The Gramophone Guru: Spotting a fake

Tim Weeks, the Gramophone Guru explains some of the ways to spot a fake gramophone. See more at www.gramophoneg...
This is a genuine antique gramophone, whereas this is not. And here’s a quick beginner’s guide as to how to spot the difference. Now, the most obvious difference is that the fake has a shiny brass horn whereas the real one is tinplated steel painted black. There’s a reason why people always assume that a gramophone should have a brass horn, and it’s actually an historical accident.
In 1899, an artist called Francis Barraud painted a picture of his dog, Nipper, listening to an Edison Phonograph and then trotted along to the offices of the Gramophone & Typewriter Company to see if they’d like to buy it, and the manager said well yes they’d take it just as long as the artist painted out the Edison machine and painted in their lest model, which was the Gramophone & Typewriter Model No. 2, and which crucially had a brass horn.
Now as that number suggests, two was very early on in the days of the gramophone and the evolution of the technology was moving on at a pace. So barely was the paint dry on the canvas than the No. 2 had been superseded by the later, better models and in the process an interesting acoustic discovery was made, which was that although brass was the obvious thing to make a horn from, just following the lead of established brass instruments like trumpets and tubas and euphoniums, as it turned out, tinplate produced a better sound.
Brass ironically was too tinny, with the result that after about 1902, the Gramophone & Typewriter Company made nearly all their horns out of painted steel apart from the deluxe models that were made of wood. Round about this time, the Gramophone & Typewriter Company stopped making typewriters, and also adopted the name of the painting they’d bought to be their trademark, and that was of course His Master’s Voice. The other big development on from the No. 2 was this, the back bracket.
Whereas the earlier model, the whole weight of the horn was balanced on a traveling arm, which meant the bigger and heavier you made the horn, the more weight pressed straight down through the needle onto the record, with this system, the weight is all supported on this bracket here fixed on the back of the case, which meant that the horn could then be as big or as heavy as you like and to illustrate that point, here’s one probably made for a pub or a concert hall, because of course the bigger you made the horn, the louder it was.
This, by the way, although this is a genuine old horn, it’s not actually an His Master’s Voice one. HMV only ever made them black or green, they didn’t go in for painting them to look like flowers, although some other companies did. Now, let’s just compare the back brackets, shall we? Now you can see this, the genuine one here. Lovely, smooth bit of casting there, flowing nicely round into the elbow. Nickel plated, never chrome, they didn’t have that until the 1930s.
And compare it with this fake. It’s a crude, rough casting, whole lot of ornamentation that HMV never used there, also made of aluminium. They didn’t have that at the time. And then just look at the way the tone arm clunks and wobbles about at the top there, and of course this is very important. This on the other hand pivots beautiful and smoothly there, which is of course very important, it has to move smoothly at this end of the tone arm, otherwise the needle won’t track evenly across the record at that end of the tone arm.
Whilst we’re on the subject of tone arms, let’s just compare these. Here on the genuine example, you can see it comes to a sort of T-junction at the elbow here. Very typical of this model of G&T and HMV models and allowing the sound box to tip backwards while you go to change the needle. This, on the other hand, sort of S-shape - now HMV did use this, but again, not on models at this period, not before the First World War, so this is clearly purporting to be something from far older than it actually is.
Now turning our attention to the turntables. You can see here is a piece of cast iron with the baize simply cut to shape and then stuck down on it. This is made of steel. It’s the later one with a lip round the edge into which the felt or the velvet could tuck, and this is very typical of Garrard motors from the 1930s, and that is exactly what this is. It’s a Garrard motor taken out of a much later portable.
One of the little, sort of suitcase sized portables that people would take out on picnics with them, probably with salmon and cucumber sandwiches and no doubt lashings of ginger beer. Finally, back to where we began with Francis Barraud’s painting. Now, on this early example here, you can see the image has been used ... more at www.gramophoneg...
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