The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is where they resume.

Right.

The yellow foam version looks to have some effort
made to form it a bit, especially in the area where
the link connects.

The hunk of cardboard with the hunk of dental floss
is, however, just that. I have one of those
cardboard versions, and I can tell you straight up
that an old warped Edison with a replaced link made
from carpet thread sounds better than the cardboard kind.

In my humble opinion, any Edison original, no matter how
badly messed up, is well worth fixing. Link replacement
is as simple as unscrewing the tiny nut on top of the cone
and disassembling then making a new link and reassembling.

The cork, the original diaphragm material, the cone...
It's all there for a reason. Not duplicated at
all by a hunk of cardboard, and a hunk of dental floss.

Another huge problem with the dental floss is that
the strands separate, making it darn near impossible
to hook them all at the same time.

I've even seen a cobble-job where someone actually
bent the hook on the stylus bar closed in an effort
to trap all of the dental floss strands!

I know because I have done enough experiments to know.

Just a few observations.

Chuck

Good observations. Another thing I found over the years when It was popular to recommend dental floss as a link material was that it tended to stretch with use thus throwing off the proper stylus bar position.

Most of the diaphragms with features mimicking the originals did a better job than those who simply glued the links to a flat surface. Although now and then one of those produced what many would consider acceptable sound, but as in Chucks findings often they do not. However there were a couple of pretty good copies visually of the original a while back that had awful sound. So its not quite as simple as just having it look original. My concern was how did it sound. I never went by the materials except for how they produced the music. I would say that edison most likely did the same thing since he made over 1,200 versions before settling on the one now considered the original. It would be very interesting to see what those failures looked like and what kind of materials did they use?

Of the two now being made its the same learning curve. Working out the kinks is always a challenge. It took me years to get rid of the majority of sound issues and most of them cleared up when I was able to get a Bruce Stylus. I don't think Nick would mind if I mentioned that his third version is rather successful and when it was considered that maybe the cork wasn't quite thick enough to stop some slight issues the results in thickening it were not to his liking.. I have often found that the slightest change in some material or shape can ruin what you had going. I hope others will follow us and come up with something that produces even better sound, although I think they are reaching the maximum soon.

Having a few days to get used to the change in the music reproduction since installing the True Tone Diaphragm, I can't endorse it strongly enough. The improvement is wonderful. I would encourage anyone to get one for their reproducer. You won't regret it. Thanks Larry for all your efforts.