Royal Imperial

Crapophones, Frankenphones, and other fake Gramophones & Phonographs

A guide to assist you in not wasting your money

Crapophones

Where there is money, there will be fakes. His Masters Voice gramophones, particularly those with brass or wood horns were once very desirable, and original HMV machines still are.

However some people in Asia, particularly India, Pakistan and China saw an opportunity for a fast buck. These countries were - well into the 1960's - still largely electricity grid free. Therefore cheap spring driven portable gramophones were still manufactured into the 1960's. These cheap portables were used as a basis for fake horn machines that people call Crapophones. Also: because of the lack of electricity in many developing countries 78rpm records were also being manufactured long into the 1960's. Therefore it is possible to find a lot of Rock & Roll records on shellack, such as Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Beatles, Sophia Loren, all on the old style 78 records.

The largest generalities about crapophones is that:

They typically have a His Masters Voice logo - however this style logo was never used on a real, original Horn Gramophone

The horn elbow is an angular construction that never existed originally

The horn is also a pure fantasy. 99% of the time faked from Brass, but as awareness of crapophones increase, people paint them as a "disguise". His Masters Voice also never made embossed brass horns. Aditionally, the shape of the horn followed a mathematical formula for best accoustics. The crapophone horns are - if you know what you are looking at - completely wrong.

These crapophones are manufactured utilising parts from a cheap 1950's or 60's portable, so the tone arm is not right for a horn gramophone

Not to forget is that HMV gramophones were the "Rolls-Royce" of gramophones with the highest quality of manufacture.

Knowledge will save you money. If you want to buy an original His Masters Voice horn gramophone there is an excellent reference book that shows all models of His Masters Voice gramophones manufactured. It documents the gramophones produced in the United Kingdom. There were similar machines throught Europe with some variances from France, Spain, Germany. Austria, Russia. The common thread of "His Master Voice" gramophones is high quality of manufacture.

HIS MASTERS GRAMOPHONE: This book is in high demand and the first edition sold out very fast - thus not available at present. The authors, Christopher Proudfoot, and Brian Oakley are aiming to make another run.

(we will build an app here to allow you to pre-reserve)

Below we show you a sample of crapophones to help you to avoid wasting your money.

Value of these: zero to $50.- should be sufficient if you like this as a gimmic. They are prone to quick self destruction (at the end of the page you can view a few video's of the actual manufacture on street corners).

We will add additional examples as they become available.

Manufacture

Packing

Alibaba

Indiamarkt