I’ve got a handful of OLD disks. 78 rpm, I think. They’re wax or shellac on cardboard. They’re fleaking ANCIENT!
(“Thearle Music Co.” “Rainbo Company, Los Angeles.”)
I am guessing that a modern turntable and needle would just shred them.
What’s the best way to get the music off of them and into a more modern format?
(I have an Ion turntable and am digitizing all of my old LPs, but they’re modern – so to speak – vinyl 33 rpm disks. I am extremely hesitant to put these old disks on a modern turntable.)
Note that just because a turntable has a 78 setting doesn’t mean you should use it. You will need at least a needle that is shaped right for 78s. (There used to be flip-over needles. Flipping a lever brought down the 78 stylus. Do not use a regular LP stylus. Putting in a suitable needle might entail a change in cartridge as well. That is dependent on your player.
My strategy for really old records: Buy the mp3 of it. You can get a much better version that way and avoid a lot of hassles. You’d be surprised how likely almost all of your records are available.
You need the right speed of turntable (obviously).
You need the right shape and size of the needle. Microgroove is not the right one.
You need the right stylus pressure. Too much, shred. Too little distortion and bounce. The exact values I can’t help you with but someone else might.
And every pass with wax or shellac will degrade the disc, so repeated trials are not a good idea. Get it as right the first time as you can.
Are you sure those are on cardboard? That would be extremely rare, and not a mass-produced medium. Acetate on aluminum might be what you have if it’s a one-time pressing and those were never intended to be played repeatedly. If it’s really wax, it might not have been intended to be played at all, but made into a pressing master.
Definitely not possible with one-time records, like the ones made in a recording booth, direct from mic to disk.
In case you didn’t know, onceuponatime, you could go into a big-city music store, enter a small booth not much bigger than a telephone booth (remember those?) and record your speech directly thru a lathe-cutter onto an acetate disk. This is what you left the store with, and was the only copy in existence.
Seems odd in this day of easy audio and video recording, but it was the only way a non-professional could be recorded without a large expense at one time, before wire or tape recorders (1920s-40’s?).
I have one such record, recorded by my grandmother around 1950. She was a speech and dramatics coach, and made a “personal” record as a birthday gift for me, mentioning my name in the recording. The sound quality is poor, but I’m very sure there doesn’t exist a MP3 file of this.
I think this disc still resides in my basement, and one day I hope to dig it up and digitize it, although repeated playings when I was a child have undoubtedly made it even poorer than it once was.
Musicat: I honestly do not know for sure, but I think these are self-recorded disks, like the ones from store-front recording studios (or even county fairs and amusement park studios.) I think these are family things.
I certainly could play the things at 33 rpm and just use digital alteration (Audacity) to speed 'em up. I’ve done this with some old clay 78 disks.
I definitely agree that one pass is all I want to make, to try to grab some mp3 data.
I’m very much worried, though, about what needle to use. Are there any services that I can go to, experts I could mail (carefully!) the disks to where they could use their expertise to digitize these for me? I’d happily drive to Los Angeles. There must be experts. How expensive would it be?
I applaud your intention to handle these priceless recordings with care. Future generations will thank you (posthumously, I’m sure!)
First, don’t use MP3 as your archive storage. Use WAV, which is lossless. With the price of digital storage today, you are talking about saving 3 cents. Don’t do it.
Playing your 78s at 33 RPM and adjusting later is possible, but as a purist, I don’t advise it. Frequency compensation curves make this idea less than ideal. It simply isn’t that simple.
I don’t have any connections with experts in this field, but I’m sure there must be some, and Los Angeles is a damned good place to start. I wish I was back there myself.
If you only have a few recordings, I can’t imagine professional treatment would be prohibitively expensive. I suggest contacting LA studios for assistance. Forgive me, I have lost all my contacts there over time. I wish you the best of luck.
One last piece of advice…even if you have converted your originals to more modern format, do not discard the originals if you can afford to keep them. They are, by definition, irreplaceable. * It’s very likely that future technology may render your originals much more worthwhile than modern copies.* Your great-great-great-great grandchildren will thank you!
Musicat: As to that last, no worries! They’re priceless artifacts, just as objects, as curios, as physical chunks of history. I’d like to get data files too – very good advice about .wav files; thank you! And, aye, absolutely damage-free laser players might be only a few years away. Never bet against progress!
For my own personal listening, mp3s are good enough, as I’ve got a tin ear. For me, “high end audio” is “more signal than noise.” But, as you note, this is a thing for posterity and for history.
Many of those had to be played with wooden needles.
Our family had one on a cardboard base and about the diameter of a 45 rpm, that had a warning to play it only with a soft, wooden needle. It was recorded in San Francisco in the '20s.
If yours is the same, a metal needle will wreck it.
They transfer old recordings to CD. The claim they can transfer all kinds of things - “16 inch transcription record” - “Audograph flexible record” - “Soundscriber flexible record.”
Their prices seem to be in the $20-$40 range for most items.
As I said, I don’t know anything about this company. But this shows there are companies doing this, and some prices. If you can find a company in LA, and drive down to see their equipment in person, you could probably find the perfect company for you. (And of course, only give them one record to start with, to see how they do.)
That’s good to know! My gut instinct was that a modern needle wasn’t a good idea.
Well, I’ll drop 'em a line. What’s the worst that can happen? Thank’ee! I’ll do some searching also, but I have to confess to being one of the world’s worst Googlers.
The recordings could have been made by your great grandmother, who wanted a verbal record of all of her personal, private information - perhaps even one of the first Social Security Numbers. The company could take that information and steal her identity, using it to marry a Nigerian prince and inadvertantly creating a rip in the space-time continuum causing you to never be born.
I wonder if antique stores would have record players that play 78s. Ones I had as a kid did.
BTW, when I first looked at this thread I thought it was about old commercial 78s. ftg’s post made me search for an old Sam Levinson record my mother owned - and it was on YouTube. I listened to it for the first time in over 45 years, so thank you all.
Not recommended if you want to preserve those priceless records. Old (non-hifi) players used heavy tonearms that plowed through the grooves with brute force, destroying them rapidly. Newer styli and tone arms can be set to use the least amount of pressure necessary to extract the sound.
Just a warning: WAVs are generally saved in a lossless format, but they aren’t necessarily lossless. WAV is just a container format. You can have WAVs that encode information as MP3, for example. PCM is the actual lossless format that is usually stored in WAV files.
To be sure you’ve got a lossless format, save as a FLAC file. As a benefit, these will also be (losslessly) compressed and thus take up less space. FLAC is considered the gold standard in audio compression these days.
But, note that even being lossless doesn’t necessarily mean highest quality. Be sure to use a high sample rate and high bitrate. For listening, all you need is 16-bits and 41100hz, but if you plan on doing any editing, there’s nothing wrong with going to 24-bits and 96000hz. Just be sure to also convert to a typical MP3 or similar for regular listening. (96000hz can react strangely with some speakers.)
Note: Analog to digital is lossy. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. For one-off old 78s, you can lose a lot of frequency range, no problem. But dynamic range could be a problem.
Once it is digital, if it is in standard uncompressed .wav, .ogg, etc. format, then there is no further loss if you do simple things like trim the files, etc. But removing pops and hiss will be lossy.
Do not use old equipment on these records. New gear only.
