Copying (A Few Of) The UCSB Diamond Discs

[donniej]

A while ago, Gary Howell (a fellow member of this forum) loaned me an only-known-copy of a DD of the retirement speech of the president of the jobbers. I brought a copy to the ARSC conference and intended to give it to great folks at the UCSB DAHR group, who also sometimes have a table. As luck would have it I was able to give the disc to David Seubert, the Curator of the Performing Arts Collection (which includes the records). He thought the idea of making mew copies of discs was wonderful and we've kept in touch, discussing the possibility of a collaboration between the UCSB Library and myself.

But why would UCSB loan out discs to be duplicated?
Because they want to make rare recordings as accessible to us collectors as is practically possible, and we should be incredibly grateful for this.

I recently requested nine discs. These were picked by me and with some help from a few members here who were willing to help me sort through the vast spreadsheet of accessible discs. They were delivered yesterday and all are in mint to near-mint, unplayed condition. It's going to be a lot of work to copy this many sides but they are some of the hardest of the Diamond Discs to find.

"Kansas City Kitty" has always been a favorite of mine and Nanci's, so while test playing, I recorded this one using an Ortofon LP stylus, 1.5 grams and mixer set to mono with direct feed to my phone. The mixer has a 3 band EQ, so filtering is minimal, demonstrating how clean these discs are. I'll be making MP3's of these for anyone who wants them. Anyone wanting physical copies should look in the "Music Trader" section of this forum for my post with a list of titles and additional details.

https://youtu.be/kpMhIg1f3YY