The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ronny, I'm from Boston and I currently own an Outing Portable, and a standing Columbia Grafonola phonograph.

Anywho, I was fiddling around with a reproducer a while ago when I had the idea to use the horn as an earbud amp, I took the reproducer off and pressed an earbud onto the tonearm and lo and behold! It sounded great! Now I've no idea how original of an idea that was, but I'd certainly never heard of it before, I guess it's just common sense, like when you yell into a traffic cone- everyone must do it at one time or another.

Also in my internet travels, I discovered this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIr7v4UW7ew

Now I'm not entirely sure what it's all about as I don't speak (Japanese?) but it looks awesome, I'd definitely want whatever that little gizmo is! A couple months ago in fact I was trying to fabricate something similar out of a pair of old earbuds, and an extra Vitanola reproducer I had lying around. Figure I could slip it on a tonearm and ta-da! You've got yourself a 80-100 year old device that plays any kind of music you want, and it's way louder that your friend's MP3 player (though dramatically less portable...)

So what does everyone else think of this? Has anyone ever tried it before?

Thanks,
-Ronny

Hi Ronny,

Welcome to the board. Lots of good info here as well as good people, (except Aaron we haven't heard from Aaron for a while, maybe that will coax him out )

When Radio starting to come into public use in the 1920's, there were aftermarket speakers in a reproducer sized body that would connect directly to the tone arm to do this very thing. You will occasionally see them on Ebay.

Welcome Ronny.

You might want to check out this old thread on the topic.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... &view=next