Phonograph with three mandrels in succession

[catfishjohn]

What an interesting machine. I hope it survived somewhere and is waiting to be rediscovered. Six minutes of music without having to get up and change a record would have been a joy. Recently I saw a Columbia BC on Ebay with a 4 minute attachment. It made me wonder why Columbia didn’t make a 200 tpi - 20th Century cylinder which would net the same playing length of 6 minutes. It seems like they had already done the hard part in building the machine.

[phonogfp]

Six minutes of music without having to get up and change a record would have been a joy. Recently I saw a Columbia BC on Ebay with a 4 minute attachment. It made me wonder why Columbia didn’t make a 200 tpi - 20th Century cylinder which would net the same playing length of 6 minutes. It seems like they had already done the hard part in building the machine.

John - I agree. In fact, I did a presentation to ARSC on this very topic, and it was reprinted in Howard Hazelcorn's book, The Columbia Cylinder Graphophone Companion. The proper development of the 6" cylinder is a great "might-have-been."

George P.

[JerryVan]

Just a personal thing I guess but, there are very few tunes I would care to listen to for 6 minutes. Also, except for some classical pieces, just how many 6 minute tunes are there?

[phonogfp]

Just a personal thing I guess but, there are very few tunes I would care to listen to for 6 minutes. Also, except for some classical pieces, just how many 6 minute tunes are there?

You're right - and why do suppose that might be so in the realm of popular music? Until the late 1960s, popular tunes were limited by what would comfortably fit on a single. As I recall, it wasn't until the Beatles' "Hey Jude" that the 3 minute single barrier was effectively smashed. After that, LPs - envisioned as "albums" of shorter pieces - became canvasses for much longer rock & roll compositions by various artists. But what if the record-buying public had been exposed to 6 minute popular compositions decades earlier? Maybe we'd have had Billy Murray singing "Stairway To Heaven...!"

George P.

[New Owner]

A lot of pop tunes that are released as singles on vinyl are usually pressed on 12" discs. This may seem excessive for 1-2 songs, but the wider groove spacing is much more durable (as the grooves are further apart, the groove walls are thicker and more durable) and allows for much higher audio quality. Basically like how with VHS, you can fir 6 hours of video onto one tape with EP, but the quality's horrible and the tape deteriorates faster than if the tape was recorded at anything slower than SP, which limits you to just 2 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_single

[catfishjohn]

I can't think of many songs I would want to hear for 6 minutes either, three 2-minute songs on one cylinder would have been great though!

[gregbogantz]

There really wasn't any GOOD reason for releasing 12 inch singles. It's mostly a marketing gimmick. Theoretically, if the recording is done at 45rpm (which some of them are), or if the music area is kept at the outermost diameters, you can get better fidelity because of the longer recorded wavelengths. But most of the newer ones are cut with no deeper grooves than what's on ordinary LPs, so there is no "durability" argument there. These records CAN be cut at a higher level because more space is available for lateral groove modulation, but all that does is increase the distortion. Contrary to vinyl-weenies opinions, analog records (especially stereo ones) have LOTS of distortion and the louder they are cut the more distortion they have - so, no advantage there. Deeper grooves allows "scratching" of the record (rotating it by hand back and forth) without the stylus jumping out of the groove. Which is a STUPID thing to do anyway. And reverse playback is a really good way to gouge and ruin the groove, regardless of how deep it is. The vinyl is no different from that used for any other vinyl records, so no advantage there. I was asked to cut a few of these when I was cutting back at RCA Records and I thought it was a dumb idea then. So about the only advantage to releasing singles on 12 inch is the larger jacket that can be used for better graphics. Which some of them don't have, either. So, it's all basically a silly waste of vinyl.