The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Yes I know we shouldn't play plastic 78s on a "real Victrola" but here is the thing.
They go from ****not playable****and instantly dragging down the motor to....
****playing easily!****after the application!
Played a few of those "throwaway" sound-alike "3 songs per side" 78s several times each with no issues or discernable wear (at least on my VV-80 with a freshly rebuilt #2 head)

In my opinion WD-40 is also fine on shellac 78s. I have some that I treated this way in the mid-70 and they did not disintegrate or degrade.

I digress, my tip is you can play the plastic 78s in a pinch after WD-40 treatment.

I also suspect the WD-40 is at least easing wear on all records its used on. Yes, don't get it on the label, yes let them dry before re-sleeving them.

No, don't put in on your Robert Johnson prized records ect.
I also won't put it on my Lucille Bogan records because it cleans up the lyrics can't have that! (-:

PeteLeoni wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2023 5:47 pm Yes I know we shouldn't play plastic 78s on a "real Victrola" but here is the thing.
They go from ****not playable****and instantly dragging down the motor to....
****playing easily!****after the application!
Played a few of those "throwaway" sound-alike "3 songs per side" 78s several times each with no issues or discernable wear (at least on my VV-80 with a freshly rebuilt #2 head)

In my opinion WD-40 is also fine on shellac 78s. I have some that I treated this way in the mid-70 and they did not disintegrate or degrade.

I digress, my tip is you can play the plastic 78s in a pinch after WD-40 treatment.

I also suspect the WD-40 is at least easing wear on all records its used on. Yes, don't get it on the label, yes let them dry before re-sleeving them.

No, don't put in on your Robert Johnson prized records ect.
I also won't put it on my Lucille Bogan records because it cleans up the lyrics can't have that! (-:

I do not know what the ultimate long term effect of applying WD-40 to shellac or vinyl records is. My best guess is that it is probably not good. WD-40 is a fairly effective solvent in addition to being a lubricant, which is why it works so well as a penetrating oil.

I do know, from personal experience, that applying lubricants to records can be helpful in getting badly worn records to play on acoustic machines--there is a reduction in drag and pronounced reduction in noise. I have never tried ibota wax, but many here swear by it. I have have used Carnauba (palm) wax occasionally to great effect. I have seen videos of people recommending applying bees' wax to repaired cracked or reassembled broken shellac records. I have tried this, too, but it does not seem any more effective than Carnauba wax, and it is much harder to apply and leaves a messy looking finish.

One of the problems with lubricants (I cannot speak for all lubricants, such as ibota wax) is that they are a major PITA if you want to play a treated record again on a modern turntable. An amazing amount of crud builds up quickly on the stylus, the sound quickly becomes fuzzy, and the tone arm starts to skip and wander about the record because the ball of crud lifts the stylus up out of the record groove. I then have to spend 10 to 15 minutes with a jeweller's loupe, a cleaning solution (Diskwasher fluid seems to work OK), and various brushes (the old Cecil Watts flat things with a modest amount of cleaner first, a Project carbon fibre thing, and a number of other brushes or varying stiffness and bristle length). I have spent hours soap-and-water scrubbing some newly acquired "treated" records on my OkkiNokki cleaning machine in order to make them playable again on my modern turntable--these are electrically recorded disks in otherwise excellent condition for which there was no good reason to treat them in the first place.

The same problem with crud build up from treated records occurs with needles on acoustic machines, except that it isn't really a problem here. Needles don't/shouldn't get reused, and there is a huge difference in tracking force--my modern turntable tracks at 4.75 grams--my Aeolian Vocalion machine tracks at about 165 grams.

I have never used WD-40 on a record, but I suspect that I have seen its effect on records that I have acquired, and if I am right in my suspicion, the effect isn't entirely pretty.

I treat records, repaired records and badly worn records, with Carnauba wax, because it is what I have and because it seems to work OK. Its use is a prison sentence to a life of acoustic playback for the treated record. Cracked and broken records that I have repaired do not come near my expensive 78 styluses anyway.

I set my favourite Beniamino Gigli 78 gently down on the platter of my modern turntable one day, and then while I was turning on the amp and adjusting the controls, there was a loud crack noise. My treasured record spontaneously split. I glued up the crack with Weldbond glue (a skill I learned here). It now only gets acoustic play. It has been treated with wax. Despite it being an electrically recorded disk, it does not seem to have suffered a lot from extensive play on my acoustic machines. So, I would say, yes, lubricants protect later 78s from the full damage they might otherwise receive from an acoustic machine.

Lah Ca wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2023 10:28 am I have never tried ibota wax, but many here swear by it. I

I found that Ibota wax is effective to reduce the drag of worn Pathé records, a nefarious consequence of using bad sapphires that can slow down a gramophone to a halt. After applying the wax the records play well, but I do not intend to play such records on modern players, as probably it will cause the same clogging as carnauba wax. As to long term effects of WD40, we will probably never find out, with the complicating factor that shellac mixes vary wildly even in records from the same manufacturer, and some may react with it. I agree with Peter that it should not be applied on a Robert Johnson Vocalion, but if you have a worn Bing's White Christmas it is probably ok - if it gets damaged you can find one or two million good replacement copies.

Any truly valuable records I find are and will be digitized asap and never played again on a Victrola.

It's a crapload of fun for me however, to not worry about the fidelity of gear at all and just listen to the music.

My whole life and job as an audio engineer producer etc has been to "cover up" poor performances with "sound salad". In those beginning Victor and Edison days right up to 50s those guys couldn't cover up a thing with fidelity or "frequency salad" to please the ear and distract from a poor performance!
It was good or not good, the song has to carry itself past the narrow frequency
band and slightly distorted harnonics. Right up through to The Beatles in fact.

