The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here's some pics of the old 20's Musette soundbox adapter that I reworked to useable condition. The original 'speaker' inside it was a aluminum disc that was vibrated with a coil but it was burned out and probably wouldn't have sounded that great anyway, so I replaced it with a little mylar speaker from one of those cheap Ipod stereo speaker units. They have a curved mylar cone supported by a foam ring. Luckily it fit into the housing absolutely perfectly too. The PVC fitting is for attaching to the tonearm, I had to shave the inside of the ends so they'd fit and seal nicely.

I plug it into my little Zenith AM handheld radio and put the adapter onto my tonearms (either my VV-210 or 10-50). Amazing how these horns amplify the volume from a earplug socket and instantly give you lots of bass (espec. the 10-50), turns the Victrolas into nice-sounding floor radios. Even better using my CD/FM player. The bass is definitely helped by the fact that the backside of the speaker isn't completely sealed (the hole for the wire is about ¼". Seal that hole off and the bass gets cut way down.

Yeah, they are neat and can work fairly well. I have one that works and one that doesn't. I had been intending to fix it in a manner similar to what you did, but hadn't considered the iPod speaker solution. I think I'll give it a whirl.

Thanks for sharing!

It is a pretty low-budget speaker, but I figured since it is normally used for a speaker and not just as a tweeter or earphone, it should do the job. Main things I wanted was something that would fit the case (2 inch diam.), make sufficient volume from a small radio earphone output, and be cheap. Plus it looks cool with the chrome-y looking mylar and the fancy foam support ring - not just an ugly black paper speaker, hah. 8 )

These are marked "4 ohm, 2 watt". Maybe I'd get greater volume using an 8 ohm driver instead but that's a guess, I'm a speaker idiot. If I run across any other same-sized speakers in my junk scrounging, I may experiment a little more. Perhaps a modern stereo headphone driver would be ideal. But I'm guessing that the main limits of the frequency range being output is due to the horns' capabilities, not that of the typical 2 inch speaker. (?)

Playing my little 9-volt battery radio (from the earphone plug no less) loudly thru the 10-50's horn, where it can easily be heard from every room in the house and even from the backyard - this must be an *extremely* power-efficient radio!