Happy to report that a new shipment of horns has landed in the US and is making it’s way to my door as we speak.
Very shortly I’ll have new pics and sounds up on the site.
In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy these reminiscences from the past.
From a 1945 Popular Mechanics! Frequently used as a musical instrument! Look at those horns!
I really like this horn. Nice balance. Loud enough to attract attention but not too aggressive. I’m partial to black as well. I’d put something like this on my mountain bike. Very small.
Don’t see many of these around. Lots of 3 reed. Notice he’s using a hose clamp to attach it to his bike. Sometimes I feel a little wary of leaving my bike locked up somewhere because I’ve just got a wing nut holding my big brass 14″ horn on. You know, maybe it’s something someone would rip off. A hose clamp would certainly slow them down at least. There’s a 3 banger over at Amazon (affiliate link).
The benefits of a small, squeeky horn like this is that they feel ‘friendly’. Actually, I have 3 squeeze horns on my bike. A big 14″ honker for when I really need to get some attention. The small squeeze horn when I’m just intending to alert somebody, especially a pedestrian. And a mini squeeky horn just for fun with kids and dogs mostly. But I’m on the bike path a lot and the weekends are crazy with tourists who don’t know how it all works.
Well then. I took some time this evening to create a collection of Squeeze Horn sounds and (iphone, I would imagine they’ll work anywhere) ringtones. If you’re a sound person, you might like to download the larger 16 bit 44.k wav file (8.3 MB all sounds in a single file). But for fun here are the mp3 clips and ringtones.
Duckish squeeze horn:
Fat honking squeeze horn
Goosey honk squeeze hor
Loud bright squeeze horn
Medium honk squeeze horn
Sharp little squeeze horn
Soft dark squeeze horn
Enjoy!
Harpo Marx! Do you know him? I got lost the other day wandering through the interwebs tracking down an old friend, Harpo Marx. I would have been a child when I first saw some of the Marx Bros. movies and I’m wondering now if Harpo first introduced me to squeeze horns way back then. Have a quick peak.
One leads to another and then some Wikipedia (where they call it a ‘bulb horn’) and then… Harpo’s Place! Harpo’s family have a tribute site where you can read all about Harpo, his family, and the whole Marx Bros. story. There are some great audio clips too. Of course I was especially interested to find pictures of Harpo’s trusty walking cane with built-in squeeze horn.
You can see it in action here…
I don’t think it would be too difficult to make one of these! Will post when I get it built.
Cool! By Gabe Riether, NuMoon Films
Foxy! Caught in the wild at Venice Beach. I haven’t been able to find anywhere you can buy a Foxy squeeze horn. Does that mean they’re rare? Not sure.
This fellow, caught in the wild outside the Venice post office, needs a bath! OTOH shows you how well these squeeze horns stand up in the outdoors. Myself I like to cover my horns with a plastic bag when retiring from a day’s ride.
Again, I can’t find a place to buy the clown. Will update if I do.
Caught in the wild. Looks pretty new. Will have other videos up shortly that show how they age and also how they polish up again.