The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Ever seen anything like this? It's a Columbia record with absolutely NO lead in...

Believe it or not I didn't even notice the fact that it was a little smaller than the other records, only noticed when I finally
went to play it!

Records of that age did not have lead-in grooves. I gather you mean it has no lead-in dead wax area. That is strange. I’ve got some Berliners that have virtually zero lead-in land. Very strange. And inconvenient.

Dischoard wrote: Wed Mar 01, 2023 10:34 pm Ever seen anything like this? It's a Columbia record with absolutely NO lead in...

I have several early French records with similar pattern, the music starting right at the edge. As mentioned, these are annoying to play, risking throwing the needle off the disc if your aim is not dead sharp.

I'm wondering if someone put this on a lathe of some sort as it's dead-even. I have two copies of this record and the other is a normal record, normal size, with a normal leading edge. It appears either someone meticulously and evenly removed this one or it is some sort of weird manufacturing variation?

There were a few Columbia Viva Tonal records c.1930 that had feed in grooves.edisonplayer.

I am sure that issue contributed to the soundbox slipping off the record and needle ripping up of turntable felt.

Some Okeh records from the electric era were this way... or larger than standard size, because Spanish Odeon pressings of them have these grooves down to the edge... something as 1-2 mm of dead zone only. Our Spanish pressings of Columbia, labeled herein Regal, though, didn't have this problem, because they were always slightly larger than the standard sized records. I'm talking about Spanish pressings from original US matrixes. These Regals won't fit in a standard paper sleeve, theirs are a bit larger because of this. I've also seen some HMVs with this problem of grooves down to 1mm from edge.