The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hi Guy's, has anyone bought or used one of Victrola guy's Recordette devices? What do you think of it. Gordon.

What is it? Recordette is a brand name of a Wilcox-Gay radio/phonograph/record cutter that was small and very portable.

It's a device that fits onto a cylinder recorder from an amp, and victrola guy is making them and selling them. You could look him up on youtube,it's quite interesting and he's getting good results. Gordon.[YouTube]THE CANAPHONIC RECORDETTE/DEMO/$99.95[/YouTube]

OK, wow, didn't know anyone was making something like that.

it is a very effective device, i dont have one because i need to get my phonographs and recorders working first but i would get one!, i beleive it consists of a peizo electric transducer

Make sure it has a proper sapphire cupped-point
cutter.

Chuck

Chuck wrote:Make sure it has a proper sapphire cupped-point
cutter.

Chuck

its not a actual recorder, it is a attachment which goes on the recorder, it basically acts like a small speaker going down the neck of the original recorder!

Oh, ok then. I didn't know what it was...

I've often thought about making something like
that. There are many very small speakers available for a few dollars each that would be
good candidates to try.

The ones I have in mind are about an inch in
diameter and very thin, and usually have a clear plastic cone.

Not sure a piezo-electric type would be loud
enough, but maybe there are newer varieties
of these around now that would be loud enough.

It would not be very difficult nor expensive to
find or make a suitable small container for
the little speaker, and have a metal or plastic
neck that would fit over the recorder's sound
tube.

Obviously Victrolaguy has done his homework
on this, and has worked out the details.

It might be as simple as: get a small speaker,
and find a small container for it and mount
it so it sends sound directly into the recorder
sound tube. I have a hunch that maybe inside
of that container, some cotton or other
damping material might end up being needed.

You could probably make a fairly nice one
for about $10. Maybe even less if you can find
a medicine vial or old film can or something
to use as the container...

Another candidate would be a telephone
receiver. If you got that tightly coupled
enough, that might work very well.

Chuck

I believe the recorder has a balsa wood diaphragm set between soft gaskets, and the piezo element glued to it, such as the element found in a radio shack horn tweeter, the high frequency goes past 20,000cps, You want to cut the bass off about 100 for electrical recording. I use a electromagnetic Fairchild 199 model lathe head coupled with the cutter of an automatic recorder.

The more I think about this the more I realize
that many simple very inexpensive experiments
can be carried out along these lines.

1) Use good working existing Edison acoustic
recorders.

2) Pick a small speaker or telephone receiver type of element that plays loudly and clearly enough.

3) Fashion up some kind of a holder for it
that is open on the bottom and leads to a neck that fits over the .62 inch diameter sound tube of the recorder.

4) Do a bunch of tests at various levels
and possibly with various types of damping material between speaker and recorder tube.

These are easy experiments that are well within
the capabilities of most readers of this forum.

They need to be done. This needs to be out in
the public domain. It needs to be figured out
and brought out into common knowledge, not sold
at an enormous profit.

That is my two cent's worth!

Chuck