The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

From what I understand the c reproducer plays the Edison 2 minute gold moulded cylinders the most efficiently. The b or automatic plays the brown wax cylinders the best, but what reproducer stylus is best for the Columbia 2 minute black wax cylinders? Thank you!

I would say a model C if you have an Edison machine.

Columbia Floating, automatic, Lyric with a ball. I don't recommend a C reproducer, the wax compound is just brown wax.

The below photo, I happened to take last week during a blank making session, as I thought it would come in handy someday, well it kind of fits this thread. I had cooked the wax a little hotter and longer than it should and then moulded it thinking it might be a good blank, it was a bad casting with stars and streaks, and everything that could go wrong did (the wax before ceresin went well over 518F.) So I remelted the casting, and added a little stearic acid to condition it, (1.5% more.) and then re poured it again, making sure not to overheat the wax. The middle cylinder is the result, and as you can see is as dark black as the Edison Gold Moulded cylinder. The new, black colored blank has NO recycled Gold moulded records, no lamp black, no nigrosene dye added to make it black, just cooking it hotter and longer made a
blank that looks like a moulded wax record but is exactly the same formula as the brown wax record on the left. Naturally those who are used to cylinder records, always think a black wax record is harder than a brown wax record. Columbia did not know Edison's formula, and thus made black colored brown wax, and psychologically when a collector (or the original purchaser) saw a black wax record, thought it to be harder than the a brown wax record.

Thank you Shawn!