Making shellac 78's in the 21st Century ?

[Wolfe]

Years ago I used to frequent a place where for some reason I was always finding these real early Columbia Lp's - the ones that came in paper and unadorned (no picture) cardboard sleeves, lots of classical music and I bought lots of them because I could get them for 10 or 25 cents apiece. But I became dismayed with how noisy the records often were, even when they looked clean. Could have been due to a lot of factors though.

It's left we with a bit of fright regarding early Columbia Lp's ever since.

[OrthoSean]

The Columbia LPs with those early sleeves you mention were often pressed with rather sketchy vinyl. It's vinyl, but very heavy and the quality control seems to have been kind of loose. I've got some that are like glass and others with very pebbly surfaces. If they were played with any real regularity on those early LP changers or single play turntables, they were subjected to rather high tracking forces and not-so-great quality needles and cartridges, too. All of the above aside, a nice clean early LP can sound amazing, usually audio quality is vastly improved by using a larger stylus than the standard .7 mil stylus people consider the standard now. A 1.1 or 1.3 mil truncated stylus can often make a huge difference here. Most LPs and 45s from this earlier period were originally cut with slightly wider grooves (1 mil) than the .7 standard used after about 1958.

Sean

[Wolfe]

Most LPs and 45s from this earlier period were originally cut with slightly wider grooves (1 mil) than the .7 standard used after about 1958.

The 1 mil cutting standard is true for mono records into the late 1960's, when mono was discontinued and mono records began being cut with the same 45 / 45 .7 mil stereo groove which had been the standard for stereo since 1957-58. Which meant that if you hadn't yet upgraded your old mono Zenith changer from 1955 and were trying to play stereo records on it, you stereo records were going to suffer.

[Cody K]

Y'know, after reading this thread I've been thinking that there might be a fairly good chance that 3-D printers could make the production of custom 78s possible in the relatively near future. Consumer 3-D printers are fairly crude still, but can already do some fascinating stuff. Industrial ones, especially in the medical industries, seem to be approaching high-definition capabilities pretty quickly. I wonder what materials could be used to print records?

[gregbogantz]

As many of you know, the latest 78rpm records pressed on vinyl can sound extremely good. By the mid 1950s, pretty much every label was recording with the RIAA equalization curve which is still the standard today. So you can play these records with a modern pickup and a modern amplifier with proper RIAA EQ and get very accurate sound. Yes, the Rhino jukebox rock-and-roll re-releases that came out several years ago on vinyl 78s are very good sounding and a lot of fun to play on a really good record changer. I use my Magnavox Micromatic changer that I've fitted with a Shure M-75 magnetic cartridge with 2.7 mil stylus to play the Rhinos and my other good 78s. A great combination.

The evolution of the microgroove playback stylus from 1.0 mil to 0.7 mil had little to do with groove shape or dimension. Pretty much the same groove shape and size has been used since the dawn of the mono LP record. Same with the 45s. There has been a little variation in the radius at the bottom of the groove, but in all cases it is a much sharper point than was used in most of the early 78s. The reason that the stylus was reduced to 0.7 mil was to reduce the tracing distortion when playing stereo LPs. This is purely a playback phenomenon that is related to the size of the scanning radius of the playback stylus. Those of us of a "certain age" can remember all the hubbub that greeted the dawn of the stereo LP in 1958 with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from record review critics about the dirty and distorted sound of stereo records when compared with the mono releases of the same recording (which was commonplace back then). It was true - stereo records DID sound more distorted. The reason was the vertical component of the stereo recording modulation gave rise to considerably more even-ordered harmonic distortion than was present in the lateral-only mono LP. This was exacerbated by the size of the rounded playback stylus being much larger than the sharp edge of the cutting stylus. The rounded playback stylus cannot possibly trace the exact same motion as the sharp cutting stylus. This is the very definition of waveform distortion. And the reason that LPs still produce distortion when played back by any physical stylus in the groove. The problem could be made less by using a smaller scanning radius on the playback stylus, thus the change from 1.0 mil to 0.7 mil radius. Going even smaller in radius wasn't done because it risked excessive record wear damage from the typical pickup cartridges of the day that tracked at around 5 to 10 grams.

So the problem got better but was still an annoyance. The development of cartridges that could track at much lower forces of around 1 to 4 grams reduced the danger of record wear which precipitated the development of the elliptical playback stylus circa 1963 that allowed an even smaller scanning radius of around 0.4 mil while using a bearing radius of around 1.0 mil so that the stylus tip didn't descend too far down into the bottom of the groove where it would pick up noise from dirt accumulation. This resulted in even better performance with lower distortion and became pretty much the standard playback stylus configuration with scanning radii continuing their decrease in size to 0.3 and finally to about 0.2 mils in the Shure "hyperelliptic" models. This was until the advent of CD-4 records around 1970 which required the ability to trace supersonic frequencies up to 45kHz. This couldn't be reliably done with the elliptical stylus of the early 1970s, so the "line contact" stylus was developed, first bearing the Shibata name and later from other inventors. These styli have bearing radii of around 3.0 mils and scanning radii of 0.1 mil or less. They are the most accurate playback types that can be had for any type of record as they create the least amount of tracing distortion. They perform much better than ordinary ellipticals when playing regular stereo or mono LPs or 45s. Or 78s, if you can find one of the proper dimensions.

[Wolfe]

"line contact" stylus was developed, first bearing the Shibata name and later from other inventors. These styli have bearing radii of around 3.0 mils and scanning radii of 0.1 mil or less. They are the most accurate playback types that can be had for any type of record as they create the least amount of tracing distortion. They perform much better than ordinary ellipticals when playing regular stereo or mono LPs or 45s. Or 78s, if you can find one of the proper dimensions.

Since I cannot stand any inner groove distortion (IGD) from improper tracking - several years ago, I went line contact for my microgroove records and now refuse to use anything else. I didn't know they made line contact styli for 78's though.

[Cody K]

I was cogitatin' on this subject again recently, and found a couple of interesting examples of new technologies being used to make old-style records.

Here's one (with video) wherein the record's groove is laser-cut into acrylic:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a- ... rd-from-B/

And here's another one, with a lengthy description of the process (and Nirvana!) where the record has actually been produced using a 3-D printer. It sounds even less good than the one above, but hey, it's early days for this sort of thing, and those tinfoil cylinders in 1878 didn't sound so hot either:

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Prin ... /?ALLSTEPS

I'm not the biggest fan of many new technologies, but it seems inevitable that they'll be used for good things like making well-playing 78s, eventually. I'm glad people are playing around with the idea, though I'd probably be happier with real shellac pressings like the ones Shawn talks about in this thread -- at least until the technology has advanced far enough that I can easily print a decent sounding 78 on my desktop.

It seems to me that 78s, with their wider, deeper grooves, faster speed, and the heavier weight of a typical sound-box, would be natural candidates this sort of production, as long as the material they're produced with is strong enough to survive repeated plays.