The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

You remember the "spot the ball" competitions in newspapers? This is a kind of "spot the phonograph"

My conjecture is that the center top and the top "drawer" (which is a dummy) are of a piece, hinged at the rear and lift up to reveal the turntable/arm compartment, with the horn housed behind the second and third "drawers," which open as louvers (hinged at their bottoms). The bottom two drawers have keyholes, so these must be for storage. Beautiful book-matched patterning on the wood (walnut?), too!

Henry, very good! You've studied the photo and spotted the small detail very well!

As this has been posted in the British & European section I assume that there is a maker's or dealer's name on it somewhere. Can we see it please?
If the "works" are still present it would be interesting to see them as well. What I don't see is a winding handle hole, so perhaps it has an electric motor.

You guys are good!

I have since 1995 one Aeolian Vocalion unknown period model, maybe made in Spain with imported hardware (as there was an Aeolian hall in Madrid) as a lowboy chest with drawers, style XV century or so... and they are fake in a similar way... It's a beautiful carved wood front, plain sides and top, and artistic legs. I'm sending a photo closed and full opened for you...

Sidewinder-there looks like enough room to garage a small car in each of the large side cupboards. A magnificent piece of furniture, but I imagine the tone of the gramophone is not so magnificent.
Inigo-a lovely machine you have there, the cabinet in the "Jacobean" style is it?

Suppose... I don't have any idea of old styles of furniture. But it's a splendid machine. It plays vertical and lateral records, and the sound is good, due to a good thing horn, and a mica soundbox that is very similar in its approach to an hmv no 4. Same mica size, and pinned needlebar fulcrum. Easy to adjust to it's best capacities.
There horn is as short as used in this era, and rectangular cross section, conical flare. I have a project since many years ago to build an internal device that could be inserted into the horn to modify it to a truer exponential type, and easy to remove. I have two different projects; one involves introduciing a special obstacle into the horn that simply modifies its internal cross section to an exponential one. The other is more comples, and involves a device made of pipes to actually elongate the sound path while giving exponential development, kind of a portable reentrant horn that fits into the machine conical horn, but takes the air column from the back and develops it in a different path. It must fit into the conical horn too... the idea is that these devices must be easily removable, kind of plug-in horn adaptors... Still I only have some drawings of them and the basic functional specifications and requirements, yet I still haven´t developed the calculations. I need to work with a 3D CAD to be able to model the actual horn and model the device and adjust it in steps so I can make it fit into the actual horn. A complex project, but very tempting...