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I've been doing some minor adjustments on a very nice banner 2-min Model B Home. I placed a molded Banjo cylinder on the mandrel, started the mechanism, and lowered the reproducer to the record. The next thing I heard was whistling. The very poor whistling lasted several seconds before the banjo announcement. The banjo music sounded terrific so I let it play through the end. What followed were the voices of two men talking. What's the deal? Do I have a haunted cylinder? Was it just a couple of drunk guys messing around and recording on the smooth surface area at the beginning and end of the cylinder? If you ran a recorder over the entire length of the cylinder wouldn't it damage the cylinder and degrade the original recording?

Thanks, Jerry Blais

You should record it and post it here, would love to hear it!

Martin

I have a commercial Edison cylinder where the original owner was being funny and recorded in the blank intro of the cylinder "This record was made by Jay West" and then the real announcement starts. I have seen a few black wax cylinders that the owner recorded on the ends and start of. Columbia black wax actually records pretty good and is just brown wax with lampblack added.

Something similar happens on a British (Edisonia/Edison-Bell?) brown wax cylinder of mine. After a good, clear, obviously professional rendering of W. V. Wallace's 'Yes, let me like a soldier fall' by the baritone Eric Farr, I hear a clank and then a scrap of what I take to be animal imitations – first a faint mewing and then two distinct barks. Judge for yourselves: http://www.horologia.me.uk/cylinder_sol ... ritana.mp3. Curiously, there is no perceptible break or change in the appearance of the grooves between the song and the (presumed) home recording.

Oliver Mundy.

Not so strange... When a youngster I used to do home recording experiments on the empty grooves at the start and end of cheap 45rpm singles... until I started making my own vinyl blanks. So some of these singles have whistles, shouts and strange noises before and after the actual songs.
I've also found suspicious 78s with some strong whistling or shouting noises in the blank grooves....