The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

We all love horns - don't we? I have several copies of "The Gramophone Critic, Incorporating the Radio and Music Critic" from 1930. Here is an advert for various horns. I am particularly intrigued by number 827, which has three horns at 90 degrees to each other so the sound would emanate from the front and two sides of the cabinet! I'm thinking these were aimed at the DIY enthusiast - indeed, the magazines contain a series of articles on "The Construction, Maintenance and Repair of the Modern Gramophone" with instructions on cabinet building, tonearms, soundboxes and horns (it recommends the 'Utah' exponential horn with a 91" air column). There are many adverts for machines and soundboxes I have never heard of. An interesting article on fibre needles is headed "A Fibrist Discourses", and there are many others on tracking, reproduction etc. It seems quite a debate raged back then over the relative merits of fibre v. steel needles, the subject crops up a lot. There are also record reviews, crossword puzzles, jokes and more light-hearted articles, such as "Should a Gramophile Marry?" (The answer is, of course, no )

Very interesting! Some of the horns shown are similar to these used in Columbia cabinet machines, the one on top left seems a copy of the saxophone horn used by HMV, others are designed for portables, and some are quite weird, like the three-sided you point out. I have a German machine that plays on all four sides, but it does not have such type of horn, it is a simple scheme with wood deflectors in front of a single internal horn that redirect the sound to the four sides.

Yes, 825/6 is very similar to the horn in my Columbia Viva-tonal Grafonola 153a. Imagine it being your job to come up with all these varying designs (some of them are quite bizarre - 817 reminds me of a caterpillar)!
Here is another curiosity from the same magazine:

I wonder if anyone else here has ever seen the prototype HMV (mahogany cabinet) gramophone fitted with a pair of Waveola saxophone horns of differing length and diameter? It was styled similar to a 163 but pre-dated that model by a couple of years, I'd think. I wish I knew where that went as it would have been an instant purchase for me!

Some years ago when he was living near Witney, Nigel Phillips aka "The Squire" had a prototype HMV cabinet machine with two long thin horns. Alastair Murray and I saw it when we were there to collect Alastair's first Micro-Perophone Chromogram. I wish we had photographed it.

epigramophone wrote: Mon Dec 18, 2023 9:44 am Some years ago when he was living near Witney, Nigel Phillips aka "The Squire" had a prototype HMV cabinet machine with two long thin horns. Alastair Murray and I saw it when we were there to collect Alastair's first Micro-Perophone Chromogram. I wish we had photographed it.

That is the very same one I saw! Has Nigel still got it, I wonder?