Did anyone else ever notice that the sound of Beatles recordings wasn't really up to par at all till the remixes? The music and arrangements however were wonderful.

Same can't be said of the jazz recordings of that era, they sounded and were recorded great! (Obviously the jazz musicianship was superb too)

There you go! A perfect example of why I love these Victrolas, I don't have to think that way cause you get what you get!

(That being said I do want a Credenza project) < hint

CarlosV wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2023 2:46 pm
.... but if you have a worn Bing's White Christmas it is probably ok - if it gets damaged you can find one or two million good replacement copies.

Re: White Xmas.
Hate every damn Bing Crosby record ever cut including that one. (-:
Except maybe "Who put the Overalls in Mrs Murphys Chowder?" That one I merely intensly dislike.

It was much eclipsed by Harry the Hipster Gibson's "Who Put the Benzadrine in Mrs Murphys Ovaltine" at any rate.
As you can plainly see, the trauma from that Bing Crosby chowder incident ended in Mrs Murphy's drug addiction. Bad fella that Bing Crosby, hurt a lotta people

PeteLeoni wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2023 6:40 pm Any truly valuable records I find are and will be digitized asap and never played again on a Victrola.

It's a crapload of fun for me however, to not worry about the fidelity of gear at all and just listen to the music.

My whole life and job as an audio engineer producer etc has been to "cover up" poor performances with "sound salad". In those beginning Victor and Edison days right up to 50s those guys couldn't cover up a thing with fidelity or "frequency salad" to please the ear and distract from a poor performance!
It was good or not good, the song has to carry itself past the narrow frequency
band and slightly distorted harnonics. Right up through to The Beatles in fact.

Did anyone else ever notice that the sound of Beatles recordings wasn't really up to par at all till the remixes? The music and arrangements however were wonderful.

Same can't be said of the jazz recordings of that era, they sounded and were recorded great! (Obviously the jazz musicianship was superb too)

There you go! A perfect example of why I love these Victrolas, I don't have to think that way cause you get what you get!

(That being said I do want a Credenza project) < hint

Very interesting veer! Thanks.

I have 78s from the 40s that are like direct to disk audiophile recordings. Played with an appropriate cartridge and non-compliant stylus in an appropriate high mass non-compliant tone arm through proper EQ, they smoke. In a box of records the other day, I found a 40s Tommy Dorsey disk that had never been played. The excess shellac bits had never been cleaned out of the spindle hole. Awesome sound. Too bad it wasn't one of his great records.

I played some Tiny Bradshaw 78s for my nephew once. He is a musician, producer, and recording engineer. Dual turntable with massive arm. Pickering P/AC1 with a large truncated elliptical stylus. Proper pre RIIA EQ. He was gasping with delight and amazement. The sound was so hot, so live. He said, "It sounds like they did this with one mic. F'n amazing!"

One of my friends brought over his first LP purchase ever, the first Beatles LP released in Canada, a mono copy. He had looked after it well, and his parents had had a reasonable sound system. I ran it over my OkkiNokki machine to clean it. Then I played it on my Clear Audio turntable with its ultra-low mass and highly compliant tone arm and its Clear Audio cartridge with its extremely compliant stylus. It sounded absolutely gawd-awful. I then took it and played on the Dual turntable (heavy non-compliant arm) using an early Stanton 500 with a large conical stylus. The album was transformed. It rocked the house down.

I have very mixed feelings about remixes of classic albums. In their original form, they are historical works of art as the artists and producers intended them. Played on the gear they were mixed for and cut for, they can sound great. (Hint: they weren't mixed for smartphone earbuds.) I listened to my son's newly remixed copy of the Beatles' Sargent Pepper album a while back. It was interesting, but it wasn't Sargent Pepper; it was something similar but different. I went back and played a number of different LP copies of the same title. I liked my old UK vinyl copy best.

Why do we want to make an earlier recording sound like a highly processed modern recording? It is sort of like saying DaVinci sucks because he doesn't have the 4K Res like hyper realism of some one like Alex Coville. He needs to be remastered. Being an old master isn't good enough.

DaVinci Coville
I remember that the people who remixed the Pentangle records for the box set release took a lot of critical flack because, while they did clean things up a bit, they stayed true to what good pressings of the albums actually sounded like. They did not attempt to modernise the recordings. To my ear they sound great. They sound like good new pressings of the albums played on good period gear. Bravo!

It's good to hear that some good sounding (audiophile level) Beatles do exist. Not suprized they are the British label mono versions. There are btw, Indian 78 rpm Beatle records!

PeteLeoni wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2023 9:13 pm Re: White Xmas.
Hate every damn Bing Crosby record ever cut including that one. (-:
Except maybe "Who put the Overalls in Mrs Murphys Chowder?" That one I merely intensly dislike.

You haven't listened to his really early stuff when he was working with people like Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti. The dude had chops. Later, it wasn't that he couldn't sing, but rather that he chose not to.

PeteLeoni wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2023 9:13 pm
Hate every damn Bing Crosby record ever cut including that one. (-:

The interesting fact is that Bing Crosby was a pioneer in your field of recording, Pete. He introduced the commercial tape recording in the US, helping to create a new company called Ampex that developed celuloid-based tapes (German tapes were paper-based) and produced recorders, and that turned the recording industry upside down. He was mainly motivated by avoiding making sequential live radio shows in the same day to cope with the time differences across the US. He first tried acetates, but the results were poor, and when he heard about the tape recorders that US soldiers had brought from Germany, he decided that such technology would save his tonsils and give him more time to play golf. And like him or not, Crosby was the most influential popular singer since records exist, a unique phenomenon that created imitators in almost every country in the world, with a style that made every man think he could sing like Bing.