From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
> Mike, did Gramophone/HMV have a portable acoustic rig partly built
> into a vehicle? I have a vague memory of a "mobile horn" recording setup,
> with the disk being driven by falling weights, like a clock. -- Tom Fine

I think that they moved the acoustical recording machines into buildings
rather than bring performers into a vehicle.  The electrical recording
machines could be remote from the performers, but acoustical can't.  But
as for the falling weights, just about all wax disc recording machines
were driven by falling weights, in the studios and in the field, even
into the electrical era, and even into the 1930s to a lesser degree.  

Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]  



----- Original Message ----- 

On 28/06/2012, Tom Fine wrote:
>> I think Mercury was unique in using a truck as
>> the "machine room" rather than just a transport vehicle.

> Didn't the BBC use trucks for outside broadcasts from early on?
> Regards--Don Cox [log in to unmask]

From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>

Actually the Gramophone Company in the U.K. started doing recording from
a "lorry" -- meaning a truck -- VERY early on in electrical recording.
Ernst Lough & Temple Choir "Hear My Prayer" was a HUGE hit recorded in
that lorry. The Melba Farewell and Chaliapin concerts likewise. And the
Chaliapin concert seems to have been recorded in accidental stereo.

Mike Biel [log in to unmask]