The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I picked this catalogue up recently and thought it would be good to have on this forum.

Hope you like it!

http://www.glennamer.com/images/HMV0001.pdf [12.5 megabytes]

Regards, Glenn.

ooo - I love stuff like this. Many thanks !

That's fantastic thanks Glenn! I've bid on several of those catalogues over the years, and everytime I get outbid, so I've never actually had the chance to read one cover to cover.
Boy I'd love to find either one of those console models! I've only come across 2 HMV consoles in my 30+yrs of collecting, and neither of those were the ones shown in this catalogue.
I found it a little surprising that the 511 & 461 were still being offered in 1928. I wonder if they were in the catalogue that late in England, or whether they simply used Australia as a dumping ground for them, as appears to have happened with some other models (and brands)?
I also notice none of the Australasian models (Excello, Austral, etc etc) are listed, so I guess those came to end in either 1926 or 27.
Thanks heaps for sharing it with us.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing! It's interesting to see the similarities between HMV and Victor products.

thanks for your replies.

Shane, a friend of mine has a 511. It seems like they were simply trying to use up the leftover Lumiere pleated diaphragm cabinets. His machine has a saxophone horn and Number 4 reproducer. It's a beautiful machine - and I love the four spring motor.

There was a "Humpback" console on eBay recently and it sold for $750+ which surprised a few people I know. There was a lot of interest in it. It was the only one I've ever seen in Australia.

Very interesting - i've also never had a change to look through one of these either. Do the prices in it reflect that which was charged for the same model in the UK or were they more expensive? I wonder was the Australian £ at this time the same as the UK £ value wise?

Thanks for post this.
S-B-H

From memory, I think the 202 was £65 in the UK, as opposed to £105 over here.
I have no idea if the huge difference was due the exchange rate, the cost of shipping half way around the world, or both.
I'm pretty sure the UK£ was worth more than ours, but I didn't think it was almost double.

Very interesting. I like the vivid explanation of matched impedance. Much more down to earth than what appears in the British HMV catalogues of the period.

I also found it interesting that the terms phonograph and talking machine are used.

Funny! This is clearly the period when HMV switched over from their own electric system, ie type 4 reproducer with elongated 'saxophone' horn to Victor's Orthophonic system with the model 5 soundbox and folded 're-entrant horn'. It's been suggested elsewhere that paying for the Bell Labs patents would put prices through the roof in Europe, and that around 1928, three years after the Ortophonic Victrolas were introduced, prices for licensing dropped significantly. Be assured those early HMV's developed for electrically recorded records sounded quite nice, while still being kind to the older acoustic records.
I wonder, was it a carefully laid out plan, not to change over to the re-entrant system, so that the acoustic records in the catalog still could be sold, or was it because of the licensing fees to be paid to the 'States?
Also funny to introduce a new line of acoustic gramophones when on the other side of the pond electric reproduction took a big start.

Great scan! I think HMV chose not to introduce an Orthophonic clone in 1925 for two reasons: first it saved the royalty fee to Western Electric, and secondly the gramophone business in the UK was doing quite well in 1924-25 and they had no need of a super phonograph to snap the business out of the doldrums, as was the case in the States where machine sales had taken a big dip in the face of radio. Wireless broadcasting was about a year and half behind North America because of a decision made by the government in 1921 ( I think...I'll check) to ban entertainment broadcasts. They reversed this in '23 after the resulting hue and cry by the public. But it meant that the British public was just getting revved up on wireless in 1924, whereas in North America 1924 was the year everyone bought a radio.

Jim