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I don't know if this has been posted before. Were the electrically recorded cylinders start with 5000 or later? I heard that starting at 5000 they were electrically recorded. Another collector told me they started around 5300-5400.I'd love to know the cut off date.
Harvey Kravitz

If you mean acoustically dubbed from electric recordings, that starts around 5400, though there are many above that number that are acoustic recordings.

Electric dubbing from electric masters starts at 5650, but even that is controversial, as it's clear that not all numbers higher than that were electrically dubbed.

Alan Sutton's Blue Amberol book can tell you the details for each record in the entire popular series.

My knowledge late Edison cylinders is very limited. I thought that all cylinders above 5000 was electrically recorded. If that's not the case, then why are cylinders above 5000 so valuable and collectible?
Harvey Kravitz

Phonofreak wrote:My knowledge late Edison cylinders is very limited. I thought that all cylinders above 5000 was electrically recorded. If that's not the case, then why are cylinders above 5000 so valuable and collectible?
Harvey Kravitz

The late 5000 series are valuable because so few were made by that late date.

BY the time we hit the 5,000 block, it was just about over for the Edison Amberols. From what I can tell very few cylinders were even produced in the last few years. Some have mentioned that less than 100 cylinders were even produced for some titles. If some title only had one hundred issues, then what was the profitability? Why did they even bother? Besides, there were still a lot of Amberola machines around even in 1929.

Rob over at Edisonia has released "Hallelujah!" From Hit the Deck.
this is a good one featuring Golden Gate Orchestra
I just ordered my copy yesterday..

I recently came across this You Tube offering of a very late Blue Amberol--which my research shows is number 5654 (Muriel Pollock playing "I'll Get By"). It certainly sounds like an electric dubbing of an electric Diamond Disc as it's so clear and vibrant. How funky to hear a performance from 12/31/1928 being played on what appears to be an Edison Standard phonograph (it is largely hid by the external horn, but you can still see that the cabinet is not very wide).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRxqffyJaDA

BTW, I recently bought that same performance on Diamond Disc and am eagerly watching the mail for it.

Ralph

Number 5000 blue Amberol cylinder came out in June 1925, way before Edison started electric recording on Diamond Discs. So, most 5000 cylinders that you find are not electrically recorded. But they are generally worth more than earlier cylinders because they are both rarer and sometimes jazzier than the music that came before. According to Allan Sutton's book, the last commercially issued Blue Amberol record was 5719, John Gart, organ, If I had you. This last Blue Amberol cylinder was not dubbed from a Diamond Disc, but from a new Edison Needle-Cut record master. It is one of only two BA's dubbed this way (Edison Blue Amberol Cylinders, A. Sutton, Mainspring Press, 2009).

Edison did both electrical dubbing and acoustical dubbing depending on which one came out, that is what was issued
. A 2011 article by Gerald Fabris shows the machine that cut the Electrical 5000 series records, it is an Amberola 1B mech in a Triumph cabinet fitted with a microscope rack (the part that raises and lowers the microscope) where the reproducer holder usually is. On top of the microscope rack is a brass cam, raise and lift lever for the electrical recorder, it is a horseshoe magnet as found in an early speaker, and the armature which has rubber dampening, is hooked right to the recording stylus, and of course has an advance ball similar to the acoustical recorder on my Edison original professional recording head. From my experience you have to do so much limiting on the low end with electrical recording that sometimes acoustical dubbing has advantages, of better results. And today for acoustical dubbing we have wonderfully advance miniature speakers with wider response, and equalization so that you can graph how many DB certain frequencies fall off during recording and compensate for them in a computer program boosting for the loss.

Rob over at Edisonia has released "Hallelujah!" From Hit the Deck.
this is a good one featuring Golden Gate Orchestra
I just ordered my copy yesterday..

I just checked his website and didn't see that title. Is it so new it is not on the website yet? Marc.