The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here's something that piqued my curiosity: among the discs that came with the C-250 was one with very early catalogue and matrix numbers, on a pressing from about 1922.

It's #80050, "Coppelia - Entr'acte Waltz" by Armand Vecsey and his Hungarian Orchestra (matrix #950-H), and "Spanish Fandango" by the New York Military Band (1042-F). According to the spreadsheet, these takes are supposedly from 1917, while the earlier ones are from 1912. Is it possible that these later "takes" could have been disc-to-disc dubbings? It's odd to imagine the Edison company summoning the same artists for the same selections five years after the fact - and still using the same matrix numbers on the masters.

If anyone here has a good copy of the original "transfer" issue, it might be interesting to compare the two, to see whether there are detectible differences........... although it is possible that they might have used a previously unissued take for the dubbing, which complicates matters.

Here's my copy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKrZCmUEP9Y[/youtube]

Any opinions?

Bill

I am not aware of disc to disc dubbing for commercially issued Diamond Discs, except the LP records. They most likely used the master mold and made new stampers from it, and it might be from an alternate take. The master discs have little to do with surface noise on the WWI records, it was a shortage of a few chemicals, and then pressing into the woolfour core rather than the better formual after the war.

The "NY Military Band" was just the Edison house band, and Armand Vecsey was still making new records for Edison in 1917 ("Poor Butterfly",etc) , so there really wasn't any summoning of old artists for new 'takes'.

Your record does have some pretty bad surface noise for a paper-label pressing, I must say.