Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Psuggmog Volbenz]

I used to own a wax cylinder recording machine. Unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire. In some ways the stylus introduced less wear to the created grooves on the cylinder than modern disc records, because the stylus and playback head were moved via a lead screw rather than by lateral forces on the stylus from the helical grooves as done in a modern record. Of course, there was still frictional and compression loads.

[Steve_freereeder]

I was forgetting that the early Edison's used tinfoil to record onto - did the early cylinders use thorn or steel needles to play ?

I have a Decca portable wind-up gramophone dating from the 1930s or 1940s and a collection of 78 rpm records which originally belonged to my parents/grandparents. The gramophone comes with a collection of steel needles which were obtainable in different grades of hardness as 'soft' or 'loud' according to the type of music or volume of sound required. After a few playings the needles became worn and my Dad tells me it was common practice to re-sharpen the needles with a file or oil-stone in order to re-use them. He also showed me how they used to make bamboo needles from slivers of bamboo garden canes. They work quite well, although softer in volume and they don't last as long as the steel needles. On the other hand, the bamboo needles are kinder to the grooves in the shellac records.

[Nick Collis Bird]

The phonograph eg cylinder machines did not use needles, it had a stylus made of sapphire or diamond and never needed changing. I have two machines, a Fireside and a Gem. The Fireside has a repro stylus the Gem original. Both around 1900 the Gem still plays beautifully .

[Sebastian]

I take it ancient, fragile or broken cylinders and disks could now be 'played' optically so their contents could be digitised without mechanically degrading the originals.

I hope so. When I participated a lecture of Mrs. Ziegler from the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv maybe 15 years ago, she proudly presented a recording taken with a rotating laser beam from the inside of a cylinder mould. (Those moulds tend to break up too easily.) The result was, well, a disappointment. The sound was heavily superimposed by various noises.