"New Edison" 2-C Long Play Console recently acquired

[drh]

I remember buying one of these out of an estate in 1973 for $25 chocked with a complete set of LP's and white label 52000's. It was my first exposure to electric DD's. I loved playing the electrics on it as it came with a dance reproducer in addition to the normal two. Jerry Madsen conned(LOL) me out of the LP's as I didn't have much interest in them at the time. I wish I had them now! He offered me $25 each which was a huge amount in 1973. Selling them more than paid for the machine and gave me money to buy other things!

As luck would have it, I just played a couple tonight on my retrofitted C-250, 10" examples in very nice shape, which I recently acquired, and I must say, they sounded...well, lousy. Low volume but blasty at the same time, *way* inferior to the standard diamond disc I played right after them (in fairness, an uncommonly lovely one, violinist J. Piastro Borisoff playing a mazurka by one Ovide Musin). Of course, they were all dubs from standard diamond disc masters.

Or were they?

An admittedly hasty skim through Girard and Barnes and the Edison disc reference volume failed to turn up one of the Albert Spalding numbers, a Sarasate Spanish Dance (no. 7). I likewise failed to find one of the band/orchestral numbers. Could it be that conventional wisdom is wrong and some of the LP recordings were not just reformatted issues of music already out on diamond disc? Maybe dubbed from discs not otherwise released? I need to go back and look more thoroughly when time permits. Ha, ha.

But I digress. The point I meant to make was that while they are fascinating objects, the $$$ they would command would be gratifying, and having a complete run would be satisfying to the collector instinct--and I admit, I was and am delighted I latched onto the two lovely copies I played tonight, particularly if one really does offer a Spalding performance not otherwise released--from the point of view of practical playing pleasure you probably aren't missing much beyond the novelty of running an acoustic machine for 15 or 20 minutes without changing the record. To hear the music at its best, you'd do better just to track down good standard DDs at a fraction of the price (same with most of the Royal Purple Amberols, but that's a different story).

[marcapra]

I just played one of my Edison Long Play 24 min. records. It was 10" LP 10006 issued in Feb. 1927 with dubs of Harold Veo's Rhapsodie Russe with a strange blend of the Volga boatmen and Tchaikovsky's 1812 in fox trot tempo! (Only in the 20's!), Ernie Golden's Oriental Moonlight, and the Hotel Commodore's Clap Yo' Hands on one side. I've play part of an LP record before, but this was the first time I actually played one all the way through. I wound my Beethoven Edisonic up fairly tight as it would have to spin for a good 12 minutes, but I thought, well the 40 min. record would have to spin for about 20 mins.! When I put the reproducer down on the record, it seemed like the limit bar rode very close to the top. I think I need to raise the reproducer horn neck before playing another record. The sound, although lesser in volume than a good later DD, was very acceptable. Fine, in fact for "dinner music" back in the 20's. The record played all the way through without a problem. The record was in E+ condition. I guess I should film it next time and put it on Youtube.