The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I have been digitizing some of the brown wax cylinders from my friend's collection by using ACT reproducer. So far things have been working well, until we have reached a boxful of cylinders coming from a travelling salesman's box.

These cylinders simply wouldn't track properly using the ACT. I am not sure whether the stylus is too large or small, or if the groove pitch is different to other specimens that we have in the collection. I actually don't know whether there are brown wax cylinders that have different groove pitch than most of usual cylinders.

Attached are some pictures taken from the collection. I also put some photos of the label inside the box (that matches with the contents, as demonstrated by the paper label the cylinders carry) One cylinder carries "3 Min" mark on the label, despite the fact it only uses half of the recording space.

I will be really glad if anyone can offer a solution to this.

Also, if anyone can recognize the performer, especially this "David......", please let me know about its dates.

I feel compelled to post, but not qualified. However, I am very intrigued by these cylinders. They look to be in fine shape, obviously quite old and quite possibly unique. You're observations make me suspect that these are a different pitch. Where did your friend get these? There was a 200 thread per inch Commercial machine that was used in the UK early on. Perhaps these were recorded on a 150 or 160 thread per inch business machine. I'm leaning toward the 200 pitch as the grooves look quite fine and 3 minutes would be about right for half a cylinder at 120 rpm.

I'd think hard about trying to get these transferred through UC Santa Barbara or somebody with an Archeophone. These are cool and would be well worth the trouble to transfer and preserve. Hopefully somebody else will know more and be able to chime in. Good luck!

Martin