I have seen vinyl 78s from the late 40s and 50s, that obviously look like they were played with an acoustic era needle.
And in India,Africa,etc,where 78s were made well into the 1960s,a windup player with an acoustic era needle was the player of choice.
How many plays could you get out of a Pathe ball stylus?
Roger
--- On Thu, 10/22/09, Steven C. Barr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Steven C. Barr <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Victrola Needles
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009, 10:57 PM
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
> For what it's worth, I only play junker records on my Victrola, to show it in action to folks like the neices and nephews. I would never play a good-condition or non-common disk on it (that's what the precision turntable, restoration preamp and variety of stylii are for). I have two large boxes of disks for just this purpose, all bought dirt-cheap at Salvation Army and other thrift stores. About 1/3 of them are actual acoustic-era specimens, which makes the experience more genuine (although my grandparents told me they never had an electric phonograph in rural Mississippi up to when they left in the early 1930's and still didn't get an electric phonograph in Texas until the depression eased and they bought their first house in the early 1940's -- point being that they were buying and playing electric-era records on their old Victrola for a long time, and I don't think they were unique in this).
>
Well...I am striving to restore my original system...which involved a ceramic-cartridge whose
output was re-fed into a "Line In" jack of an old Sony R-2-R machine (all carried off,
sadly...?!) As Mr. Lennick will recall, I used this to dub my 78's to cassette...which he
then used for broadcast!!
Basic message...an acoustic player has an average "tracking pressure" of quite a few
pounds! This does NOT bode well for shellac records...LET ALONE vinyl...?!
Steven C. Barr
|