The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

transformingArt wrote:
Also, all of the recordings appeared on the RCA-Victor album, "Caruso - Metropolitan Revivals" were actually dubbings; they were NOT pressed from the original masters but made with "transcribed" masters which were electrically amplified.

Being more specific, the first pressings of this album (Which featured a photograph of Caruso listening his records sitting with his MET colleagues on its front cover) was pressed from original masters, but after about few pressings, the masters showed apparent signs of wear, so RCA Victor decided to press it with "transcribed masters", dubbed from the pressings they had in their archives. This second (transcribed and amplified) album features a caricature style drawing of Opera stage on its cover. The cover was later redesigned to show the record album itself on its cover - an Album inside an Album!

Maybe I have one of the early runs of that set, then. They didn't sound like dubs to me, the last time I played any of the records. One of them in there, the Addio dolce svegliare quartet from La Boheme I thought compared favorably to an original pressing. That would have been one that also might not have been pressed to oblivion. Some of the others, I could see that the old metals might have already had too much wear for continued use.

Wolfe wrote:That's interesting that they were considering those earlier non-Victor sides in that series. Or did some actually get out on red Heritage Series copies?

Now, that I'm not certain of. There's a Caruso with an otherwise unissued take that was put out on Heritage. The guy who all of mine came from was the developer of the series, Wilfred Graham. He had all sorts of pressings done from all sorts of stuff and while some of them are of phenominal quality like the '02 DeLucias, many masters had been "buffed" to give smoother reproduction on more modern equipment, which sadly wiped out not only "surface noise" but also a great deal of the high register. Sad. I've been told he was the one who had the idea to "buff" the masters and that lots of great stuff was sadly damaged as a result. Considering how many hundreds of these he had in his collection, he must have had big ideas for the series, but they weren't great sellers as it turned out, and it didn't survive for a very long time. When I have more time, I'll take a closer look at "70 Years Of Reissues" and see if there were any non-Victor items issued, I'm not home to look right now and my record collection is in the process of being completely moved and reorganized, so I don't have access to everything at the moment, and likely won't for awhile.

Sean

OrthoSean wrote:

Wolfe wrote:That's interesting that they were considering those earlier non-Victor sides in that series. Or did some actually get out on red Heritage Series copies?

Now, that I'm not certain of. There's a Caruso with an otherwise unissued take that was put out on Heritage. The guy who all of mine came from was the developer of the series, Wilfred Graham. He had all sorts of pressings done from all sorts of stuff and while some of them are of phenominal quality like the '02 DeLucias, many masters had been "buffed" to give smoother reproduction on more modern equipment.

I didn't completely understand "buffed" thing - you are saying that there was some sort of ways for polishing the original metal parts?

Caruso died 90 years ago today!

I didn't completely understand "buffed" thing - you are saying that there was some sort of ways for polishing the original metal parts?

Yes, the metal parts were cleaned and polished for some to the point that it actually removed some of the sound from the resultant pressings. The idea was to eliminate surface noise extant in the original parts, which it did do, but it also removed sound from the recordings themselves.

Sean

Uh Guys, it is a well documented (in books) fact that both lateral disc and Edison Diamond Disc masters were "polished" to take the edge off the grooves, thus helping to give them long life, and make the resultant discs smoother sounding on the early reproducers (sound boxes). Now I think "polished" and "buffed" in this context mean one and the same thing.

No. I wasn't referring to the final process of cleaning and polishing a fresh master. Original and already previously finished masters were "rejuvinated" by being buffed down even further to reduce surface noise that was present on already finished masters that, at that time, were already decades old. This is pretty well known among collectors that have these vinyl tests. If you listen to some of the "Heritage Series" issues, you'll hear a sound on many that is "dumbed down". This is the result of buffing already finished masters. Again, not all of them had this done to them, it's immediately obvious if it was as soon as you set the stylus down in the beginning grooves. Will Graham was the one who had the idea to do this. Two very well known collectors / transfer engineers who knew Will personally have both told me this story (and his "less noise" reasoning behind doing it) more than once.

Sean