The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I received about 60 records with an Edison home I recently purchased off of craiglist. I have approx. 6 of the records that are in a blue case with Special on the top they have different letters such as special A of special F. I haven't seen this before. Give me some information about them and let me know what makes them Special....

Thanks for the help,
Dave

These were given as a premium to customers who converted their machines from 2 minute to a combination 2/4 minute setup, in short.

Sean

In 1913 a further series of "Specials" A to K were available to those who bought the Blue Amberol attachment to bring their earlier machines right up to date.

Edison was always loyal to his existing customers. He would have been appalled at the idea of built in obsolescence.

what did the attachment look like for the blue Amberola records? Aren't they just regular 4 minute records and can't they be played on with an "H" reproducer say on a home triumph etc?

Dave Beck wrote:what did the attachment look like for the blue Amberola records? Aren't they just regular 4 minute records and can't they be played on with an "H" reproducer say on a home triumph etc?

Prior to 1908, home entertainment cylinders were made with 100 threads/turns per inch (tpi) and played for approximately 2 minutes. In 1908, Edison introduced the wax Amberols, which were 200 tpi and played approximately 4 minutes. Because the reproducer is mechanically driven across the record (as opposed to being pushed by the grooves in the record), it was necessary to create adaptors so that the existing 100 tpi machines could also play 200 tpi records. They generally do this by cutting the feedscrew rotation speed in half while leaving the mandrel speed the same. The adaptor kits also included "Special" Amberols A through K so that customers immediately had records they could play. Separate adaptor types were made for the various machine (Home, Standard, Gem, etc.)

In other words, yes, you can put an Amberol or Blue Amberol on a machine and use an H reproducer to play it, but if you do this on a 100 tpi machine, the reproducer will skip like crazy as it is being forced across the grooves too quickly.

O.K. I understand now, they were up grading to the 2-3 adapters on the machines which uses a planter gear to change the speed. Thanks for the information.
Dave

The 2/4 conversion kits for a Edison Standard seem pretty robust. However, the small planetary gears on the Edison Home kit seem small and look like they could wear pretty quick. I mostly play 2 minutes on my Home, and play the 4 minute records on my Amberola 30.

The "Special" records I've encountered are all wax Amberols and very fragile. Many were later reissued on celluloid but there are some titles only found on wax.

estott wrote:The "Special" records I've encountered are all wax Amberols and very fragile. Many were later reissued on celluloid but there are some titles only found on wax.

Specials A to K were issued on both wax Amberol and Blue Amberol. I'm not sure about the scarce Hebrew Specials L to W. They may have only come out on wax. The scarce "D" series specials that were given out for customer referrals were definitely only issued on wax.

I have Special "K". It is very funny!
It's a longwinded Vaudeville routine with several
political digs that date it to that time period.

Chuck