The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I Only use SOFT needles on my records and they are quite loud enough and are kinder to the records.

Cody K wrote: you'll definitely want to restrict your record selection to lateral recordings only. Vertical recordings, such as Edison discs and some others such as many Pathé discs, not only won't play well on your machine, but you'll most likely damage or destroy them if you try.

Since the early Sonoras had provision for playing vertical records (as noted in the catalog), this caveat may not be necessary (that is, if the OP's machine has the requisite swivel on the reproducer, and the sapphire and diamond styli).

Bill

Again it may be personal taste, but I find that with few exceptions records well into the 30's and 40's will have been recorded with far more sound than a mechanical reproducer can play well. It will play, but it will also distort badly on large passages of loud sounds. At least that has been the experience I have had. Even the machines designed for electrical recordings fare better with the early versions of recordings, latter the amount of volume included in the records to my ear becomes harsh and over driven. I have also read that too much input into a mechanical reproducer may damage it , but other than sounding over driven I am not sure if anything physical actually occurs.

I agree, Larry, best to play (and hear) later electrics on machines designed for them. I have very sensitive hearing and I can't handle hearing later electrics on acoustic machines. The ONLY exception would be an EMG or Expert machine with a cactus of bamboo needle. I play lots of 30s discs on my EMG with those and it's a delight, but these machines were also designed and engineered with that in mind.

Sean

pictureroll wrote:I Only use SOFT needles on my records and they are quite loud enough and are kinder to the records.

Ditto here! Medium needles are definitely too much for electrically-recorded stuff, but OK for many, but not all, acoustic sides. Loud needles will drive me into the next room, not to mention the increased surface noise they elicit.

Related topic: Today on a bird walk in a nearby nature preserve, I "liberated" a few honey locust thorns. I'll give one a try after lunch and report back to the group. They sure look like they ought to work---right shape and size---but I recall that long ago I tried them and they dulled rather quickly; however, the sound was good.

Henry wrote:

pictureroll wrote:I Only use SOFT needles on my records and they are quite loud enough and are kinder to the records.

Ditto here! Medium needles are definitely too much for electrically-recorded stuff, but OK for many, but not all, acoustic sides. Loud needles will drive me into the next room, not to mention the increased surface noise they elicit.

Related topic: Today on a bird walk in a nearby nature preserve, I "liberated" a few honey locust thorns. I'll give one a try after lunch and report back to the group. They sure look like they ought to work---right shape and size---but I recall that long ago I tried them and they dulled rather quickly; however, the sound was good.

I find that certain reproducers will play very loudly even with a soft tone needle. Using something thicker is as Henry said, unbearable. However there are some machines where the medium tone will work, and with some softer recorded pieces a loud may work. Its really dependent on several things, the reproducer and how loud the record is recorded. My Telefunken is loud with the thinnest soft needles. The Orthophonic portable can use at least a medium and not reach the volume of the Telefunken.

Larry

larryh wrote:
I find that certain reproducers will play very loudly even with a soft tone needle. Using something thicker is as Henry said, unbearable. However there are some machines where the medium tone will work, and with some softer recorded pieces a loud may work. Its really dependent on several things, the reproducer and how loud the record is recorded.

Larry

Very true! The condition of the sound box is key. My Exhibition sounded like bleep before its rebuild, but after that it's been soft-tone needles almost exclusively.

For every thing there is an exception. One previous post said any "flexible" record would not be suitable for an acoustic gramophone. Well, that would be true of any flexible record made after about 1940. However in the 1920's and early 1930's there WERE flexible records that would play quite well on acoustic machines. The most well known of them were made by the Durium company, and called Hit of the Week records.

I've read through this thread and have a question. Is it safe to play any 78 on modern equipment or do modern record players also cause wear? I'm sure anything hard that comes in contact with the record must cause some wear, but if that wear is small or minuscule for 78s regardless of when they were made, then I might not mind playing my better records on modern equipment. I just found a George Riley Puckett recording on the Columbia flag label. It is about as near mint as any record I've found. I've resisted the temptation so far of playing it on my VV-50. Yes, I know I could transcribe to another medium (if I had the equipment) but what about a modern record player, not just for this one, but for any 78 no matter when made?

It depends on what you mean by "modern equipment." Generally speaking, modern equipment has better tonearm geometry than vintage equipment, and that factor combined with the magnetic-magnet-pickup-+-diamond-stylus-on-a-cantilever's capability to track the groove with less stylus pressure exerted means that you will cause less record wear than with, say, a Victor II and an Exhibition sound box. The tracking should be more accurate, too.

But, to achieve this, it is important to get a good tonearm/pickup-stylus match. A modern stylus that is bouncing around in the grooves, because it is unsuited for 78 RPM record playback or is poorly adjusted, will likely cause more damage than a well-adjusted and maintained vintage machine.

Optimal playback of vintage records on modern equipment also (at minimum) requires having a variety of stylus sizes available, a turntable with speed adjustment capability, and an amplifier that can defeat the RIAA equalization curve that was standardized for recordings after (roughly) 1955. Thus, for example, one could have "modern equipment" in the form of a latter-day Crosley-branded 3 speed record player + amplifier + USB Port all-in-one, and not have ANY of these optimal playback features.

There have been other threads on TMF regarding this topic, and of course in other fora. There is a lot that one could say!

Best wishes, Mark