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I have a small conical horn marked at the small end NBCO. Is this an original or reproduction horn. Thanks.

Its NIBCO, any takers?

Well, NIBCO makes/distributes valves and related plumbing parts. Perhaps what you have has been modified with a plumbing fitting or may not be a phonograph horn at all. Photos would be helpful!

Here are a couple of pics. The end shot of the horn is not the best, but that is where the script of NIBCO with a circle around it is. NIBCO does make plumbing fixtures and has been around for over 100 years, so it may be possible they started out making horns. The horn pictured is well worn and has all the paint swirls and drip marks of the early horns.

Looks like a repro from the 70's to me.
All the originals I've seen, are made entirely from tin plate. This appears to have a tin plate cone with a bit of brass tubing soldered on the end.

Two words:

KARL FRICK


Mr. Frick was an early supplier of reproduction talking machine parts, many of which may charitably described as not entirely authentic. this style horn, sold primarily as a replacement for the Columbia Q, was one of his better jobs. the Edison horn that he offered was crudely made up with a tin funnel shaped bell, in the manner of the horns of the early 1890's. His horn elbows for the Victor rear mount machines were really something else, being made up of large copper plumbing elbows, washers and sheet-metal cones roughly soldered together.

I still have one of the Q horns, similar to the one that you pictured, in a box with a partial
busy Bee machine that I really must get around to restoring. Oh well, the machine's waited lo these thirty years, it can set a trifle longer!

I've always called Karl Frick's creations "Fricks's Freaks".

So your saying Karl Frick signed his horns NIBCO?

Frick didn't sign his horns or other parts, but neither did he remove markings from plumbing suppliers or wherever else he bought the random hardware he used in cobbling up his creations.

Oh, by the way, NIBCO was known as National Bronze until sometime in the 1960's.

I don't believe that the NIBCO trademark was used before 1960. the firm pioneered the manufacture of bronze sweat fittings, and was, as I recall the original manufcturer of wrot copper sweat fittings, developing these products om the decade after the War.