Unusual record??

[gramophoneshane]

My disc was recorded in Frisco by an Australian soldier, and is a pretty generic message to his parents. I guess the most interesting part is that he mentions seeing Benny Goodman perform 3 songs & some vocalist called Peggy Lee
I also got a chuckle towards the end when Trevor says $6.00
We were all pounds, shilling & pence at the time, & his pronounciasion (?) of "dollars" sounds very American to my ears.
I used a fibre needle, so the volume isn't the best

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjuNtPojcDs[/youtube]

[Viva-Tonal]

That was NICE!

Thanks! Bear in mind, the disc was much less checked and cracked 20 years ago compared with now.

Gee, I wish I could get that sort of sound quality from my disc. It sounds great!
I wonder how well the music would record onto a wax cylinder. It would be pretty neat to add a new intro to the music using your dads name etc.

Try it and see what happens! (I wonder how well an Edison would record the sound from a large speaker such as an Altec-Lansing A7-500!) That was the best sounding disc of what few recordings I have of him from the 1940s that were done on discs. In a test play of it yesterday my tonearm bounced up and down because of the buckling of the acetate--nowhere near as good as long ago.

The other 78 rpm discs I have of Dad were made in 1948 after he got his tenor sax, and are all dubs made by someone miking the small speaker on a tabletop record player and cutting disc after disc from what the mike picked up.

(The other 1940s recordings I have were all made on his Webster-Chicago model 80 wire recorder.)

Your disc sounds under-recorded in the first place; sounds like the level wasn't high enough and/or he wasn't close enough to the mike.

[estott]

I found something slightly unusual recently, a Philco home recording of one of FDR's Fireside Chats, February 23, 1942. Sound quality is reasonably good but I can't play it properly- the speed is someplace between 33 and 45 rpm. Still there's no need to transfer it, all of the Fireside Chats were transcribed and you can hear this (and others) on the web- probably better since someone had to flip this record in the middle of the speech.

[Viva-Tonal]

I found something slightly unusual recently, a Philco home recording of one of FDR's Fireside Chats, February 23, 1942. Sound quality is reasonably good but I can't play it properly- the speed is someplace between 33 and 45 rpm. Still there's no need to transfer it, all of the Fireside Chats were transcribed and you can hear this (and others) on the web- probably better since someone had to flip this record in the middle of the speech.

I wonder how close you'd get to correct if you took the disc, played it at 78 on a modern turntable, and transferred it to a tape that you could then play at half speed, simulating the sound of it played back at 39.13 rpm?

[gregbogantz]

Viva-Tonal is correct. The Philco home recorders made in the 1941 - 42 model years operated at either 78 or at 39.13 rpm, exactly half of the standard 78.26rpm speed. I suspect the reason for this was that the 33-⅓ speed had already fallen into disuse for consumer products (even though RCA had introduced it in 1931) and also because the Philco 1942 record changers featured continuously variable speed. They were made with a stroboscope pattern painted onto their turntables, complete with a neon lamp for illumination. The owner could easily set the platter speed with this strobe to either 78 or 39 rpm, whereas any other speeds would have required additional strobe patterns. Of course, your particular home recording may not have been made at exactly 39.13rpm if the operator had not accurately adjusted the platter speed using the strobe.

[estott]

Very interesting!
If this was a recording of unique material I'd have it properly transferred, but the speech is easily available in other formats. It's a quaint thing to have nevertheless.