The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Welp, I have gone and set up my Talk-Back recording outfit on my VV 8-12. Yes, it involved putting screws in the wood. However, I justify this by stating that there are only 2 small screws, they are hidden underneath the turntable, and the equipment that they are holding is authentic, period kit.

The last time I posted about this setup (before I actually had it in my possession, somebody stated that it looked like it had a cylinder recorder. Yes, it does; if you look at both the recorder and the reproducer (which, by the way, needs no needle and fits perfectly onto my Orthophonic tonearm, which also helps to date it as I believe that Orthophonic tonearms were wider that pre-Ortho arms), it becomes apparent that this particular kit makes vertical records.

This is cool because I can make and play records simply with what I have in the kit, and cast them in resin with no abrasive since there is no steel needle to grind, but I can also make Diamond Discs, although to do so I would need to remove the tracking bit in the recorder (it is situated slightly to the side of the cutting stylus and would have ridden in a pre-cut groove on the blank) and make a mount to fit the Diamond Disc reproducer connector. (By hooking it directly to a Diamond Disc machine, I can avoid the trouble of building a record lathe for it.)

Removal of this bit would be necessary for DDs as it adds to the distance between the playing grooves, thus reducing the TPI from a Diamond Disc's 150, and probably even lower than the TPI of a regular 78. In fact, I estimate that because the playing groove would be interspersed with a blank guide groove, the recording duration of a 10" blank is probably less than 3 minutes, and the blank groove and bit are necessary without a Diamond Disc's feed mechanism.

Both the recorder and reproducer have aluminum diaphragms, so coupled with the aforementioned fact that the reproducer fits an Orthophonic tonearm, it is safe to say that this was probably made between '25 and '29. The cutting stylus looks to be of glass.

I can think of at least 3 others besides myself who may be very interested in the sound produced by this kit, and who also may be able to develop new blanks.... wink, wink. No experimentation can happen without blanks.

That is a really neat record lathe! I have done some acoustic recording tests just for fun before. I built my own lathe and I recorded at 78rpm acoustically using a large horn. You would be surprised at what I used, I used blank compact discs and recorded on the shiny plastic side. It actually works really well even though the records are only a minute and a half in length. I would suggest if you are waiting on getting blanks try etching a groove into a blank cd, or you can buy polycarbonate sheets and cut them to disc size, this will work better because this is the same material that cds are made of but you can get a bigger sized disc. So if you want to just experiment with sound quality in the mean time you can try this method, and I am sure you will find it works pretty well. However, you will need an electric turntable for playback, any other phonograph will damage the grooves.

-Steve

I thought I heard someone say old laserdisks can be used for blanks.

I will probably be able to play it back acoustically as well, because it came with a special reproducer that takes no needle. The reproducer is intentionally very light and the stylus is a loop of wire, so that there is no point that can dig into the record. As a side note, it will play a Diamond Disc but only very quietly.

I think I did mention laserdisks a while back but I was thinking of a Recordio or something with those... Won't they break the glass cutting stylus on my setup?

I am actually not sure if it would cause damage but I would doubt it. CD surfaces are soft enough that the grooves are not actually etched but they are basically indented into the cd. A great plus to this fact is that there is zero surface noise on playback.
-Steve