John Baden Woodroffe designed an Electro-Magnetic pickup for Shellac 78' recordings in 1927, it is arguably the single & most important pickup that gave momentum to the early Electric Home Audio arena.

 J.B.Woodroffe was an English Designer & Inventor born on July 4th 1900 in Chelsea, London. He was mentioned in a 1925 Wireless world article where he collaborated with a Capt. H.J. Round of Marconi fame who was on the team that invented Marconi's Indirectly heated Triodes, which transformed wireless in the 1920's. Round had a previous "E" form pickup design that was already being used by the B.B.C to broadcast Shellac Recordings but which suffered from the complicated method of needle change & required timely Needle bar damping adjustment for each record being played. The 1925 Round & Woodroffe collaboration made some advancement in this area & produced a more visually attractive & easier to use pickup, but in very limited numbers, according to the Wireless world article of Nov 4th 1925, these were Designed by H.J. Round & skillfully constructed by J.B. Woodroffe in his own workshop, but it was the pickup that J.B. Woodroffe designed 2 years later in a further simplified version of the H.J. Round design that impacted the Early Electric Era like no other pickup of it's time. 

J.B.Woodroffe's actual Education in Design & Invention is unknown & it may have been his time spent towards the end of WW1 in the Royal Air Force where he gained his technical skills & great interest in mechanisms. 

He joined the R.A.F at age 17 in 1918 & married Lillian May Harding on 24th June of that year, who was 8 years older than him at the time. This Marriage may have been brought forward by his Enlistment & Worries about the War still on going.

He lived for his entire life in a 5 storey house at 93 Harwood Road, Fulham & turned his top floor into a makeshift Laboratory that was full of Technical equipment, of which many items were made from Brass one being a Brass Microscope under a Glass dome, This Laboratory set-up looked like it was active for a very long time according to Descendants of the Woodroffe family. 

As well as the Celestion pickup, J.B.Woodroffe designed a "Matchbox" Radio for Marconi & by the early1930's He sold the patent for this Invention as well as others & subsequently never had to take another paid position.

During WW2 J.B. Woodroffe worked on "night flying" projects for the Ministry of Defense & was 1 of the team members working for the Barnes Wallace sighting mechanism that was immortalized by the WW2 Film Classic "The Dam busters"

Later in life J.B. Woodroffe became a "name" at Lloyds of London, Introduced by his Friend, Les Collins. According to the Woodroffe family, "this ALL ended in mystery and a futile investigation by the Fraud Squad - A great deal of money was thought to have been lost due to Fraudulent activity but was Unproveable due to the Lloyds 'Handshake' way of doing business". 

After his Wife died in 1980 he became something of a recluse ,

This was compounded by The work he undertook during the period of the second world war that had left him concerned about being a subject of spying & bugging. His family thought that this was nothing more than Paranoia, However,  In his final months he was repeatedly burgled at his 93 Harwood road Address & strangely there was a pattern to these burglaries where items of value were not removed but instead, papers were taken.

John Baden Woodroffe died on April 10th 1987 at Wimbledon hospital.

The Gramophone magazine showcased the Woodroffe (Glasscoe) pickup in their September 1927 issue . This appears to be identical to the Celestion release. The Glasscoe Gramophone Salon in London ran a small Ad in the same issue of the Gramophone magazine & the image of the Woodroffe (glasscoe) pickup may have simply been a publicity stunt. 

Celestion's founder, One  Cyril French worked for J.E.Jaccard, a manufacture of talking machines & had an understanding of this Technology. The collaboration between this loud speaker maker & J.B. Woodroffe was a logical one as speaker drivers of the late 1920's & pickups were very similar in design & function albeit in reverse.

The major advantage of the Woodroffe - Celestion pickup to it's contemporaries above & beyond the physical attributes & subsequent desirability was the seemingly  makeshift needle bar armature damping arrangement that was comprised of 4 short lengths of Soundbox diaphragm gasket tubing on the central pivot. From an Industrial Designer's perspective it looks like J.B. Woodroffe lived by the maxim= " use what you have & get on with it !" This damping arrangement even appears un-obscured in the illustration on the Patent application. 

The use of the gasket tubing "on-end" was genius as the tubing by definition is hollow, the damping effect was made more flexible & sensitive than would be the case with a solid rubber block, something that makers R.I & Varley used on their 1928-29 electro-magnetic pickup that was an obvious, but really excellent, elaboration of the Woodroffe - Celestion design.

The actual composition of the Varley rubber damping block is unknown as surviving examples have hardened beyond practical examination & restoring one of these requires a very soft rubber such as Silicone which shows how critical to these 1920's designs the choice of rubber was to dampen the needle armature action.

The Woodroffe - Celestion received a great review in the Wireless world in March 1929 

 "The principle of this pickup was developed by Mr J.B. Woodroffe & is almost too well known to need description. The armature, which is pivoted centrally is allowed exceptionally free movement & is damped at it's upper extremity by attachment to a rubber band. The output is fairly uniform up to 2,000 cycles & is sufficient to operate a 2 valve amplifier: 3 valves should be used if it is desired to incorporate a volume control. The workmanship is above the average & can be fully appreciated as the movement is unenclosed. For many years this has been regarded as the standard pickup & is used by many electrical Gramophone manufacturers."

The Wireless World featured an article in January of 1927 titled " High Quality Reproduction". This article sought to push the boundaries of the new ALL Electric Audio experience & featured a pickup designed by the Author R.P.G Denman & which was constructed by J.B. Woodroffe for the article. The pickup is almost certainly a Re-build of the Woodroffe - Celestion pickup & used tissue paper stuffed between the magnetic pole pieces & the needle armature. The idea was that paper gives a very natural reproduction due to the "Linear damping" effect. (Linear with Frequency) compared with the usual rubber damping employed during this period. 

J.B.Woodroffe's personal collection of his Celestion pickup.

After his passing, upon clearing out the house at 93 Harwood road, J.B. Woodroffe's Nephew found a box full of the Woodroffe - Celestion pickups , hidden in a cupboard, under the stairs . One is the earlier 1927 design (top left in the image above) that lacks the HMV / DECCA tonearm adapter , another is a double resistance output model that may have been made as a test. 

This collection of pickups may be the remainder of stock held by the Designer at his home address to Rebuild or Modify  for special orders  from Audiophiles of the day. 

These do not seem to be prepared for retail sale as the paper band usually glued around soundbox / pickup cartons of the Era are absent. There are 14 in total.

The "E" form  pickup Designed by Capt. Henry Joseph Round & used by the B.B.C was reviewed in the Gramophone magazine in their December 1926 issue=

"The Instrument is very reliable and has produced some excellent results, but it has faults. The fact that the reed (Armature) has a definite natural frequency of it's own inevitably leads to non-linear reproduction, and although this is minimised by the rubber buffers, the latter greatly increase the "load" on the record (thus increasing the wear) and also tend to level up the "ff" and "pp" passages. An improvement can be obtained by pivoting the armature and reducing the pressure on the damping buffers".