What should I know before installing an electric tonearm on my gramophone?

[Marc Hildebrant]

If your goal is to play the record with the least amount of groove wear and to extract the most music, I would direct you to the web site: https://www.diamondcut.com/st3/.

They sell a software program along with a great book (I wrote) to tell you how to play the old 78 RPM and Edison Flat records using a modern turntable. Very low wear on the grooves and you can save the music to your computer.

Marc

[OddRomanian]

If your goal is to play the record with the least amount of groove wear and to extract the most music, I would direct you to the web site: https://www.diamondcut.com/st3/.

They sell a software program along with a great book (I wrote) to tell you how to play the old 78 RPM and Edison Flat records using a modern turntable. Very low wear on the grooves and you can save the music to your computer.

Marc

I've never really liked turntables and using them with 78s kills the appeal in my opinion, besides, I don't have the money for one.

Either way, I've managed to find a solution to avoid record wear, a very kind repairman in my area will install a weight on the gramophone tonearm to reduce the weight to a few grams.

Thanks either way for the advice!

[herrickpickups]

until the Woodroffe/ Celestion pickup that the B.B.C adopted, appeared on the market in 1927 it's true that many really early electric pickups were heavy & not favorable to the longevity of a recording, this was bettered by the R.I Varley company in 1928 with their own version of this add-on skeletal horse shoe magnet type pickup, until the late 30's there were good & bad pickup designs. 1 of the heaviest of the era was the Ekco recording head that was sold with aluminium blank records & had an unusual striated green toned bakelite housing, this pickup, however has a fabulous tone & a triangular needle port to enable use of triangular fibres to preserve a record collection. The next generation of pickups started with the HMV hyper-sensitive type around 1938 & which used miniature steels or thorns. These are light on a record & do less damage than a standard soundbox, but they need a step-up-transformer to use before going into an amplifier ( A guitar amp with 4 band EQ is a good amplifier to use with electric pickups if you don't have a period radio with a GRAM input) A 50;1 ratio S.U.T is enough. Later still 1945-6 were the 2nd generation of the moving coil types that were originally unleashed on the war time public in 1940...with limited success. These M.C types also utilized mini steels / thorns that differ from the hmv hyper sensitive type by way of a moving coil rather than a moving iron or variable-reluctance type. All the later pickups that use mini steels & thorns are a good choice for an electric tonearm to play 78's. A Varley or Woodroffe Celestion is a good choice for the 20's era. Percy Wilson gave a glowing report on the R.I Varley pickup in the Gramophone magazine in November 1928 & again in May 1931. An electric pickup reproduces a broader range of frequencies than a mechanical soundbox can handle & brings new tonal detail to an existing record collection.
Outstanding pickups that use mini needles are; the "COIL" pickup by Wilkins & Wright, The "Lexington"(junior model) by Coopers of Wardour St. London, The Sugden " Connoisseur" , The H.M.V Hyper sensitive, + hand made pickups by EMG & EXPERT. The Expert resembles a dentist's drill & the moving coil is always broken in these, the EMG was more of a flexing coil rather than a moving coil & as such, the examples Iv'e handled had their coils still working after more than 75 years.
From the early 1930's outstanding pickups were; the B.T.H (Kellog) type as mentioned in "modern gramophones & Electric reproducers" by Wilson & Webb & the Marconi "marconiphone" with a twin coil V magnet construction & the ability to tune the sweet spot & hold it there .

[herrickpickups]

The Wilkins & Wright "coil" moving coil MONO pickup from 1946 is a great choice as you can use mini fibres or steels for 78's & adjust the needle weight on the record down to ½ Oz. Reproduction through it's step-up-transformer is amazing ! connect to the GRAM input on an old radio or to a guitar amp with an EQ bank. or perhaps the AUX input on a modern amplifier ?
This pickup was considered such an important step in Audio design that there is one of these in the Science museum's collection.
Broken coils are not particuarly expensive to rewind, typically a score ! hardly a "fortune" pre-conception without investigation or research is in & of itself short sighted, & to spread an un-founded notion in this way is at best, unhelpful to others in my humble opinion