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I happened to pull into a thrift store the other day and was more than surprised to find a number of "Mac" (Harry McClintock) records sitting in a pile in one section, filed in a record album in another, just scattered throughout the record section. Three of the discs were badly warped and of those, two were Canadian Orthophonic releases. I bought the whole batch for $6, put the flat ones in the ultrasonic cleaner and flattened the three warped discs by laying them on a pizza stone which in turn lay atop my radiator. You'll see in the video below just a hint of a warp still on this March 1928 recording of "Mac" singing "Jesse James". It plays fairly decently for a record that appears not to have been well taken care of all of its life!

https://youtu.be/jyb9ciMDX0c

Good find. I love Mac records.

I was quite surprised to see a couple of them as Canadian releases, I guess he translated well across the border!

Great records, But do tell about your record flattening method. For those of us with radiators that will be useful!!

I enjoy the few Mac discs that I have.
Nice find.

James.

Ben the phono man wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:37 pm Great records, But do tell about your record flattening method. For those of us with radiators that will be useful!!

Normally I use an oven with a flat pizza stone but thought this might be even better and less worry. I set the pizza stone on the radiator, I set the first warped record (in a sleeve) on the stone, put a random Columbia Red label record on top of it, set the next warped record down (no sleeve), then a Columbia Red, then the last warped record, and then a stack of about 10 Columbia Red labels. Each record was first cleaned in my ultrasonic cleaner so no dirt got further ingrained in the shellac.

Left that sandwich of records on there for about two days and the result is that I can now play them all just fine!

Hope that helps

Dischoard wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:26 pm

Ben the phono man wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:37 pm Great records, But do tell about your record flattening method. For those of us with radiators that will be useful!!

Normally I use an oven with a flat pizza stone but thought this might be even better and less worry. I set the pizza stone on the radiator, I set the first warped record (in a sleeve) on the stone, put a random Columbia Red label record on top of it, set the next warped record down (no sleeve), then a Columbia Red, then the last warped record, and then a stack of about 10 Columbia Red labels. Each record was first cleaned in my ultrasonic cleaner so no dirt got further ingrained in the shellac.

Left that sandwich of records on there for about two days and the result is that I can now play them all just fine!

Hope that helps

Thanks, Appreciate it. I have to try this out on a cold few days when we have the heat on!