The sale of a remarkable gramophone collection two years ago at the Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) in which an EMG gramophone took £6500, prompted the consignment of another large collection to the June 4 sale at the Cheltenham rooms.
Again, the outstanding result among the 28 lots was for a gramophone by Ellis Michael Ginn (1899-1959), whose hand-built machines provided the finest sound reproduction of their day.
‘Their day’ might appear to be pre-First World War judging by the illustration, right, of the electric Expert table-top gramophone with its 3ft wide (91cm) black composition horn. In fact, Ginn deemed the horn an essential part of the search for perfect audio quality well into the 1930s and the era of the new electrically recorded 78s.