The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A few years ago somebody posted to the web a large excel file containing a pretty comprehensive list of Diamond Discs you could sort by number, title and artist. I lost the link to the site when my pc crashed sometime back. Does anyone know about this and if so, know how to find it? Thanks, Bruce

This is it. Thanks alot. A great resource for those of you who may not be familiar with it! Cheers, Bruce

I got sidetracked in the middle of replying to this, but here is that spreadsheet, with some improvements on their formatting, compressed as a .zip file.

The difference between theirs and the attached is not all that big, but it makes the information easier to read, and I wanted to try attaching something other than an image for a change.

Edit: Version 2.0:

You can now use the ‘Line #’ to reset the row order after using the auto-filter option shown here:

Their data could use additional clean-up (which would make filtering/sorting it more useful in some cases), but it is now easy to filter and sort, in addition to searching.

As always, if you have any questions or if I can assist you in any way, please let me know.

— MordEth

Please note that the archive above has been updated...and here is a combined spreadsheet, with one tab of discs, and another of cylinders.

— MordEth

WOW!!!! I had no idea this existed! I've been manually copying all of this off my discs and trying to figure out the recording date using books. How do you all use this spreadsheet to mark off the discs that you personally own?

I've used this extensively.

I'm sure there are better ways but I've set up an excel spreadsheet and cut and paste the matching coupling numbers over. It still take a huge amount of time but I've logged about 500 discs in this manner.

Using it for cylinders is also helpful but even more of a pain. Any dubbed BA cylinders show up on the disc tab, not the cylinder tab and the numbers also do not sort properly so it can be a bit of a hunt but still a great tool.

MordEth wrote:I got sidetracked in the middle of replying to this, but here is that spreadsheet, with some improvements on their formatting, compressed as a .zip file.

The difference between theirs and the attached is not all that big, but it makes the information easier to read, and I wanted to try attaching something other than an image for a change.

Edit: Version 2.0:

You can now use the ‘Line #’ to reset the row order after using the auto-filter option shown here:

Their data could use additional clean-up (which would make filtering/sorting it more useful in some cases), but it is now easy to filter and sort, in addition to searching.

As always, if you have any questions or if I can assist you in any way, please let me know.

— MordEth

Thanks! Why the A, B, C after the numbers? Different versions or different pressings?

IIRC, there were three takes done of many or all selections.

winsleydale wrote:IIRC, there were three takes done of many or all selections.

I'll pick a nit here and note that there were usually at least three released takes for most recordings. You'll find info on many more unreleased takes in the spreadsheet. Also, many had more than three released takes when the masters wore out and remakes were needed. These have higher take letters, again, usually in threes: F/G/H, J/K/L, etc.

52089 wrote:

winsleydale wrote:IIRC, there were three takes done of many or all selections.

I'll pick a nit here and note that there were usually at least three released takes for most recordings. You'll find info on many more unreleased takes in the spreadsheet. Also, many had more than three released takes when the masters wore out and remakes were needed. These have higher take letters, again, usually in threes: F/G/H, J/K/L, etc.

So I'm assuming an A take will be better than a B take? And the later releases sounding less good due to being dubbed from dubs? Like the last run of casting when the mold has worn out?