The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Shawn, Good luck to you in your new endeavor!

I remember you had posted on a thread I made regarding changes in the shellac compound from early 78's to later ones-I was hoping you would be working on making 78's at some point!

Keep up the good work, sir!

hi shawn as you know i'm an audio technician as well
some advice
buy yourself some canvas screens they will greatly improve the sound of electrical recordings now as the sounds bounces of all the surrounding walls some instruments sound softer evendough there at the same distance of the micro, if you surround your instrumentalists in a little canvas room the instrumens will be better audible on the record also get a suction device for your disc recorder i can hear bounce clics in the recording this is where the cutter was grinding swarf into the groove (you don't want that!) a little tube connected(ducttape)to a vacuum cleaner hose with the tube suspended above the spindle with a mic stand (easy to make and no more swarf errors)
when you cut a acetate the sharf will be a continious splint brush it towards the tube and during the recording the suction will do the rest easy peasy! the screens can also concentrate the sound for cylinder recordings
edison had a padded room for instrumental solo recordings the screen will work in very much the same way preventing the sound from bleeding into the room instead of the horn thus creating a more crisp full recording
many studio's used canvas screens in their studio's note the canvas screens(big ones)in this foto of charles chaplin and the abe lyman orchestra i hope you can use the advice given
greetings
tino

Tino greatly appreciated, the canvas screens will do well. The disc recording was made on old Audiodisc The musicians wanted it to sound old. We Just got in a suction record hold down system and are going to put a suction device to rid of the swarf, for higher fidelity recordings, also just got a Pierre Clement recording lathe too, and recording head also heated stylus will make better recordings too. The musicians wanted the experience of gathering around 1 ribbon microphone and going at it old school. I also made digital recordings as well, some mono and some stereo, with everything miked, but they liked the sound of the mono recordings using the RCA 44bx as it sounded similar to the Earnest Stoneman recordings, and Carter Family 78s. In fact The musicians were given a choice and tried both the 22 channel Behringer mixer (frequency response 10-150,000cps) , or using the tube mixer in the Presto, and chose the Presto, which I had just re-capped.

Very cool, I love what you guys are doing at Innerspeaker Records! I can't wait for those 78s too! Consider the Charleston as one of your recording options, it's not an easy song to find on a 1920s 78 these days.

how about acoustic recording on discs maybe convert a old lathe into an acoustic recorder by replacing the elec. cutter by a converted soundbox or a soundbox from a brittish E.M.G. machine (wich looks a lot like the original acoustical cutting heads)
or use the motor and tangial tracking system from a edison diamond disc
many folks are recording on cyl (in many cases bad or worse with some exeptions like yourself) but as far as i know nobody does on disc you could try your hands on vertical recording on discs

All that is suggested is also on our wish list. In fact the Edison studio recorder I have may also have been used to make Diamond Disc masters as well, there is a similar head on the 1912 DD lathe photo in the Frow Diamond Disc book. It takes a few minutes to change diaphragms. Hope to be able to record all speeds and sizes of records, as well as lateral and vertical acoustical cut records, on metallic soap blanks.