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Recording hints and tips from my website. Recording hints and tips. A paper horn made of manilla envelopes works great!

To record first you need a recorder head. These Always have an "Recorder" stamped on them. Replace the reproducer with a recorder (picture shown below),and place a blank on the mandrel, then put the horn on the machine. Practice the music or subject you want to record, and use the same steps as for playback. Place the recorder at the left end of the cylinder. Turn on the machine, lower the lift lever then Speak into the horn, and record.
Advanced Recording Tips.
For talking records a cone horn with no bell, 26" and 6" at the opening is the best recording horn for general use. Speak clearly especially sibilants sounds which should almost be whistled slightly, to be audible in play back. Use an even distinct diction.
You should be about two inches from the opening when recording. If you are recording a singer with a piano, have the piano about two feet behind you with the treble section pointed at the horn. Grands should have the lid raised toward the horn, and uprights three feet off the floor on a riser, no sustain pedal used. Sing about the same distance as the speaking record. If you have loud or high notes, take a step back from the horn to equalize the amplitude, so you do not blast the recorder. For duets and quartets, two recording horns should be hooked together with a horn copper adapter,and rubber tubing of 4" long. The singers at one horn and the other towards the band or piano.
A band with singers should have the band some distance behind about three feet behind the singer, is where the band should begin to balance the voice over music. Cornets, trumpets, and loud brass should be at the back, woodwinds at the front. Bass drums should be omitted in brass band, and orchestra recording, they just do not record well on cylinders. Cymbals should
be used as an effect, and off to the side, not through a whole song, as they are quite loud. If you are recording a brass band use a 36" or 56" horn, a bell is OK on these. It is a good idea on large recording horns to wrap rope in a spiral down the length of the horn to reduce resonance. Solo instrument recording Use a 26" horn, and point the horn at the instrument in the middle place trumpets cornets, about three feet distant from the Horn. Clarinets, woodwind solos as close to the horn as possible. Violins should be very
close to the horn, with S holes pointed at the horn.
Modern rock and country recording can be done with surprising results. You can use the small bass drum in these kinds of recordings, they do not effect the sound too much. Place instrument amplifiers about six feet distant from the horn, singers should sing as close to the recording horn as possible. Drums about six feet distant. You will need to have the amplifiers much softer, as you are not using a PA system for the voice, Do not Use a PA for voice in an acoustic recording, the low mid range of the speakers spoil the sound. If you have a real good clean PA with little distortion, you may use this for back up voices, mid and tweeters pointed at the horn. To monitor the mix before recording listen at the small end of the horn, have the band play to check the balance, what you hear at the small end of the horn, is what the recorder is going to hear. It sometimes is possible to put an t in the line before the phonograph with a valve for a set of ear tubes (like a stethoscope) for listening to the mix. Temperature is very important, about 95 degrees is ideal. To Achieve the right temperature, I use a chicken house style lamp with a 100 watt light bulb placed five inches behind the back of the machine behind the blank I put the blank on loose, and have the mandrel turning five minutes, wind machine up fully again, seat the blank, and tape the end of it to the mandrel
with some scotch tape, then begin recording. When you are finished recording brush the swarf off the record you have made with a camel hair brush. These brushes are available at high end art stores. ( Swarf, the little worms of wax, that are made by recording.) Next take the blank off, shut the light off and let it cool to room temperature again. Replace the recorder with the reproducer the hear the record you have made. In demonstrations it is best to have the two machines, one for recording and one for reproducing. All this information is the result of years of experimentation and that is the best way for you to learn the art, much trial and error.

