A Lane In Spain / Jean Goldkette Orchestra

[Wolfe]

Good song by a quality band, with a real nifty little guitar solo by Eddie Lang as an extra.

The record was extremely noisy, a whole slab of bacon frying. It seems that many Victors from this period are. I tried to cut the noise down without eliminating too much of the music.



PLAY

[beaumonde]

The record was extremely noisy, a whole slab of bacon frying. It seems that many Victors from this period are. I tried to cut the noise down without eliminating too much of the music.

Allan Sutton, in his new book "Recording the Twenties", states that it was a conscious decision by Victor to increase the abrasive compound in the shellac mixture, after electric recordings were introduced, to help reduce damage to the grooves by the less-than-compliant mica-diaphragm reproducers of pre-Orthophonic machines. I wonder if this even had the desired effect. But the noisy pressings (a bane to modern collectors) were much less a problem in olden days.

And, yes, that was a nifty Eddie Lang solo!

[OrthoSean]

That is another great disc and a fun Credenza record!

Wolfe, do you have a 3.8 or 4.0 mil stylus? Sometimes these do a nice job in themselves of reducing that "frying bacon" noise even before applying click repair, et al.

Sean

[Wolfe]

Adding extra abrasive compound, I have heard from other sources about Victor's practice of doing that around the time. Too bad it had to affect so many good sides.


I've been intending to buy a 4 mil stylus, mainly because I have a number of (mostly) early acoustics that absolutely need one to track properly, and as indicated, it could be handy in other circumstances.
A 4 mil on the posted record would have probably helped lessen the noise and make the upper midrange a little less strident.

[OrthoSean]

Yea, the 3.8 (which came to me as part of a record collection purchase) and the 4.0 are both excellent for many transfer applications. Victor Grand Prizes seem to require either a smaller (2.3 or 2.5) or larger (3.8 or 4.0) stylus and there isn't any rhyme nor reason to it. The larger stylus also does well on things like early 20s acoustic "Victrola" and black Batwings of the same era. UK HMV and Columbia non-laminated discs often seem to play much better with these larger styli as well. I highly recommend having one if you can swing it!

Sean