Electrified Brunswick Panatrope "Cortez" on eBay for $20K

[recordo]

I love the heavy bass on those Brunswick light ray records!

[syncopeter]

I do too, but I really love the sound of some those 4000-series records. Hifi in its beginning stages. Beautiful natural balance, crystal clear. Mainly thanks to radio and evolving sound film, sound recording had made enormous leaps forward in only a few years. Brunswick, Columbia and OkeH were around 1927 the absolute masters. Victor was too big and suffered from stepping in a bit too early. They had made huge investments, that had to be earned back before they could update to newer technology. Don't forget, in those days new and better apparatus came on the market every week. Columbia went broke and was taken over in 1925 by British Columbia. Brunswick was taken over by Warner not much later. OkeH was part of the big German Lindström affiliation. Victor had to struggle on on its own. It was a major company, with a lot of big names, but I doubt if there was enough money to really invest. Not until RCA stepped in in '29 do you see major improvements. Then they could start developing their still incredible range of ribbon microphones.
Victor records from the middle to late 20s are nice, quite nice even. But they don't have the depth and clarity that a Brunswick, Columbia or OkeH have. They sound more compressed.