Well, one question immediately comes to mind. Who CARES about 78's issued after the advent of tape 
(1947-48), unless the tape master has been lost? Even if only a good-condition LP exists 
(post-1948), it is almost guaranteed to sound better and have a wider frequency/dynamic range than 
the 78. So I ask again, who cares about what's gotta be the vast majority of late-era 78's? I mean, 
they might make a nice novelty, but they have little or no historical value since they're a 
worst-case/obsolete-technology version of something.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "steven c" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB) Study


> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
>> I honestly didn't know there were 80,000 unique 78 sides recorded! What is
> the material?
>>
>> Steven, do you think you have more disks than Joe Bussard? Did I
> understand you correctly that you
>> have 40 THOUSAND unique 78's (ie no repeats)? Or, how much of that is
> overlap?
>>
> My estimate is that three million 78's were issued in North America
> between 1892 (Berliner's first attempts) and 1960 (last commercial
> 78's pressed). That would be six million unique sides (or about
> 5.98 million, allowing for early/classical SF 78's). That gives
> me just over 1% of the possible total!
>
> I would currently guess an overlap of around 5%. I'm currently
> doing a limited database of label/number only, just to identify
> duplicates...at this point I have about 19,000 phonorecords in
> data records, with less than a thousand duplications.
>
> And...I suspect there are other privately-held shellac archives
> that are larger!
>
> Steven C. Barr