Edison Diamond Discs in Excel Spreadsheet

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IIRC, there were three takes done of many or all selections.

I'll pick a nit here and note that there were usually at least three released takes for most recordings. You'll find info on many more unreleased takes in the spreadsheet. Also, many had more than three released takes when the masters wore out and remakes were needed. These have higher take letters, again, usually in threes: F/G/H, J/K/L, etc.

So I'm assuming an A take will be better than a B take? And the later releases sounding less good due to being dubbed from dubs? Like the last run of casting when the mold has worn out?

Nope, all takes are recorded individually, nothing is dubbed. Take A is a different recording than take B and so on. When the A/B/C set starts wearing out, the selection is re-recorded again to takes F/G/H, or even more as needed. Also, there is no guarantee that take A on one side will have take A on the other, so you can actually find 9 different copies of most records with different pairs of takes (A/A, A/B, A/C, B/A, etc.)