What's this?

[Marco Gilardetti]

If you use it this way, "crude" as it is, I can easily foresee that you will pray being born deaf.

Perhaps it would make some sense if a thin piece of velvet would be pasted on the back of the gizmo, in order to dampen the diaphragm and deliver some sort of mellower, subdued tone.

[Steve]

If you use it this way, "crude" as it is, I can easily foresee that you will pray being born deaf.

Perhaps it would make some sense if a thin piece of velvet would be pasted on the back of the gizmo, in order to dampen the diaphragm and deliver some sort of mellower, subdued tone.

Not that the No. 4 is infamous for exhibiting a harsh and glaring tone to begin with! I do agree with you though that an absorbent material is necessary to achieve the "desired" effect. However the one basic principle of a pivot system is that it should be free to move back and forth. Anything jammed between the stylus bar and diaphragm to prevent this, will not improve the sound and will also potentially damage the grooves of a record! That energy has to be re-transferred somewhere.

[Lah Ca]

For some unknown reason, I find myself using a Chinese/Japanese rhetorical pattern here where one circles in and down towards a point from a larger more general context rather than presenting an immediate thesis statement or argument. Don’t know why. Maybe the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. Rough day for allergies yesterday—out all day repairing fences. Patience, please. There is a point, eventually.

We can only speculate on the earliest musical instruments. I believe a pentatonic flute made from a bird bone is the oldest known.

There undoubtedly other instruments made from less durable materials that did not survive. One day in the woods outside of Oslo, I witnessed a grandfather teaching his grandson how to separate the bark from a twig from a particular type of tree so that he had a tube of bark. He then transformed the tube into a pentatonic flute using a pocket knife, ending up with something similar to bone flutes sometimes found as Viking artifacts. Bark, reed and wooden whistles and flutes do not survive.

There is no evidence for early drums, and yet they are the most universally common instruments across all human cultures. Again, artefacts of softer organic materials seldom survive. But drums must have been among the earliest instruments.

With drums it would not be long before someone discovered that sliding a finger or thumb along the drum skin would produce an interesting and amplified squeak. People are ingenious. It would not be long before someone discovered that stretching a piece of gut twine over a piece of wood placed on the drum skin produced an interesting effect when the twine was plucked or when it was rubbed by sliding along it with fingers and thumbs and from this rubbing on to bows. All stringed musical instruments, in the abstract, are modified drums.

A soundbox/reproducer is a modified drum in which the needle and needle bar stimulate the drum skin (mica, glass, aluminium, gutapercha). It is analogous to a stringed musical instrument in which the string and bridge stimulate the drum skin (wood or skin or plastic or carbon fibre).

Changing the size and materials used for a bridge (the point of drum stimulation in a stringed musical instrument) can have profound effects, changing tone and timbre, changing relationships between fundamental tones and harmonics (clearer tones or more harmonically rich tones), changing relative volume dynamics from bass to treble, changing volume itself.

The item on epigramaphone’s new No. 4 sound box is in essence a bridge. If it is tight enough over the mica so that it doesn’t rattle unpleasantly, it will have some interesting effect, good or bad. It increases the effective mass of the needle and the needle bar. Metal is resonant. By being flat and tight against the mica, it becomes part of the resonant surface of the diaphragm. My best guess is that it will reduce the volume of the soundbox by restricting diaphragm movement and will produce purer fundamental tones by reducing harmonic overtones—a clearer, quieter sound. It was made, purchased, installed, and kept for a reason. It served some purpose. Speculation is fun and interesting, but let’s wait to hear back from epigramaphone before trashing the unfortunate little device completely.

[poodling around]

The soundboxes including the modified No.4 have now arrived. The mystery device is not attached to the diaphragm. It is easily removed by sliding it downwards and then sideways to clear the stylus bar.
As can be seen from the picture, the "tongue" exerts light pressure on the underside of the stylus bar, holding the device firmly against the diaphragm. I have not yet had time to do a sound test with and without the device, but will report my findings in due course. My expectations are low, but it is an interesting gadget which could be used on any open fronted soundbox with a mica diaphragm.
I would love to know who made it.

I wonder if it might behave a little bit like the all brass tone-arm and sound-box I have. The diaphragm is all brass and has an elaborate 'spider' design produces excellent sound.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=57106

Maybe your no. 4 will behave like the centre is metal and evenly distribute the sound produced in a (better) way ?

I am really looking forward to your findings and have high hopes !

[jamiegramo]

It reminds me of a honky tonk piano device which creates an intentional rattle or vibration. Maybe designed for playing certain records.

[An Balores]

Who has not held the stylus bar between finger and thumb whilst playing a record and discovered it softened the sound and made the record less hissy?
It will be interesting to hear what effect this gadget has on reproduction.......

[Marco Gilardetti]

Who has not held the stylus bar between finger and thumb whilst playing a record and discovered it softened the sound and made the record less hissy?

When a kid, when tubing gaskets were all hard as a rock and all soundboxes yelled awfully harsh, I used to do it all of the times.

That was long before the idea that anything like the internet was going to exist, and that I would learn that stuff like gaskets existed at all, and were replaceable, and that the tubing with which to do the job could be purchased by mail. Since then I no longer felt the need to hold my finger against anything.

You now make me wonder if these gizmos were purchased long ago as a remedy for prematurely hardened gaskets.

It may be also "amusing" to consider how the manufacturers insisted in their ads that their machines deployed a "loud, clear, ringing tone", while most customers complained about it and tried in many ways to dampen it a bit.

[Inigo]

Thinking about that device and how is it installed, pressing a central part of the diaphragm against the needlebar end... Indeed all the vibration of the needlebar is transmitted to the mica, but instead of doing it only at the center point, it gets more surface vibrating sympathetically, kind of a spider, or those Edison diaphragms with thicker layers on the center. Certainly it helps stiffening the diaphragm center, and dampens local vibration modes under its large surface.. I'm curious to hear it in action...

[Marco Gilardetti]

Mh. Mica diaphragms are so hard that I doubt there is really a need for a spider or any other further-hardening gizmos. In any case, higher-order vibration modes are the key to broad frequency response - thanks goodness they're there in loudspeakers, otherwise reaching the entire human hearing spectrum would be quite a nightmare.

So, enough speculation! When are we going to read about the "field tests" of the gizmo?

[An Balores]

"Field tests"? You mean taking a portable out on a picnic?