Advice about Cylinder Phonographs

[winsleydale]

10 years? Ech. You do it for me.

[Chuck]

Well you've just nailed it exactly there with
your last comment! This is precisely why
any of the currently made moulded cylinders are
worth every penny of their price!

Chuck

[winsleydale]

I guess so! It still makes my goal of having like 200 of my favorite songs cylinder-ized a bit expensive, though.

[De Soto Frank]

It's very labor intensive, both to manufacture that raw cylinder blanks, as well as to record the material onto them...

As Chuck's post confirmed, it's as much an Edisonian "dark-art" as it is an exact science...

To paraphrase Old deaf Tom, "We haven't found a way that works yet, but we've found 999 ways that don't."


Maybe pick your top-ten all-time favorite tunes, and put those at the top of your cylinder project list.

[winsleydale]

Even that is like $350. That will be a career purchase, not a... Oh, who am I kidding?

[Lucius1958]

It would be interesting, of course, if someone with a good knowledge of modern synthetics could find a compound that would have both the durability and thermoplastic properties of celluloid (without the volatility), and produce a blank which could be recorded upon in the same manner as Lioret's cylinders...

This being a niche market within a niche market, of course, it is doubtful that such a thing will ever happen...

Bill

[Chuck]

Hi Lucius,

That idea of trying to find some other "more modern"
type of plastic which could be used for cylinder blanks
is a very tough call.

About the only thing that might work and might make
sense would be some sort of an acetate compound such
as was used on the one-time recordable 78 rpm discs
which were popular in the 1940s and 50s for use on
those small portable disc recording machines.

That would work if it was acceptable to have
only one chance to make a recording. Those cannot be shaved and re-used.

Same for the thin red plastic which was used for
the "Dicta-Belt" dictation machines of the late 1940s
and early 1950s. I just recently learned that that
same kind of thin flexible red plastic was used for
the recordable Edison "Diamond Discs" of that same
era.

That came as a bit of new info to me, that the Edison
company apparently recycled the "Diamond Disc" trademark
name again at that late date. I just saw a picture of
2 of those thin, red, translucent "Diamond Discs".

Not to be confused with the old Diamond Discs we all
know and love. These are thin, red, translucent and
recordable on a much later dictation machine.

Anyway, I just wanted to underscore how difficult it
is to have a compound which:

1) Is sensitive enough to record well.

2) Still be hard and resilient enough to be played back
a great number of times.

3) Stand up to wild variations in temperature and humidity without changing or blooming or oozing out glycerin droplets on hot days.

4) Creates a blank cylinder which can be shaved
and re-recorded many times.

5) And most important of all: Have very low surface noise.

That is a very tall order indeed!

Those fellows back in Edison's lab back in the 1890s
did thousands of experiments to come up with the
brown wax we still use now. They worked on it for
years. There were a lot of very highly educated and
experienced men who worked full time on this for
many years before arriving at the metallic soap
compound we still use now to make these blanks.

I seriously doubt that there is any modern polymer
compound which will give the same performance as the
good old brown wax.

If there is, it would take a modern research
laboratory and a staff of degreed chemists working
full time for at least a few years to find it.

Who has the money to set up that laboratory and hire
all those guys and pay their salaries until they find
this?

I don't have that kind of cash on hand, otherwise I
would be doing exactly that right now!!

Chuck

[Edisone]

Edison replaced the gold sputtering process with brushed-on graphite, but I am pretty sure they weren't used together.

[De Soto Frank]

It would be interesting, of course, if someone with a good knowledge of modern synthetics could find a compound that would have both the durability and thermoplastic properties of celluloid (without the volatility), and produce a blank which could be recorded upon in the same manner as Lioret's cylinders...

This being a niche market within a niche market, of course, it is doubtful that such a thing will ever happen...

Bill

Lucius, and Chuck -


Speaking for myself, in my own little personal world of collecting things and empirical experiment, sometimes there are no modern replacements for "original materials"...

One example from my experience: good, old-fashioned, phenolic "bakelite" knobs. The hard, granular stuff.

I collect all sorts of old stuff - cars, cameras, tools, talking machines, appliances (large and small), etc.

About 10 years ago, I started hunting GE "Monitor Top" refrigerators, wanting one that we could use in the kitchen of our 1917 house.

I found a nice one on e-bay, and went down to Baltimore to pick it up.

It "worked", and was in excellent cosmetic condition, except for the refrigerating unit, which sits on top of the ice-box cabinet. The ice-box cabinet on some Monitor Tops is porcelain, fired-into the steel cabinet; other models had enamel-painted cabinets. As far as I know, ALL refrigerating units were enamel-painted, and tended to discolor over the years. Such was the case with my machine.

Wanting to clean it up, I wanted to remove all possible hardware from the refrigerating unit, to strip/ repaint. This included the bezel and knobs of the controls: ON / OFF and Temperature.

Being a child of the late 1960's, I assumed that "like all control knobs", these little black "bakelite" beauties just pressed down over a D-shaft ( like radios of the era ), or a serrated split-shaft. They didn't want to "just pull off", so I grabbed a screw-driver, under the edge of the ON / OFF knob, and started prying.

Well, it wasn't long at all until I heard a "snap!", and watched the front part of the that knob go arcing across the room.

It didn't slip over a shaft at all.... the ON / OFF knob turned-out to be an incredibly complex, machined hunk of "bakelite", with all sorts of shoulders. flanges, and cams machined into it, to operate various "fingers" and other stuff inside the control head.

All the bits that bear against the knob are electrically "hot", so the knob has to be made from an insulating material.

Said material also has to be hard enough not to wear down under the pressures of springs / and metal fingers with a very narrow contact area. And it needed to be cheap & easily worked enough to be cost-effective from a manufacturing process.

Good, old black phenolic "bakelite" was the ideal material.

It still is, IF you can find it. Apparently, it is no longer made in America.

I haven't had any luck trying to find a source over-seas, from whom maybe I could purchase a blank "rod" or "Billet", and then machine a new knob.

None of the "modern" plastics are suitable - every one I have checked-into usually has one aspect that makes it unsuitable - usually in the surface-hardness area...



Sometimes, the boys back in the "dark ages" got it right, and 100 years later, it's still "right"...


I don't mean to say that we shouldn't continue to explore and experiment, but we also shouldn't be afraid to admit when "there doesn't seem to be a better way" ?

Not trying to pick any fights here... just sharing my little perspective about such stuff.

I miss asbestos, Carbon-tetrachloride, lead solders, and white lead too... they had their uses...

Happy New Year anyway...

[winsleydale]

Can you shave and record on a Blue Amberol? I mean, obviously you wouldn't want to get rid of a good antique recording, but say it was badly scratched and unplayable? Could it be done?