The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Lori and I picked up a Victrola 16 which had all the albums filled with records. This morning, going through the records, I found these two discs. They are made of a thin flexible material, maybe celluloid or somewhat like nylon or vinyl, and recorded on one side. We'd like to learn what the purpose of these were. Cheers, Russie

They were a very short lived attempt to produce a "better" record, with quieter surfaces and improved tone. However, they required special needles and wore out quickly. The "experiment" only lasted about a year, making these quite hard to find.

Please note that they do not hold up to regular steel needles and should only be played on modern equipment with low tracking weights.

Thank you, that makes sense, as the label actually says to use only Marconi Gold Needles. Cheers, Russie

Could be the photo, but it appears that the record on the left is quite worn already.

The gold needles were gold plated and reportedly could last you several plays. Considering the fate of the MVT records, either the gold needles didn't do their job very well, and/or people ignored the edict and used steel needles anyway.

I wrote a short article on these records for the Winter 2016 edition of the CLPGS magazine "For the Record".

In 1906 Columbia retained Marconi as consulting physicist. The Velvet Tone record was said to be a result of this collaboration, but no-one seems to know exactly what Marconi's input was. Some say that it was probably just his famous name.

As others have mentioned, the records were a commercial failure and were soon withdrawn. It is possible, however, that they led to the development of the laminated "New Process" records of the 1920's with their commendably silent surfaces.

There are two known versions of the blue and gold label. The earlier one shows Marconi with a receding hairline, whilst on the later one pictured in this thread he appears to have acquired a hairpiece.

Let's hear one play!

Phototone wrote:Let's hear one play!

This sounds like a good, honest transfer. https://youtu.be/AH51Qq4-Ad0

Mmmmm, so velvety.

Actually if that record was mint (presumably a quieter surface) it would sound pretty good for the period.

Were these records the predecessor of the later Velvet Tone records, a budget label of Columbia?

The later Velvet Tone records produced from about 1925 to 1932 used the same laminated shellac pressings as Columbia's other labels.

The later "Velvet Tone" budget Columbia label was just an example of Columbia using a name they already owned. They were identical in manufacture to Columbia label records, although some Columbia budget discs continued to be recorded acoustically a couple years after the major labels switched to electric recording. I have heard that Columbia did a major upgrade to their acoustical process around the same time that the Western Electric electronic recording was introduced and they wanted to get some use out of their investment, as well as avoid paying royalties to Western Electric on the budget discs.