Pathé' Demo Record

[GaryLC]

I was given a bunch of old 78's along with the VV-XI I just got. Thet are mostly 10", but a lot of old 12", very thick, some with only one recorded side. Amongst them is this Pathé' demo record. Again, I'm still overwhelmed with learning about all these, but thse are "vertical cut" records, correct? I shouldn't play them on my Victrola? How do I generally tell vertical cut vs. lateral cut, the grooves on a lot of the thicker Victor records look like these.

[EdiBrunsVic]

Your Victrola won't play this record correctly. I suggest you find someone with either a Pathé machine or a Brunswick phonograph that has a Pathé stylus. I have a copy of this record too.

[Wolfe]

Playing them on modern equipment can be dodgy too. You need, first, a cartridge wired for vertical playback, and a stylus that can hold those very shallow depth grooves. A run of the mill '78' needle is likely to skip a lot.

[gramophoneshane]

How do I generally tell vertical cut vs. lateral cut, the grooves on a lot of the thicker Victor records look like these.

Experience & knowledge are probably your only friends here.
In time, you'll get to notice a different look (and feel) to the grooves of a vertical recording.
The differences are impossible to explain (for me at least), but if you take a lateral record & vertical record under good light, and tilt them around a little, you'll see a subtle difference in the way the patterns in the grooves appear to the naked eye. If you looked through a bunch of Victors with loud & soft passages that are easily seen across the disc surface, and then looked at a similar Pathé record, the Pathé should look a kind of weird in comparison, but it's one of those "the same but different" sort of things that's hard to put your finger on.
Speaking of which, I dont know how many would agree with me, but I think you can feel a difference between a lateral & vertical cut disc with your finger tips if you run them along the grooves, in the direction of the grooves. To me a lateral feels smooth, but a vertical has more texture to it. Try it & see what you think
There wasn't an aweful lot of companies who made vertical recordings, so it also helpful to know who did and become familiar with the labels they had.
Until recently, I thought all vertical cut shellac discs were played with a sapphire ball stylus, but after a thread was posted about Vocalion vertical records, it seems that some were designed to be played with an ordinary steel needle. Which used sapphire & which used steel might be a little harder to work out, but personally I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Pathé is obviously for a sapphire stylus, but other brands apparently contain the abrasives in the shellac designed to wear a steel needle, which would also wear a sapphire ball if it were used on these discs. A steel needle will also cut the grooves of a Pathé if it were used.