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Interesting link to a new vinyl record press.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/newsvide ... vi-AAmKW1A

Very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

Now if they could only develop a high quality (and affordable) self-contained record player to replace all of those horrible Crosley monstrosities that the hipsters use to ruin their new vinyl records....

OF

It's quite interesting to see yet another manufacturer of new pressing plants to appear.

The first one I saw appear were two new ones made for Pallas Group by Irmler, also fully automated and, as far as I recall, with packaging handling. Unfortunately no video is available.


And yes, those Crosley, ION, Roadstar, Auna is indeed quite scary, especially when you see people using these crappy cheapo's.

Now, let's get them going on pressing shellac 78's capable of play on acoustic machines...

De Soto Frank wrote:Now, let's get them going on pressing shellac 78's capable of play on acoustic machines...

The 'recipe' looks easy enough to replicate today, IF you can get the raw materials (where does one get "green rottenstone", as specified in the Edison lateral disc formula?) .... I think there must be more modern materials, of the thermo-plastic variety, which would have better wearing & smoothness qualities above the old shellac-type mixtures.

I think the main problem would be filtering out the scratchy parts of the 'rottenstone', in order to keep surface noise to a minimum. The post-Johnson Victor Company bought back old records from its dealers, so the 1927-28 Victor pressings can be an illustration of failure, on this account. Victor allowed returns of MILLIONS of old acoustic discs, then ground them up & reused them, to their everlasting shame. Look closely at many of your Orthophonic records: they didn't remove all of the labels, so they were ground-up and unsuccessfully used to make new discs. On some, you can actually see tiny bits of steel needle dust, too. Eldridge Johnson must have had fits, if he noticed what happened to his product after selling out. News accounts of the time noted how quickly the new records wore out, but made light of it by saying that the record companies wanted you to buy replacement records.

Edisone wrote: The 'recipe' looks easy enough to replicate today, IF you can get the raw materials (where does one get "green rottenstone", as specified in the Edison lateral disc formula?) .... I think there must be more modern materials, of the thermo-plastic variety, which would have better wearing & smoothness qualities above the old shellac-type mixtures.

If the goal is to produce shellac discs, and not to replicate a specific formula, the ones produced by the end of the fifties by the major labels had surfaces almost as quiet as contemporary vinyl. The drawback is that very few of them would resist being played on an acoustic gramophone. Conversely, the vinyl 78-rpm discs produced in the 40s, in particular the V-discs, resisted quite well to being played by steel needles on portables. Probably adaptations of the plastic used in modern cylinders like the Vulcans could be used to produce sturdy 78s. There could be a niche market for those just like the newly-made cylinders.

I'm looking for new 78 that can be played on a Victrola or Disc Graphophone, with a heavy soundbox and a steel needle.

Yes, there will probably be surface noise.

Let's see the fancy new machine press records that are perfectly centered 100 % of the time, finally. The record that is playing in the beginning of the clip is perfect example of one that is not centered. Hipsters don't seem to mind oscillating pitch ? Most of them probably don't play classical vinyl.