The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I found a few of these in a lot I recently bought. Anyone know why they are painted? The yellow ones are also very magnetic. Found in the U.K. mixed with regular needles.

The painting, at least on the needles I'm familiar with, is there to indicate whether or not the needles had been used. The setscrew would create a small circle in the paint when the needle was put in the needle chuck.

I understood that the painted needles are long-playing or semi-permanent needles.

You can see red painted semi-permanent Polar Bear needles on page 4 of this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5615

My attachment didn’t load. Epigramophone is quite right, I would only use them on junk records and playing up to 60 records is fanciful.

A while back a friend gave me a pack of Victor chromium needles. Naturally, I can't put my hands on it at the moment, but as I recall they were painted in that fashion, in their case being green.

The yellow painted needles are HMV "Long Playing". I would not let them anywhere near my records.

The tips are rather blunt. From my experience they look like Victor Home Recording needles, the red one being earlier and the yellow ones being the later "New Style". Here in the U.S. the Chromium Long Play (Program Transcription) needles were orange.

Steve

Those are chromium needles. Different manufacturers used their own color. RCA was a medium green. I use them in my early to middle 1930s record changers.