SG Brown type A headphones? Please help, I can't identify them.

[Andiblacksmith]

Hi all,
Sorry if this is just me being stupid but I really need the help of someone who knows about these things. My Grandad was a radio ham 40, 50, 60 years ago and I inherited my favourite of his old headphones when he died, I never actually had them plugged into anything but there was just something about them that I liked. I am now moving house an have rediscovered them much to my delight and decided to try to find out a little more about them and stir up all the old memories of Grandpa Leslie.
I have been looking on the web and have only found one picture that looks like a match but the phones I have have 1500 stamped on them and it does not appear Browns ever made a 1500 or 3000 ohm variant. I am out of my depth looking for any information on them and came across the BVWS website from which I ended up here!

The photos are too large to upload so I've put them in a dropbox folder so that they can be viewed full size.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/80kgvhj6b...yPm_CMb1a?dl=0

Thank you for any information you can give me on these old things, if it wasn't for Grandpa Leslie I'm not sure I'd have ever found the delights of radio and electronic engineering!

Cheers,
Andi

[Mr Moose]

Hello,
These S G Brown headphones were Browns top of the range headphones and I believe used a conical aluminium diaphragm driven by a vibrating reed (as used in their loudspeakers and microphone amplifiers) rather than the normal and cruder system of two coils on a U-shaped magnet with a steel diapragham.
They are also an early design going back to the first world war or earlier although later versions may have been upgraded.
This advert is from 1924.
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/images/...1AWE-Brown.jpg
Yours, Richard

[Andiblacksmith]

Thank you for that Richard, interesting to know. He was always very humble but had nice things so good to know that a nice set of head phones for the radio shed was amongst them
Would you be able to shed any light on the 1500 stamped between the conductor posts? I thought this was where the resistance was marked but the advert seems to confirm they weren't made in 1500 or 3000 ohm versions, or do you think they may have changed them at a later date?
Best regards,
Andi

[Herald1360]

Measure the resistance?

A cheap DVM is less than a pint!

[Andiblacksmith]

I have measured the resistance and it is 1500 ohms, that is why I am so confused - they don't seem to have been available in that resistance and yet these are clearly stamped as such.

[Herald1360]

So they are what it says on the tin!

Trouble is, they don't conform to expectations. Maybe they were specials for a particular customer and as such wouldn't appear in published material. Not an unusual state of affairs then or now......