The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Its often the case that a decent surface turns up in the late white label edison records. Yet way too often a very shiny and clean white label ends up have near awful scratching sounds where the black label of the same selection can be much more acceptable. I often wonder what it is that makes a usually somewhat dull older surface be cleaner sounding that the shiny near new looking white label? I know that black label record can be terrible as well, but I have found that its difficult to be sure on those as well. Sometimes they can look great an be bad as well, yet the somewhat dull one may be very low noise. So far I can't pin it to any particular period or label in which some records seem to run fairly quiet. It makes buying them a real crap shoot, you simply don't know what your going to have till it arrives and is heard.

Larry

I read in Mike Sherman's book on Edison DD's that even unplayed Edison DD's can become noisy if they were stored in a damp environment as moisture is the enemy of all of the DD's.

Yes I believe that is true. In fact I quit trying to buy some "New" edison disc from a fellow who had them stored near the ocean in a couple sheds. They had terrible noise to them. I also purchased a machine once that had a lot of loose veneer from being in a basement. Unfortunately the records were so noisy as to be unplayable. Sadly the area I am currently in his awful humidity levels, the lawns are soaking wet every day till near 1 or 2 in the afternoon.. No air, makes for mildew and poor records I would suspect. Still some black label records seem to withstand the problem when others don't. It seems something in the surface material soaks up the moisture more than others. I just played some columbia banner classical selections and in this weather they barely can keep up to speed due to the dampness in summer.

Larry