Recording cylinders with non-Edison equipment
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:05 am
I have recently begun to experiment with home recording. I have an Edison Standard B, a good if shabby workhorse with a very steady motor, and a mica-diaphragm New Recorder (ser. no. 47072, a relatively early example with a side-arm), but I have also found that I can get useful service from a German-made (EWC) floating recorder fitted to a Columbia Q which probably dates from 1901. The Q has proved to be perfectly capable of recording the full length of a standard cylinder without losing pitch, even at speeds as low as 117 r.p.m. (This was an accident, the regulator having been jarred while I moved the machine about; I usually record at 120, which allows fully three minutes for music after a short announcement.)
Two more advantages of the Q: its open construction and unpainted surfaces make it much easier to clean off the swarf after recording, and it has the right kind of reproducer and stylus for playing back brown-wax cylinders.
The recorder needed a new diaphragm, the original glass component having shattered. I initially fitted one which I cut from a piece of scrap plastic (PET) taken from the packaging of a pack of light bulbs, and this crude improvisation gave results indistinguishable from those of the Edison. (I also use a plastic diaphragm on the Columbia reproducer.) Later, however (after the accompanying pictures were taken), I installed a 33mm glass diaphragm, supplied through the good offices of Norman Bruderhofer. This seems to be more sensitive; it picks up vocal sounds such as ch and sh, which the other two configurations do not.
Herewith are pictures of my 'studio' and of the recorder with its chisel-shaped cutter. The speakers, connected to a laptop, supplied the piano or organ accompaniment; when singing, I had to hunch myself over them in order to get my face near enough to the 610mm brass horn. Later on I propped up the Q still higher so that the mouth of the horn was partly above the speakers and I could stand a little more upright, though the posture is still far from ideal.
Unfortunately my attempts to digitise the resulting records have been thwarted by the limitations of my laptop; it has no microphone jack and the built-in microphone is useless for this purpose. I have not yet solved this problem and should be grateful if anyone could recommend a cheap but serviceable audio-recording device. Meanwhile, however, I hope it will be of some interest to know what the little Columbia machine and its simple recorder can do.
Oliver Mundy.
Two more advantages of the Q: its open construction and unpainted surfaces make it much easier to clean off the swarf after recording, and it has the right kind of reproducer and stylus for playing back brown-wax cylinders.
The recorder needed a new diaphragm, the original glass component having shattered. I initially fitted one which I cut from a piece of scrap plastic (PET) taken from the packaging of a pack of light bulbs, and this crude improvisation gave results indistinguishable from those of the Edison. (I also use a plastic diaphragm on the Columbia reproducer.) Later, however (after the accompanying pictures were taken), I installed a 33mm glass diaphragm, supplied through the good offices of Norman Bruderhofer. This seems to be more sensitive; it picks up vocal sounds such as ch and sh, which the other two configurations do not.
Herewith are pictures of my 'studio' and of the recorder with its chisel-shaped cutter. The speakers, connected to a laptop, supplied the piano or organ accompaniment; when singing, I had to hunch myself over them in order to get my face near enough to the 610mm brass horn. Later on I propped up the Q still higher so that the mouth of the horn was partly above the speakers and I could stand a little more upright, though the posture is still far from ideal.
Unfortunately my attempts to digitise the resulting records have been thwarted by the limitations of my laptop; it has no microphone jack and the built-in microphone is useless for this purpose. I have not yet solved this problem and should be grateful if anyone could recommend a cheap but serviceable audio-recording device. Meanwhile, however, I hope it will be of some interest to know what the little Columbia machine and its simple recorder can do.
Oliver Mundy.