The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

There was an interesting April Fool's article in the CLPGS publication "For the Record" the other month. Someone found some unissued Caruso recordings and turned them into clocks.

Unfortunately, someone has almost re-created it for real...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VINTAGE-78rpm ... 1356214162

...at least in the real world it's a record of lesser value, but it still makes me ask "why?!"

Cheers,
David.

Can't answer the "why" anyone would want to do this to a usable record, but I am even more disturbed by the people who think it's a good idea to turn records into bowls. On the other hand I saw a German TV show where some vinyl record collectors talked about having successfully flattened one of these "artistic pieces" back to usable condition. Not sure how well that would work, but there is actually a disc flattening device for vinyls http://www.furutech.com/2013/02/02/1790/

Andreas

If someone is going to destroy records for "art's sake", at least go to the local thrift store and buy those big boxed sets of "World's Greatest Whatever". No one will miss those anyway.
I can't imagine "unbending" a bowl so it would play again. It would seem that the grooves would very likely be too badly distorted to track properly.

Jim

I asked Patsy Stoneman, whose father was E.V.Stoneman, if they had a phonograph at home when she was a child, and she told me that they had an Edison cylinder Phonograph, and that the record companies for whom her father recorded would send copies of his 78's to them. There were 22 children in the Stoneman family, and she said that the kids would lay them in the sun and form them into wavy bowls and sell them because they had nothing on which to play them!

A "rare" one of a kind, Caruso picture disc...

What REALLY makes me shudder are people who tell me they used to use 78's for skeet shooting!BOO!! edisonplayer

edisonplayer wrote:What REALLY makes me shudder are people who tell me they used to use 78's for skeet shooting!BOO!! edisonplayer

I have been told the Edison Diamond Disks flew even better.

One thing that gives you some comfort is that they generally only used those odd Paramount records for skeet shooting...

37K for a record? Must be a world record for a record?