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Two great sides:

"Am I Blue"

http://www.box.net/shared/qtyee8k9l2

"Birmingham Bertha"

http://www.box.net/shared/1v7jkpb2t0

Both from Edison 14012, recorded May 28th, 1929.

Enjoy!

Sean

Sean,

Thanks for posting these great and rare B.A. Rolfe sides!
I had never heard them before, and espessally enjoyed "Birmingham Bertha".

Paal.

Sean,

Two fantastic sides-Thanks so much for sharing them!

Regards,
John

Wow! Just got this 78 at a garage sale last week!! And after years of collecting I JUST found this forum! How did I miss it??????????? I love this forum!

Wow! I JUST got this 78 at a garage sale last week!! Great disc!!!

A Needle Type Edison is a pretty darn good garage sale find.

Nice sides posted too. Good stuff.

Does anybody have any opinions on the quality of the shellac/amount of surface noise on those Needle Types?

I've only got four Edison needle types. Two of them are new old stock and the other two have seen a bit of use. They all seem to be pressed on some kind of chaeper compund than most others. Comparable to ARC (Banner, Perfect) type shellac. Mine all sound really good, though, and play with very little surface noise, despite the wavy-ish appearing surfaces.

Sean

That pretty much exactly jibes with my experience. I also have four Edison NT's including a copy of Am I Blue and, that record in particular is quite noisy. The kind of noise that sounds like it was caused by wear. The rest don't have the quietest surfaces, but are acceptable, especially since the sound was cut very high in level, and very well too, with plenty of frequency range for the time period, ca. 1929.

My experience jibes with all of yours. I have several Edison needle type discs, one or two that appear to have never been played or certainly not played much. Regardless, they all have substantial surface noise compared with the Victors of the day. One good indicator of the inferiority of the compound is to play the land areas of the disc, that is the grooveless portions of the leadin and leadout areas. This is especially telling if you use a modern electric pickup wired for vertical response. Edison NT records are much noisier when playing the land than Victors. This is an indication of lack of smoothness and uniformity in the compound. Of course, it could also be a condemnation of the Edison metal matrix operation that may not have produced smooth, quiet metal parts. But Edison had lots of experience in matrix operations, both with cylinder and DD production, both of which are known for some pretty quiet pressings, so I'm inclined to believe that his metal parts were pretty good.

That said, I'm often amazed at how good the Victor product was in the late 1930s. Just this weekend I played a very clean looking Victor shellac from around 1940 that I would swear was a vinyl record. An almost dead quiet, extremely fine sounding record. When played on modern equipment, some of these shellac 78s can produce stunningly high quality sound.

gregbogantz wrote:
That said, I'm often amazed at how good the Victor product was in the late 1930s. Just this weekend I played a very clean looking Victor shellac from around 1940 that I would swear was a vinyl record. An almost dead quiet, extremely fine sounding record. When played on modern equipment, some of these shellac 78s can produce stunningly high quality sound.

Indeed.

Why, just the other day I had Victor 27395 on the turntable, Tea For Two by Joe Reichman and trio, from around 1940/41. It's still sitting nearby.


Apart from some light background hiss, when the volume is turned up, it gives an amazingly present sound, you don't have to stretch imagination too much to picture the musicians playing right in the room. High quality goods.

Don't mean to derail the thread too much.