I love the sculptural look of old phonograph horns. They definitely make a statement in a room, drawing attention to the beauty of the music source. Most speakers anymore are bars or cylinders that don’t really have much of a visual appeal to them. A couple of years ago, I found the Victrola gramophone bluetooth speaker (HERE) online, and snatched it up for the bluetooth speaker in my sunroom. It is definitely more beautiful than the standard sound bar, but pales in comparison to a genuine gramophone or phonograph horn.
Now, they aren’t exactly easy to find. And they are typically EXPENSIVE. I have had my eye out for one for some time before I found this gem. And it is glorious. The classic tulip style, with a gorgeous interior red/yellow fade interior paint job. She was definitely not in perfect shape, but no complaints from me for the cost.
I have seen several DIY posts on how to convert an old horn into a passive amplifier for an iPhone, but the size of this thing was a bit excessive for a phone amplifier. This was NOT a tiny horn. What I really wanted was a bluetooth speaker for my art studio/ office. I did not want my phone parked on a base across the room.
So… to get the project underway, I made several trips to the local hardware stores. I spent an obnoxious amount of time tinkering with various pipes and fittings in the plumbing and electrical sections. The end of the horn was too big for 1/2″ fittings, but too small for 3/4″ fittings. It was infuriating.
Initially we started with the idea of attaching the horn to a pipe which fitted into a hollow base where we had a bluetooth speaker. The small speaker would ‘funnel’ the sound through the pipe into the horn. This really achieved the old phonograph ‘tinny’ sound, but ultimately we scratched the idea. The complexity of it was pretty daunting (fitting tightly enough to avoid sound leakage), and to be honest, the audio is inferior quality when you intend to actually enjoy listening to music.
Our final design was much simpler – we opted to mount the horn for stability, and place a small bluetooth speaker inside the horn itself. As the horn is so long, and the speaker is so small, it is difficult to see the speaker without looking directly into the deep bell of the horn.
In order to create this support, we mounted the horn to a small end table using an industrial pipe and flange, however, it needed additional support.
Did you know that original gramophone and phonograph machines had various tripods and cranes to hold the weight of their long horns? I was not aware of this until I had to figure out how to support this thing! Apparently I was a phonograph novice.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a horn crane now??
SO… time to get creative. Nothing was a great fit. The table had a small footprint, and I didn’t want a big bulky support taking focus away from the horn. I rummaged through my art room looking for anything that could support the weight of the horn, and saw my little art mannequin dude sitting in the corner. I decided to give him a try, but he was too small and flimsy.
However, he gave me an idea… art mannequin HANDS.
These are used as a tool for sketching and drawing hand details, so their joints are malleable. I ordered a set on Amazon (HERE) and tried them out. The hands were a great fit, as the fingers could be wrapped around the horn where needed to provide a more stable support. The wrists of the hands had a solid wood structure to securely mount them to the wood table.
Now that I had figured out the components of the speaker system, I could assemble the parts. The horn was scrubbed & the exterior of the horn was given a fresh coat of black satin paint. As the interior paint was so stylized and unique, I did not touch the interior paint. It is definitely worn and dinged up, but it adds to the authentic aged look. The pipe mount was sprayed black. And finally the mannequin hands were waxed and polished. These were unfinished wood, which made them look really… unfinished. The Feed-N-Wax brought out the rich wood tones, and then a light coat of Antique Wax gave additional depth and age to the wood.
We placed the horn in the pipe base, and then positioned the hands on the table so that they fully supported the weight of the horn. We permanently affixed the placement of the hands by screwing them into the table from the underside. Once the wrist bases were firmly mounted to the table, we positioned the ball joints of the wrists and thumbs around the horn again, to support it’s weight. Once the wrist and thumb placement was right, we removed the horn again and glued the wrist ball joints and thumbs. The fingers are still moveable, but the thumbs and palms that are the foundation for the horn are permanently fixed.
Now that the horn support was fully assembled, all the horn needed was a sound source! We had a mini cylindrical bluetooth speaker, another Amazon find for under $20 HERE. It packs a good punch for such a small inexpensive speaker, and as it is under 2″, it can get really far into the depth of the horn, maximizing it’s amplifying ability. An added benefit of it’s size is that it can be set so far back into the horn, it almost disappears from view.
Finally finished, the old forgotten phonograph horn has taken on a new musical life: adapting to a new generation of bluetooth enabled digital music players!
That is SO cool, Maria! I wondered how you were going to make the inside of the horn look newer, but it makes sense you’d leave it alone. Do you have to take out the bluetooth speaker to charge it? Is that a pain?
We may decide to race the power cord through the pipe support in the future, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving it turned on all of the time, so we just remove it for charging at the moment.