The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

do you prefer disk records or cylinders? i personally like cylinders more

I like them all !!!

Iowa Dale

1900 -1920 cylinders. But later on the Edison transfers were poor and warbly....1920-1935. Discs. Personally now, I love the new transfers to cylinder done by Edisonia, Vulcan, Berlin Phonograph Co, etc... excellent songs and quality.

Pathé: Discs. My experience with Pathé cylinders has been very uneven, with some sounding quite good but some really not good at all, and all too often they are moldy or don't fit well on a mandrel.

Edison: I love the cylinders when they aren't dubs. From there on, discs.

Columbia: I have so few cylinders, I can't really make a fair comparison.

US Everlasting, Indestructible, etc., etc.: They didn't issue discs, but I like the few of their cylinders that I've collected over the years.

I don't really care.

I do not own any cylinders or a cylinder machine.

However, one of my aunts had one that my cousin and I used to use. I remember it as a front double door upright fancy woodwork cabinet machine with a large internal horn and lots of room for storage of cylinders--I don't think I have ever seen another one like it, and my cousin does not know what happened to it. It might have been a custom build designed to accommodate a larger table top unit--don't know.

I enjoyed the music on my aunts's cylinders, strange as it seemed at the time.

And for me the music is what it is all about. Cylinders or disks, they are all just technology for transmitting the music.

I must confess that I find the hardware quite fun, too.

If a cylinder player offered itself up in a crime of opportunity I wouldn't run away.

lah ca, the phonogrpah might be in some storage unit somewhere but really don't think anyone would throw one like that out. i hope you find it one day!

I tried liking cylinders way more than once but just couldn't get there. But that's OK, that leaves more for the cylinder heads.

I use both formats.
The content is what I prefer most.

James.

I prefer 78s, but that's because there's no cylinder machines here around. Gramophones and records really did it in Spain, the cylinder fashion must have been a brief one and only among very wealthy people... I've never seen one cylinder machine here, while I see old gramophones and records frequently.

I collect and enjoy both, but I prefer discs because they offer a much wider choice of repertoire covering a longer period.
Having said that, there is nothing quite like a directly recorded Blue Amberol played on a top quality phonograph.