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One features an early Edison Home Phonograph from my collection playing a very early brown wax cylinder by Russell Hunting as "Michael Casey". It is LOWEST RPM playing Columbia brown wax cylinder I have ever seen or owned. And, in my video the cylinder still sounds ever so slightly fast to my ears - but I didn't want to reduce the speed any lower on my phonograph!

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

The other video I just posted on my channel features an elusive Climax phonograph. A Columbia 'client' phonograph manufactured from mostly Hawthorne and Sheble parts (sans: motor and crank!). This phonograph plays very loudly. My ears are still ringing from standing as close as I was to record the video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUyCfiBZh4M[/youtube]

Doug

A great cylinder and the early Home is in just stunning condition. Quite a treasure.

Clay

FloridaClay wrote:A great cylinder and the early Home is in just stunning condition. Quite a treasure.

Clay

Thanks for your gracious comments, Clay, and for stopping in to watch the video.

Doug

Thanks for posting.

3.5 minutes! Not bad for a "2 minute" cylinder!

I assume they intentionally reduced the speed to increase the playing time? I'm surprised they didn't try that trick more often, but maybe it only worked OK for non-musical items? It certainly sounds OK here. Does quality or loudness suffer with the slower speed?

Without a calibrated speed dial (and originally without a strobe disc!), it would be quite annoying to adjust down for this, and then have to adjust back up for normal cylinders. I wonder how accurately most people set their phonograph's speed back in the day?

Cheers,
David.

2Bdecided wrote:Thanks for posting.

3.5 minutes! Not bad for a "2 minute" cylinder!

I assume they intentionally reduced the speed to increase the playing time? I'm surprised they didn't try that trick more often, but maybe it only worked OK for non-musical items? It certainly sounds OK here. Does quality or loudness suffer with the slower speed?

Without a calibrated speed dial (and originally without a strobe disc!), it would be quite annoying to adjust down for this, and then have to adjust back up for normal cylinders. I wonder how accurately most people set their phonograph's speed back in the day?

Cheers,
David.

There was no "standard" speed in the early days of cylinder records. Nor, for that matter, were the records generally labeled to show what the correct speed should be. 120 and 144 seem to be the most common early speeds, but they are not the only ones known.

Yes, the slower speeds result in loss of quality, but they are fine for speech. In fact, the later language learning cylinders were generally recorded at 90.