The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hello, I’m looking for playable long play discs.
-Joshua

Josh_boro20 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:09 pm Hello, I’m looking for playable long play discs.
-Joshua

I see that you are looking for a conversion kit over in the "Yankee Trader." Do you not have facility to play the long play discs already? If not, be aware that you must have a functional long play reproducer with a good stylus, too; the kit alone won't do it for you.

I have an adapted C-250 with a rebuilt long play reproducer, and I have some of the long playing records. I get the lure of pursuing them, in the abstract, and having gone that route I'm still going after them when I see them. If you haven't already taken any steps down that road, however, I'd suggest thinking hard before you get started. I'm not necessarily saying "don't do it," but if you do please go in with your eyes--and your wallet!--open. The things are expen$ive, and you can easily pay the big bucks for one only to find that while it looks perfectly OK in photographs, it's utterly unplayable in practice. (It has happened to me.) Even when they do play through correctly, they are all low-level acoustic dubs from standard discs, meaning they sound weak and poor, nothing close to as good as the standard, moderately priced discs from which they were copied, and after each side you get to do something like 175 crank turns to rewind for the next one. So, yes, it's really cool to sit down and listen to uninterrupted music from an acoustic machine for 12 or 20 minutes at a lick, but these records offer a very poor dollar-to-sound-quality ratio. Sad to say, there's a reason they were a commercial failure.

in the long run, it'd be cheaper to buy a late twenties changer- more music, too!

drh wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:57 am

Josh_boro20 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:09 pm Hello, I’m looking for playable long play discs.
-Joshua

I see that you are looking for a conversion kit over in the "Yankee Trader." Do you not have facility to play the long play discs already? If not, be aware that you must have a functional long play reproducer with a good stylus, too; the kit alone won't do it for you.

I have an adapted C-250 with a rebuilt long play reproducer, and I have some of the long playing records. I get the lure of pursuing them, in the abstract, and having gone that route I'm still going after them when I see them. If you haven't already taken any steps down that road, however, I'd suggest thinking hard before you get started. I'm not necessarily saying "don't do it," but if you do please go in with your eyes--and your wallet!--open. The things are expen$ive, and you can easily pay the big bucks for one only to find that while it looks perfectly OK in photographs, it's utterly unplayable in practice. (It has happened to me.) Even when they do play through correctly, they are all low-level acoustic dubs from standard discs, meaning they sound weak and poor, nothing close to as good as the standard, moderately priced discs from which they were copied, and after each side you get to do something like 175 crank turns to rewind for the next one. So, yes, it's really cool to sit down and listen to uninterrupted music from an acoustic machine for 12 or 20 minutes at a lick, but these records offer a very poor dollar-to-sound-quality ratio. Sad to say, there's a reason they were a commercial failure.

Well said! The Edison Long Playing system can be a fairly expensive novelty.

That being said, any serious collector needs one in his life.

I actually had a kit on my 375 at one point but sold it, I regretted that. And you are right it was a very expensive addition, a lot of cranking and Fine tuning. I found it to be the most neat addition.
-Joshua

Josh_boro20 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:09 pm Hello, I’m looking for playable long play discs.
-Joshua

John Tefteller has been selling some New Old Stock ones on Ebay. There are a couple listed right now. Expect to pay upwards to $400+ for playable 12 inch copies.

marco wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 9:06 am

Josh_boro20 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:09 pm Hello, I’m looking for playable long play discs.
-Joshua

John Tefteller has been selling some New Old Stock ones on Ebay. There are a couple listed right now. Expect to pay upwards to $400+ for playable 12 inch copies.

Just before it ended, I was briefly (like, for 5 seconds) the high bidder in his auction of the Carl Flesch 12" recital. Had I won, I would have been out $600+. Alas--or, maybe, thank the good Lord!--it was not to be; somebody else blasted past me, and the thing went for a sum that, with postage, would have exceeded a cool $1,000.

I have taken two from him, neither especially distinguished listening, both wildly expensive (for me) but only moderately priced (for him, as his stuff has been going). One was probably the least in-demand of the series, the 10" disc of ol' time hymns--pretty lackluster stuff all 'round. The other was the 12" Anna Case recital, perfectly playable but with a fair number of superficial scratches that do click loudly and hence graded below the seller's average for these things. It's one of the "desirable" ones, and in general I love Anna Case, but I was disappointed to learn, upon playing the disc, that it could well have been titled "Anna Case's Worst Records." It includes on one side "Song of India," which ever since latching onto a conventional copy I've considered the poster child for "Don't Translate Russian into English," and on the other Septimus Winner's ungodly repetitive, cloying "Listen to the Mocking Bird." Yeah, I know, a classic, and I still don't like it. Not much Anna or birdie tweeter Sibyl Sanderson Fagan can do to salvage that one.

The money these things have been bringing goes beyond insane. Considering the story is these records are leftovers that he took after they didn't sell at some church bazaar, this John Tefteller must be laughing like a crazy man. Or laughing at the crazy men. Or both.

I have reproductions available of one side of the one 10" Long Play which was fox trots. The disc also comes with a reproduction sleeve (no, I don't sell the sleeves separately, in case anyone was going to ask). Please message me if you're interested.