The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I found 5 or 6 reels of new-old-stock Silvertone recording wire today at $5 per roll. If you're interested let me know. I didn't buy them but they probably won't sell too quickly.

Since there have been no replies here
regarding the rate at which the wire travels
past the head, I consulted google.

Google says that one standard wire speed was 24 ips.
There are other references to speeds as low as
15 ips, and as fast as 30 ips.

In addition it explains that the wire is moved
by the takeup reel spool. The wire is apparently
not driven by a capstan as the tape in a tape
recorder is.

This then implies that the actual speed of the
wire varies as a function of the diameter
of the piled-up wire on the reel.

For a given length of wire that never gets broken
or spliced or has hunks of it taken out and
wound on other reels, this method would hold
up ok as far as maintaining the correct speed
for any given recording.

But no capstan drive sort of dooms these machines
to not having very accurate speed control.

That all got solved when the wire got abandoned
in favor of tape driven by a capstan and pinch roller.

Chuck

Chuck wrote:Since there have been no replies here
regarding the rate at which the wire travels
past the head, I consulted google.

Google says that one standard wire speed was 24 ips.
There are other references to speeds as low as
15 ips, and as fast as 30 ips.

In addition it explains that the wire is moved
by the takeup reel spool. The wire is apparently
not driven by a capstan as the tape in a tape
recorder is.

This then implies that the actual speed of the
wire varies as a function of the diameter
of the piled-up wire on the reel.

For a given length of wire that never gets broken
or spliced or has hunks of it taken out and
wound on other reels, this method would hold
up ok as far as maintaining the correct speed
for any given recording.

But no capstan drive sort of dooms these machines
to not having very accurate speed control.

That all got solved when the wire got abandoned
in favor of tape driven by a capstan and pinch roller.

Chuck

All the spools of wire I have say 24 inches per second and yes the speed does depend on the take up spool rather than any capsten so it would vary. However because the take up spool is quite large in diameter and has a fair amount of width to it for the wire to spool onto and because the bailer mechanism spreads the wire evenly across the spool I wouldn't of thought that the wire would be laid down thick enough to really increase the diameter significantly and hence affect the speed.

Other earlier machines I believe did use other speeds but on the whole it appears that by the late 1940's onwards this seems to always be the 24 inches per second.

It was pretty fast for sound quality- at slow speed it was hard to magnetize a small spot on steel wire and the results weren't crisp. a good wire recording can sound quite decent.

One thing I noticed at least with mine if you don’t mess with it very much it will develop an issue where the playback will speed up and slow down.

Not to mention there are two different types of leaders. There is a string leader with Webster recorders, and a plastic leader with silvertone recorders.

OK so I finally picked up the Silvertone 8103 today along with 100+ reels and 2 reel racks. When I got it home and plugged it in all I got was feedback and the turntable spins all the time. Controls switching between the record player, wire player and radio do not work so I believe a cleaning of all electrical contacts is in order. Any other suggestions where to start?

Steve



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Most electronics older than 1970, need all electrolytic, and paper condensers replaced. Sometimes with older electronics bringing them up slowly on a variac when first firing them up can reform some of the capacitors. We lucked out at the Musum, as possibly Bill took his machine to Bert Olin for servicing, that is the only thing I can think of, for it's perfect performance.

I restored this same model quite a few years ago. The turntable is a bit complex, with 4 or 5 idlers that will need replaced. None of the parts places seemed to have any new idlers, so I had to resurface and machine down my own new rubber for them. The radio is also a bit cramped to work on, and the microphone amp tube is almost unique to this radio, so pick up some spares if you can find them. The crystal record cartridge usually needs replaced, and if it came with its microphone that also will likely need to be rebuilt. For my microphone I replaced the crystal element with a modern electret element and installed a 3v battery in the microphone base to power it- something the original didn’t need. That’s about all I can recall about my experience with mine. It was definitely not a beginners project.