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Hopefully not a dumb question and I'm sure there is some divergence of views on the topic, but what do you folks use for playing the later 78s......roughly the big band era through the 50's? I've certainly heard that steel needles will quickly ruin these records due to the composition change that had been made from the earlier discs. I've taken that as an article of faith. Oddly enough though, at my grandfather's house - when I was just a bit younger - he had an electric motor equiped 78 player, probably WW2 vintage but equiped with steel needles. So was that still common practice for folks who just didn't know better? I have available a fairly chintzy modern turntable that includes a 78 rpm setting and have just used a 3.0 mil "78" stylus that could be boughht from LP Gear's website. I'm sure there are higher priced solutions, but for playing the occassional common 40-50's discs is this acceptable? Any sources out there that specialize in different sized 78 compatible styli for non-outrageous prices? Personally, that era is not my main area of interest for collecting, but the occassional spin of "Begin The Beguine" is a good option. John

OK, here we go again. The topic of pre- and post-c.1935 shellac has been discussed on the board, with two basic positions taken by respondents: do, and don't. I'll repeat here what I've said before: I play all my 78s, regardless of vintage, with soft-tone steel needles on my VV-XI with Exhibition sound box. (Exception! No vinyl!) No visible or audible damage, as far as I can tell, has resulted. YRMV. Also, my Exh. box is restored, and fine-tuned. I wouldn't recommend this with an unrestored, or improperly adjusted, box.

John Svensson wrote:Hopefully not a dumb question and I'm sure there is some divergence of views on the topic, but what do you folks use for playing the later 78s......roughly the big band era through the 50's? I've certainly heard that steel needles will quickly ruin these records due to the composition change that had been made from the earlier discs. I've taken that as an article of faith. Oddly enough though, at my grandfather's house - when I was just a bit younger - he had an electric motor equiped 78 player, probably WW2 vintage but equiped with steel needles. So was that still common practice for folks who just didn't know better? I have available a fairly chintzy modern turntable that includes a 78 rpm setting and have just used a 3.0 mil "78" stylus that could be boughht from LP Gear's website. I'm sure there are higher priced solutions, but for playing the occassional common 40-50's discs is this acceptable? Any sources out there that specialize in different sized 78 compatible styli for non-outrageous prices? Personally, that era is not my main area of interest for collecting, but the occassional spin of "Begin The Beguine" is a good option. John

Sounds good to me. For what your purposes are described, if you're happy with it.

Probably don't even need to open the can of worms about vintage windup machines.

I play the few 40s 'n 50s records I have on my Orthophonic and also don't notice any wear (note I said 'notice'), but the records aren't exactly pristine to begin with. Maybe if they were brand new and I was going to play them a few hundred times and was later going to play on a hi-fi I'd worry about it. Lot of the wear is done to higher frequencies my machine can't reproduce anyway ; )

As for a player with an amp that still used a steel needle, I'm making an educated guess that it would cause a lot less wear because of the much lower weight and much greater needle compliance than an acoustic soundbox even with a steel needle. So if I had one of those I'd worry about it even less.

"....don't even need to open the can of worms about vintage windup machines." Sorry, sounds like this one has been opened before. Apparently many people see no ill effects from putting these on the old Victrola.
I was just curious if there was a subculture of 1940's phonograph collectors lurking here who had favorite models that could be tracked down. As was pointed out, for the amount I play records from this era my solution may be as good as any. John

John Svensson wrote: I was just curious if there was a subculture of 1940's phonograph collectors lurking here who had favorite models that could be tracked down. As was pointed out, for the amount I play records from this era my solution may be as good as any. John

I know that some of the later model HMV portable (windup) phonographs curry some favor around here.

The HMV 101 or 102 perhaps.

John Svensson wrote:at my grandfather's house - when I was just a bit younger - he had an electric motor equiped 78 player, probably WW2 vintage but equiped with steel needles. So was that still common practice for folks who just didn't know better?

This was common practice because there wasn't many other choices until micro-groove discs were introduced, along with the ultra-lightweight tonearms, cartridges & modern jewelled stylus to play them.
There were various longplay (or longlife) needles available, that could be used instead of a steel needle, but many of these were harder on records than ordinary steel needles that were changed after a single use.
Abrasives designed to wear a steel needle were still put into shellac records made in the 30s, 40s & 50, but less abrasives were added than previously because they were seen as overkill (& increased record hiss) with the lighter tracking weight of the magnetic & crystal cartridges most people were using at the time.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I played all my 78's on a portable windup machine, changing the steel needle infrequently, and all my records got slowly ruined. But they (even the 1940's ones) held up pretty well considering the abuse they took, being played over and over and over again in that way. I still have a Spike Jones disc from then that is fairly thrashed, but still playable.

Which is not to say that today I'm not very persnickety about such things. Especially mint records that I own, they're to stay that way and only be played on modern kit.

Personally, I play them on acoustic machines using cactus needles. Still sounds great and doesn't wear the record.