WANTED: 9 Buyers for new 20th Century 6" cylinder records
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 5:26 pm
The Columbia "20th Century" 6" long 3-minute cylinder records weren't made for very long, and are prone to mold, and thus hard to come by - and expensive.
Those of us lucky enough to own Columbia graphophones with the long mandrels are usually therefore unable to easily demonstrate them. And, as is the case with other rare and delicate records, even when we have a good record to play, we might not want to do so very often.
I've gotten in touch with Norman Bruderhofer, who makes new cylinders that are essentially indestructible, and he says he can make new 6-inchers, but needs to make and sell a minimum of 10 to break even financially. I've asked for an estimated per-unit cost on such a cylinder, and for the particulars of how a selection is transferred to cylinder (acoustic from original hard media, or digital?).
In the meantime, do you think you'd want to be one of the 10, with me, to commit to buy one of these? I'm thinking we could get consensus on some extra special content so that the resulting record would be worth listening to frequently...I don't think it's necessary to stick with content from an original 20th Century record, which in my experience are mostly pretty boring.
Your thoughts?
Those of us lucky enough to own Columbia graphophones with the long mandrels are usually therefore unable to easily demonstrate them. And, as is the case with other rare and delicate records, even when we have a good record to play, we might not want to do so very often.
I've gotten in touch with Norman Bruderhofer, who makes new cylinders that are essentially indestructible, and he says he can make new 6-inchers, but needs to make and sell a minimum of 10 to break even financially. I've asked for an estimated per-unit cost on such a cylinder, and for the particulars of how a selection is transferred to cylinder (acoustic from original hard media, or digital?).
In the meantime, do you think you'd want to be one of the 10, with me, to commit to buy one of these? I'm thinking we could get consensus on some extra special content so that the resulting record would be worth listening to frequently...I don't think it's necessary to stick with content from an original 20th Century record, which in my experience are mostly pretty boring.
Your thoughts?