The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Shawn, the gadget Victrola Guy is using fits on a regular Edison recorder, he's not using an electronic cutter. I saw pic's of the one you made back in the 90s and it's not as high tec as that. I've tried small headphones and when I turned the volume up the sound from the headphones distorted.
As Chuck says I think that it can only be a small speaker of some sort? I'm going to stick with this and do some experiments of my own.
Chuck, I didn't know you could get speakers that small, I'll take a look on E-Bay first, and of course if it works, let you all know how I did it.
Mr Victrola Guy also has a playback amplifier gadget of which I've made my own version, the one I did is just a small powered mic put in a tube conected to the reproducer then to an amp and it works great, you can even adjust the EQ. Gordon.

Those tiny speakers are available from several
sources of electronic parts.

At one point there were some in the Jameco catalog. http://www.jameco.com

Also might check Digi-Key, Hosfelt, Futurlec,
B.G. Micro...just to name a few.

Yes, ebay too. Search for "miniature speakers"

I really think that if we all start doing some
experiments with this, that before long we can
have a more or less standard method figured
out, and then leave that documented here for
more people to use.

After all...$99 buys a LOT of small inexpensive
parts, tape, glue, plastic bits, metal bits,
balsa wood, bits of wire, connectors...
And you'd still have plenty of money left over
after that to use for other purchases.

Chuck

Well, I've been looking onto the best way of doing this and I was told by someone with a lot more brain cells than me, to use a thing called a Transducer speaker they are very small and quite cheep to buy.
Well thats one way the other is to buy a mini speaker like the one I'e just had delivered this morning, it cost me £12.00 although I've seen cheeper one's since. It's ment for an MP3 player ect it's 3 watt and I connected it up to my Edison 2 min recorder and got some pretty good recordings straight off. Just thought I'd share this with you all as we should, the item I found on UK Ebay was: Bluetooth mini speakers item number 221191772169. Gordon.

Good work Gordon! In my humble opinion, that
is money well spent. By doing experiments such
as this, I would bet that soon you will be
getting outstanding results. (and you will have
plenty of money left over to use for other things)...

Now, if the aforementioned gadget
was priced at, say $9.99 instead of a whopping
$99, then it might make sense to just buy one and save all that effort experimenting. But, given
the situation as it is, I think the experiments
will yield much nicer results all around.

Chuck

It all sounds to me like an over-amplified telephone. You're never going to get good results from plugging a tiny tinny speaker into an amateur home recorder - that will only combine the worst qualities of both.

For example: Bell solo from The Magic Flute. The original (not on youtube) is very clear & realistic, as if bells are being played right in the room. He has re-recorded it into a mess of distorted, ear-splitting shrieks. (note my picture of Scrooge - he's listening to it right now!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQk29SJknrU


About his claim that he's using a "transducer" and NOT a "speaker" : look up "transducer".

Transducer, speaker, receiver...
what ever you want to call it, it ends up
having:

Some sort of a moving diaphragm that makes
sound when an alternating current audio signal
is connected to it.

If you are going to use a plain ordinary
Edison "home" recorder, then you are limited
to sending sound down its sound tube.

Put a 29 cent 2 inch paper-cone 8 ohm speaker
into a suitable small container and neck it
down to a ⅝ inch diameter sleeve to fit over
the recorder's tube, and there you go.

I have not done any of these experiments yet
myself. But anybody could try it. The results
could be altered and messed with by using
different size containers and by trying different materials for the container.

A cutoff piece of a cardboard mailing tube
taped to a small plastic funnel would no
doubt have a different sound than a version
all glued up out of balsa wood.

Also, the damping material inside the container
that would fill the space between speaker and
recorder tube would also play its part.

A big wad of cotton would sound different than
a wad of paper towels would. Who knows what
would work the best? But, I have a pretty fair
idea that some good results could be obtained.
Maybe not. But maybe so.

Sure, yes, absolutely if you crank the level
way up too high, old Scrooge there will be
wincing.

Chuck

i got a victrolaguy's archivette donated to me by the victrolaguy for my cylinder digitisation project now i can digitize cylinders that won't play with a electrical picup arm because of a slight crack or because the wax is too soft (white parafin and very light brown) also i noticed that moldy cyl sound like hell with electric playback with nothing but noise while acoustic playback still gives music and the archivette picks up on this so ive tried out several cylinders i thought where f@#$ckt and i got some of the original recording

the victrola guy is a ex gunsmith and his apparatus is very well constructed with all metal parts for the housing of the piezzo

the distortion you hear in the vids of the victrola guy is due to the video cam i have several of his cylinders and when i play them back electronicaly its almost like listening to a lp

it all seems high-end to me and the quality of workmanship is worth every penny

what you are talking about with speakers or microphones believe you me i tried but this archivette works 10 times beter than a micro because the tendency of the piezzo to cut off the verry low rumbble and the super high hiss in case of pre 1905 cylinders the actual recording is right in the middle of that

i take my archivette to fellow collectors here in holand and record their rare cylinders
all i need is my trusty 1898 squaretop edison standard with rebuild c reproducer my archivette and a handheld digital sound recorder
people arren't going to borrow out their one presious bettini cylinder but in this way i can still make a desent copy of it

you know you people talk about things without trying it out its like saying a ferari is a noisy car and you don't want one because its noisy insted you want to build your own car and say at the same time you can build it in higher quality
you just know thats not true
i know 99 dollars is a lot of money but im realy thinking about buying that recorder thing from him because the archivette is top notch and i'll defend it to the death if need be
i have some archivette recordings on my youtube channel(tino van der zwan youtube)and honestly i can't hear the difference between pre 1900 recordings done with my electrical element

i hope you will reconsider
greetings
tino

Has anyone actually used one of these? How were the results?

The Victrola Guy no longer sells the Recordette. Shortly after unveiling it he pulled it off the market and deleted the You tube videos on how to use it. It worked too well. I think he realized that if he was going to make a business out of selling custom cylinder recordings then it would make no sense to sell the Recordette to the public. It is really too bad as I was going to buy one myself.
Pete