Shaving.
Nothing is better for shaving than a Commercial Ediphone or Dictaphone shaver. You put the record on the shaver mandrel, just like playing a record, and close the end gate. Push the cutting head down to the wax, then lift it
up, place it on the right end of the blank, and shave. Always shave several thin shaves to one thick one that may tear the wax. A cotton cloth dampened with Lamp oil, Kerosene, or mineral spirits, may be used to dissolve the surface of an un-wanted recording, if no shaver is available, the surface wills have much more noise than of those shaved with a commercial machine made for the purpose, of shaving cylinders, but it does work none the less. Sincerely
Shawn Borri

http://www.hervedavid.fr/francais/phono/Pathé.htm

..has a pic of a Pathé recording studio, with about 30 musicians in the band. The shape of the room is obviously intended to direct sound at the horn - but look at the itsy horn they used!

link not found

I am including a photo of the latest blanks I made, a week and a half ago, I wish I had more time to devote to cylinder making, as I work. 40 to 50 hours per week, for DHS as a care giver and a lot of overnigts. The latest ones are the best blanks I have ever used, even counting original brown wax. This is Shawn Borri by the way. I sold around 500 blanks this year. I know that does not seem like much, but that is probably six to seven hundred man hours. I have put over ten thousand hours into making these things over the last ten years.

I take it as you're still producing blanks, that you got the donations you were requesting on your website Shawn?
I also notice that your blanks dont have inner ribs like PM's or the originals. Is this due to manufacturing technics, or something else?

Paul uses a setup with a tool made out of a file that makes the inner ribs, and a hand cranked jig that turns the mold to make the ribs. Original blanks have a spiral, because the inner core, upside down, unscrewed from the center of the blank. I did not get any donations, I pulled that after a few days, was not a good idea. The ribs give a peculiar resonance, and weaken the integrity of the blanks, making it easy for them to warp. I have a fine spiral ribs, not deep inside, to help grip the mandrel, but not so thick as to. Limit the number of shaves and not have the annoying mid low resonance. I am making blanks, yes. They are the only American blanks made. I made six special blanks for the pre perfected phonographs at Edison Historical Park, they are on the mandrel right now of the 1887 and 88 machines. Blanks take at least takes thirty days to season, so if I get an order it takes at least that long to ship.

Here is a side by side comparison, of one of my new blanks, and an 1898 original brown wax. You can purchace the ones from England, as both of us can produce ony so many so fast, and P.M is a mentor of mine,has ten molds, instead of my one mold. I am into quality instead of quantity, so the blanks for 2011,are the best that can be obtained, quiet, accurate thick and long, so you can plate them, and make working molds for resin copies. The aluminum hardener is filtered until clear, and the wax goes through two filtering stages as it goes into the mold, and a baking stage to evenly cool the blank, to minimize stars, pinholes, and inner granulation. I use triple pressed stearic , free from olaic acid, and most importantly ceresine wax is the tempering agent, it has low oil, and a much finer grain structure than paraffin, which is granular. I have cut molding time from one hour to twenty minutes per blank, and that has nothing to do with cooling them faster, but slowing it down, keeping wax and mold hotter longer.

gramophoneshane wrote:link not found

Fun! If you use the word p-a-t-h-e , this forum board will add the French e accent doohickey. Result: the name p-a-t-h-e in a web address makes the link useless !

Here's a 'tiny' url : http://tinyurl.com/2evzhcd

Thank you, Shawn for all the work you have done to re-discover the secrets of cylinder recording after all the years of neglect by the mainstream [and the death of those who knew these things]. On that longer blank, the british Edison-Bell 2 minute cylinders were about that much longer than a normal 2 minute record. Bob Ault

Thank you, Bob. I have been working on dubbing cylinders from electrical sources, with surprising fidelity, I use an early style Edison weighted recorder from the 1890s, and add extra weight,heat the blanks to. Ninety five degrees, use a digital thermometer and use a copper diaphragm from a model c and the gaskets are very soft molded rubber cement, records below 100 cycles, does not blast because of the counterweight. Sounds electrical, even though acoustic, I put a small. Bose computer speaker inside a 56" horn, and pack the backside of the speaker with absorbant material , to seal the open end of the horn. Peter Dilg taught me alot of recording tricks, when I called him back in grade school, I learned to record on a Dictaphone in the late 80s. And home A in the 90s, in 95 I started electrical recording on Miller Morris Blanks, an the service became popular, and I was odering blanks constantly from PM [quote="hillndalefan"]Thank you, Shawn for all the work you have done to re-discover the secrets of cyl