The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I have been listening to all of the columbia records that came with my edison standard this afternoon.

Why do some of them not have the title written on the record? Or maybe they didn't have a consistent method for doing so? On one of the cylinders, you can only read half of the title!

And then what is the difference between the two cylinders that have the titles written on the side like edison records? Were the made at a later/earlier date?

And finally... what do I do about the mold? Is there a way to safely clean Cylinder records? Most of them sound really good.. with most records only have a few spots of mold on them. Unfortunately 3 records are totally destroyed.

Any thoughts would be great!


Cheers

David

Here's a chronological overview of Columbia cylinder records:

https://forum.antiquephono.org/topic/27 ... hronology/

If you're interested in Columbia cylinder record boxes, here's a similar overview:

https://forum.antiquephono.org/topic/25 ... hronology/

Columbia moulded cylinders are especially prone to mold. The Columbia brown wax is no worse in this respect than Edison, but the black wax formulation seems especially attractive to mold. You can clean moldy black cylinders to make them look nice and shiny, but there's no way to rescue the recording because the plants have consumed it.

George P.

phonogfp wrote: Columbia moulded cylinders are especially prone to mold. The Columbia brown wax is no worse in this respect than Edison, but the black wax formulation seems especially attractive to mold. You can clean moldy black cylinders to make them look nice and shiny, but there's no way to rescue the recording because the plants have consumed it.

George P.

In other words David, what rust does to steel is what mold does to wax.

JerryVan wrote:
In other words David, what rust does to steel is what mold does to wax.

Good analogy, Jerry!

George P.

I believe that Columbia used a different formula for their black wax than Edison,which is why theirs is more susceptible to mold.edisonplayer