Advice about Cylinder Phonographs

[De Soto Frank]

"Can you shave and record on a Blue Amberol? I mean, obviously you wouldn't want to get rid of a good antique recording, but say it was badly scratched and unplayable? Could it be done?"



I am far from an expert, but I would say "no".

The blue amberol consists of a celluloid "jacket" moulded-over a plaster core. I don't think there's enough thickness there to shave-away the existing recording, and still have enough to record-into.

Then there's the matter of actually having a recording head that could "cut" the celluloid. Most primary recording matrices are soft, and are not intended for repeated ( or any ) playback, but rather as an original "negative image" for making a mould for producing playing copies.

The Blue Amberols had the sound info moulded-into the plastic, rather than etched or "Cut".

If you find a Blue Amberol somewhere where the blue celluloid jacket has split up into the recorded area ( pretty much a junk cylinder at this point ), you could carefully peel-off the celluloid, and see how very thin it is.

As far as I know, the only "production" four-minute cylinder blanks were a harder black wax, similar to the first generation black Amberol records. Excluding what blanks might have been produced to office dictating equipment.

[winsleydale]

That's kinda what I thought... I wonder how the Tahitian field recordings came to pass.

[Chuck]

This is just to answer a few posts in this thread.
I do not intend to wander too far off topic here
nor hijack this thread in any way.

Edisone: You may well be correct about the graphite
vs the gold sputtering. Maybe they were used totally
separately. It was always my understanding though, that
a little graphite was needed to get the gold started.
Maybe not, but wax does not conduct electricity very well.

Desoto Frank: You may want to try my custom patent-pending
blend of fine black bakelite dust mixed in with fiberglass
resin. I've used that substance many times to make
repairs to broken black bakelite things such as old
telephone parts. The method is simple. Find an old
black bakelite pot handle or something, clamp it up
in the bench vise and use a large rat-tail file to
file off some fine powder and collect this powder
in a suitable catch container below the vise.

Then prepare some fiberglass resin (go maybe just a bit
heavy on the hardener, not too much but enough to
really activate it). I mix in the black dust first
before adding hardener and get it really black.
Then after the hardener is added it starts to set up
fast. The stuff casts nice. It then drills, files,
machines, shines up...just like the original material.

It's well worth experimenting with. Try it!

Chuck

[De Soto Frank]

Chuck - thanks for the suggestion - It's worth a try !

I think I can find some dead pots with black phenolic handles...

[De Soto Frank]

That's kinda what I thought... I wonder how the Tahitian field recordings came to pass.

I rather doubt they were recorded on blue celluloid.

If the source material was originally captured as a four-minute ( or at least more than 2-minute ) field-recording, then I would bet the original blanks were the "black-amberol type" or some other manufacture.

The original four-mintue Amberols were black-wax, and now in the 21st century at least, are regarded as extremely delicate and unstable - there are more than a few reports of the spontaneously cracking just from heat from human hands during handling.

I don't know if this was in issue back around 1910, but there must have been some issue that motivated TAE & Co. to come-up with the Blue Amberol, which was their "last word" in cylinders until they closed up shop in 1929.

I'm not familiar with the Tahitian field recordings, but if they last longer than 2 minutes, they could have been recorded on a two-minute machine, speeded-down to gain additional recording time ?

[winsleydale]

http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/CPD ... Recordings

[De Soto Frank]

Thank you !

I have visited the link, read the article, and listened to the recordings.


I have a theory:

I think the original field recordings were made on 2-minute brown-wax blanks, using a two minute recorder, with the recording machine slowed-down to around 120 - 130 rpm.

Most early recordings ( pre- LP era ) have a "signature" that helps ID their format... almost nothing that rotates is perfectly round or perfectly concentric. Even if they were at time of manufacture, age and storage factors can cause things to go slightly out of shape.

When you play-back a 78 RPM disc record, or a cylinder recording, there is a characteristic frequency "beating" in the background, equivalent to the recording / play-back speed.

Commercial American cylinder recordings have a characteristic whoosh that "beats" at 160 beat/minute. This corresponds to the "high=spot" on the cylinder going past the stylus at regular intervals. If the record gets scratched across the recording surface ( ideally, perpendicular to the grooves ), you'll hear a "tick" at 160 beats / minute.

Same goes with a 78 RPM lateral disc or 80 RPM Diamond-Disc.

I think the same phenomenon is present in 45 rpm and 33-⅓ rpm LP records, but our ears / brains don't pick-up on the variances as easily.


At any rate, listening to the transcriptions, I hear nothing "beating" at 160 bpm. I do detect some background / damage noise at around 120-130 bpm, on all cuts, especially where there is surface damage ( scratching ).

All the recordings come-in around the 3-minute mark - but the singing is going-on before the cylinder starts and after the cylinder stops ( presumably ). If you have a four-minute blank, why stop around the 3-minute mark, leaving ¼ of the blank empty ?

If you slow the mandrel speed down to 120 rpm, the recording / playing time increases from the nominal "2-minute" mark to around 3-minutes. And, the fidelity is still tolerably good for music, certainly more acceptable than a 90 rpm "Language cylinder".

I think the original brown wax field cylinders were sent to Edison for transcription to Blue Amberols - I'm sure they would do special projects like this for a fee.

