Orion Omni-Directional Reproducer.C.M.C.Switchmatic (speaker)

[FIXITNOW]

Vintage sphere speaker

Aluminum Wall Mount.Orion Omni-Directional Reproducer.C.M.C.Switchmatic (speaker)

internally there is a 2/3 Ohm Impedance speaker and 25R wirewound pot


vintage novelty extension speaker
got this off eBay for its maiden bid 99p either no one else wanted it or it was poorly described
has anyone any info on these or the maker?
Not sure of the release date
there does not seem to be much on the web about novelty speakers
anyone else got any novelty ones ?

[Edward Huggins]

The driver looks like a late 1940s Whitely Bros (WB) PM unit.

[Andrew2]

I've never come across one of those before. It looks as though it might sound horribly peaky, like singing into a teapot.

[Radio Wrangler]

Back in the day, I got given an extension speaker highly advertised to make transistor radios louder and give a stereo effect.

It was a 2' cardboard tube with a 3" hong kong speaker shoved down to the middle, and a plastic grille shoved into each end. Magazines carried ads for these things with racy drawings in aggressive perspective, of people around them enjoying the martini lifestyle while the prose made exorbitant claims of their acoustic capabilities. The offending item looked far, far bigger in the illustrations.

Complete crap. I can't imagine anyone keeping one. the one I got helped light the fire the next day.

David

[Herald1360]

I rather like that.

That chicken head knob may be original but a suitable ivory one with added nicotine colouring would look more in keeping I reckon.

Plenty of room to hide a complete radio in there without affecting its external appearance, too

[FIXITNOW]

may have an ivory one somewhere

I see I will have to look through some mags to se if I can find an ad for these

I guess its a 60's item

['LIVEWIRE?']

I once had a green plastic tubular extension speaker. The tube was about 3.75" diameter from memory and maybe 8" long. Later I built into it a 3 x BC108 based transistor plus Motorola o/p I.c MW Radio,and made use of one of the tube ends as a knob for the air spaced tuning gang (208 + 176Pf, IIRC). The speaker was a typical 3" diameter Japanese type, OK for AM Radio. The combo. worked perfectly well, picking up all the MW stations then available (Radio 4 from 3 different Transmitters, Wales, R. Eireann (as it was then known), Radio 1 (247M), etc. It was broken up many tears ago, though I probably still have the ferrite rod, Osc, & I.F. coils somewhere

[FIXITNOW]

finished repairing the cone on this last night, for a 5" speaker gives a fair account of its self plugged in to my Roberts R303.
Even managed to find a chicken head knob in ivory

[Nickthedentist]

I particularly like the flying ducks, presumably chosen because of the popularity of the china ducks people often had on their walls at the time.

A genuine rarity, I think.

[Nickthedentist]

Googling suggest that the company was later(?) known as the "Page Engineering Co Ltd" and also made, amongst other things, a speaker combined with a bedside lamp as well as switching apparatus to route the output of one's radio to various speakers around the house.

Probably yet another of those short-lived, ambitious, post-war electronic engineering start-ups.

[AC/HL]

Extension speakers became redundant as rising affluence enabled the purchase of second sets.

[qualityten]

Thanks for showing this entertaining novelty. I agree that it looks more late 50s. Perhaps it originally had a duck head knob for the pot!