Modern turntables have counter-weighted tone arms and stand a reasonable chance of staying with a record even if it has some warping. But while watching season 1 of Carnivale (finally), I’ve seen several instances of someone using a Victrola (that is, one like this) to play a record with a very visible warp in it. I was under the impression that those needles were just basically on pivot points and really didn’t have any ability to give and take in that way.
In the Victrola era, records were made of shellac, and had a groove about three times wider than the later LP records pressed on vinyl. If anything, they were more forgiving of an uneven surface than a modern tone arm would be.
Here’s a sitewith more information than you’d ever want to know about old phonographs.
On those early gramophones the pressure on the needle was quite a lot. We had a wind up one when I was a child and we were supposed to only use the needles once. We faithfully changed the needle every time until we ran out and then start over again.
I’ve got roughly 150 78 RPM records and don’t think I’ve ever seen one of them have a warp. They’re brittle, not bendy.
If the record has a simple up and down warp, a Victrola should be able to track it. The reproducer or soundbox pivots up and down freely. This is assuming it’s in good repair - I’m in the midst of restoring a Victrola and one of the rubber parts in the joint between the soundbox and the tone arm was so badly hardened that I first thought it was cast metal.
Were 78s ever made in anything other than shellac?
Originally they were made from hard rubber. Beginning in the late 1930s RCA began pressing them in vinyl and other labels followed with their own vinyl compounds. As a medium, though, vinyl didn’t really work until the record player manufacturers got rid of the steel needles and heavy tone arms after World War 2. By then the LP records were being introduced.
Rubber, then shellac, then vinyl (over a cardboard base). My family used to have some vinyl 78s; children’s five-inch-diameter records and a couple of 10-inch-diameters with the label Hit of the Week, probably owned by one of the majors.
