The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Beware of those cubes that spin around the record. They are known to ruin modern records, as they are very hard on them.

I have about 50 16 in "The Voice of America". I sadly, haven't heard any of them though.

In general old radio stations (those that have been in business since the 1950's) can be a source for 16" transcriptions. Later ones were vinyl, by the way.

In the hifi realm, many companies that sold separate tone arms sold both a 12" and 16" versions of their high quality tone arms. If you have a separate turntable possibly salvaged from a radio station, it will have a long tonearm, or if you only got the turntable you can source a tonearm on various online sites. You don't have to have a turntable with a 16" platter, a 12" platter, or even smaller will work as long as you have the appropriate length tone arm, mounted the correct distance away.

Phototone wrote:In general old radio stations (those that have been in business since the 1950's) can be a source for 16" transcriptions. Later ones were vinyl, by the way.

Victor / NBC / Thesaurus 16 inch discs beginning in the early 1930s were "Victrolac" (which is basically vinyl), Flexo pressed 16 inch discs on flexible film like material starting around the same time. Most 16 inch discs were pressed in something durable or laminated (like Columbia / CBS / Transco), they had to be since syndicated programs were often shipped from one station to another once they were aired. I can only think of Vitaphone soundtrack discs being actual shellac, or glass based lacquers used during WW2, for a very short time. By all means, if you can think of any others that were shellac, I'd like to know, I have well over 1000 16 inch discs and can't think of any other than the glass based discs that would have been as fragile like shellac.

Sean

Phototone wrote:In the hifi realm, many companies that sold separate tone arms sold both a 12" and 16" versions of their high quality tone arms. If you have a separate turntable possibly salvaged from a radio station, it will have a long tonearm, or if you only got the turntable you can source a tonearm on various online sites. You don't have to have a turntable with a 16" platter, a 12" platter, or even smaller will work as long as you have the appropriate length tone arm, mounted the correct distance away.

I have some turntables I picked out of the dump haha. If i can find a correct tonearm how do i know how far away to mount it?