The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Bettini sound-box attachements for the earliest cylinder players. Does anyone know what they sounded like, in comparison to ths stock reproducers of the period. Has anyone ever done an A-B comparison using rebuilt units, with a brown-wax cylinder?

Check youtube.

Well the ones I could find on youtube don't really sound very good, but the videos are playing moulded black wax cylinders, which I think are perhaps too high in modulation.

WE copied the spider design for the Ortophonic aka Re-entrant soundboxes for the optimal reproduction of electrically recorded records to make optimal use of the diaphragm. I think that the clips you see on youtube have the the problem that they are overloading the membrane. A Bettini recorder was up to 15 rimes more sensitive than a normal one. With live performances were recorded from as far as 20 meters. But they were handmade, rare and quite easy to break. I don't think more than 50 were ever made, if even that many. As said WE copied the spider design, which gave the full bodied sound to the orthophonic machines, more than the ingenious folded horns, because I has a small table model HMV that also sounded marvelous. That had only a 2 foot horn, but still could fill your room quite easily, far better than than the big floor standing models that preceded it.