really worth that much, and if so, why? I would rather spend that amount of money on something more unique looking than that machine... just sayin'.

Curt A wrote:Is it really worth that much, and if so, why? I would rather spend that amount of money on something more unique looking than that machine... just sayin'.

Its price derives from it being made by HMV, from being rare and having the largest orthophonic horn of all, or so it is claimed. Not many were sold at the time, certainly orders of magnitude less than Victor Credenzas. I have never seen any assessment of production quantities of any European manufacturer, and there is a lot of speculation about how many were manufactured, and that includes all of HMV's production. C Proudfoot mentions in his book His Masters Gramophone some statistics of numbers sold in specific markets (London) at a given period, which is the closest I have seen to actual production numbers of European machines.

I agree it is not eye-catching at all, actually it looks pretty dull, and bulky. Not unlike all other orthophonics and related competitors...

I've had all three HMV re-entrants - 163, 193/4 and 202/3 plus a Victor 8 36. It seems to be generally agreed that this model has the fullest and most resonant reproduction of all of those, and I would have to agree with that based on my experience, though I know one or two who have different preferences. It's a free world!
It's also a rare model.

Indeed, you cannot really compare this to a Credenza. I know of someone who had a Credenza and an HMV 163, the smallest of the HMV re-entrant models. He sold the 163 because he thought the Credenza sounded a little better and in the UK at least, the Credenza is less common than a 163. I've also owned all the three different sized HMV's and the 202/3 (I still have a 202 but might be offering this for sale shortly) are much better than the 193/4 which in turn roundly beat out the 163's. Although I haven't done a direct comparison myself, based upon what others have told me, I would suggest that the Credenza with its smaller horn would probably compete with the 163, if not always sounding clearer and would be somewhere between that model and the HMV 19* series.

As for production numbers, as CarlosV says, little (not enough anyway) is known about the HMV's. Proudfoot mentions the sales in the low 200's for the UK market and this is in stark comparison to the Victor models which sold in the tens of thousands. Mark my words, if the HMV 203 was a Victor model, taking into account its serious rarity and unbeatable sound reproduction for an internal horn model, the price would already be well over $20,000 with few people arguing about the merits / relative value of the thing.

Truthfully speaking, there aren't any better acoustic machines than the 202/3 apart from the largest EMG's / Experts. The 10B and Senior models respectively easily surpass the HMV models but please also bear in mind they are later models and developed when even HMV had dropped acoustic production models.

And yes, the key is correct!