I believe during transcription, the original brown wax was played-back at 120-130 rpm, and the dub was recorded at the standard 160 rpm speed. So, the Amberols play at 160 rpm, with about ¼ of a cylinder-worth of "dead wax" at the end... or plsit between each end.

That's my big fat arm-chair theory on the matter.

[victorIIvictor]

Chuck Richards wrote, "About the only thing that might work […] would be some sort of an acetate compound such as was used on the one-time recordable 78 rpm discs which were popular in the 1940s and 50s for use on those small portable disc recording machines."

Actually, one-time recordable discs on some disc-shape substrate (be it paper, glass, steel, or aluminum), both those for use with portable disc recording machines and for large professional recording machines were (with exceptions noted below) coated with lacquer (i.e., cellulose nitrate), NOT cellulose acetate. I quote (with some re-editing, for clarity), Dr Michael Biel, Prof. emeritus at Bowling Green University and past president of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), who wrote his PhD dissertation on recording mediums used in early radio broadcasting, from a post to ARSClist on June 3, 2013:

"Recording studios still now have vacuum systems to pull the chip [from cutting the recording] into a water-filled container in the next room. The chip is now, and was then, and was ALWAYS flammable nitrate. The only exception[s] were the cardboard amateur discs with a clear coating that was celluloid, and a few of the thin steel amateur home discs that had an Underwriters Laboratory seal on them like Record-Disc (the ones that had a strobe band on the labels.) […] The use of the word acetate was early in radio broadcasting history -- even before the first [cellulose nitrate] coated discs were marketed in 1934. The clay-colored floppy World Broadcasting System PRESSINGS from 1932 to 1936 or so were acetate, as were the clear blue 16-inch Brunswick Flexo pressings from 1932-1934. Note that these were pressings, not recording blanks. Some WBS [pressings] even have evidence of vinegar smell [a telltale sign of their cellulose acetate composition]. These were some of the first plastic discs that broadcasters saw and since they WERE [cellulose] acetate, that word stuck because the shadowgraphed needles were noted as needles for [use on] acetates rather than shellac. When the coated recording discs were [initially] marketed they were not called anything by their manufacturers. Presto, the first company [to manufacture discs coated with cellulose nitrate], called them 'The Presto Disc' in all of their literature. Electrovox called theirs 'Voxite.' AudioDevices published in their 1940 book 'How To Make Good Recordings' that they were NOT to be called acetate. They say that three times in the book. They might have been the first manufacturer to title them lacquers."

http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A1=i ... L=arsclist

Topic 51. Identifying a 13" plastic disc

I believe the use of the misnomer "acetate compound" for these discs goes well beyond semantics. If someone believes a disc is made of something other than what it is made of, they may use inappropriate cleaning methods and ruin the recording. This is especially important in the case of these lacquer-coated instantaneous disc recordings, which are by definition unique recordings.

Best wishes, Mark

[Lucius1958]

Thank you !

I have visited the link, read the article, and listened to the recordings.


I have a theory:

I think the original field recordings were made on 2-minute brown-wax blanks, using a two minute recorder, with the recording machine slowed-down to around 120 - 130 rpm.

Most early recordings ( pre- LP era ) have a "signature" that helps ID their format... almost nothing that rotates is perfectly round or perfectly concentric. Even if they were at time of manufacture, age and storage factors can cause things to go slightly out of shape.

When you play-back a 78 RPM disc record, or a cylinder recording, there is a characteristic frequency "beating" in the background, equivalent to the recording / play-back speed.

Commercial American cylinder recordings have a characteristic whoosh that "beats" at 160 beat/minute. This corresponds to the "high=spot" on the cylinder going past the stylus at regular intervals. If the record gets scratched across the recording surface ( ideally, perpendicular to the grooves ), you'll hear a "tick" at 160 beats / minute.

Same goes with a 78 RPM lateral disc or 80 RPM Diamond-Disc.

I think the same phenomenon is present in 45 rpm and 33-⅓ rpm LP records, but our ears / brains don't pick-up on the variances as easily.


At any rate, listening to the transcriptions, I hear nothing "beating" at 160 bpm. I do detect some background / damage noise at around 120-130 bpm, on all cuts, especially where there is surface damage ( scratching ).

All the recordings come-in around the 3-minute mark - but the singing is going-on before the cylinder starts and after the cylinder stops ( presumably ). If you have a four-minute blank, why stop around the 3-minute mark, leaving ¼ of the blank empty ?

If you slow the mandrel speed down to 120 rpm, the recording / playing time increases from the nominal "2-minute" mark to around 3-minutes. And, the fidelity is still tolerably good for music, certainly more acceptable than a 90 rpm "Language cylinder".

I think the original brown wax field cylinders were sent to Edison for transcription to Blue Amberols - I'm sure they would do special projects like this for a fee.

I believe during transcription, the original brown wax was played-back at 120-130 rpm, and the dub was recorded at the standard 160 rpm speed. So, the Amberols play at 160 rpm, with about ¼ of a cylinder-worth of "dead wax" at the end... or plsit between each end.

That's my big fat arm-chair theory on the matter.

Pretty accurate: although, as I listened, looking at a clock, the recording speed seems to have been around 100 rpm (as near as I can tell).

It would be best if one could examine the cylinders themselves, to see what the groove pitch was: whether they were recorded on a standard 100 tpi phonograph, or on a 150 tpi Ediphone...

Bill

[winsleydale]

Well, that's a whole lot more thought than I put into it...