This is so cool. I feel so privileged to be able to hear this 1949 record in 2022 as if it were new. Thank you! And yeah this sounds so much better than the first one.
different companies used different proportions of shellac and other substances. When the material gets old, miniscule damage occurs automatically, which we hear as hissing. Unfortunately, we will never hear anything like it was back then!
A while back, I bought a Shure stereo cartridge with a 78 RPM diamond needle wired at the 4 posts for mono reproduction. I mounted it to a Dual 1219 turntable tracking at around 2.5 grams. I was amazed at the decent sound quality of the less than good condition 78 RPM record.
There was this customer at one of the best audio dealers in town who was an Uber 78 lp fanatic. He used a modified Thorens table, with an SME arm, with some high quality cartridge. He would record them to tape on a Studer-Revox Open reel deck. He first cleaned them on a Keith Monks record cleaning machine. Now that's commitment.
This is so much better, has a warmer sound than 33 1/3 vinyl. I remember my granddad playing 78s on his record player with a valve amp and needle that would last 10 sides. They sounded wonderful.
The recordings made back in the day were not made strictly for tube gear at all, they made music to sound great with all the technology available at the time like microphones and recording equipment. The old gear I’ve heard 78’s on was very limited in the final stages like stylus quality and type along with loudspeakers which were not very clear sounding back then. All this crap about valve sounding warmer is just pure rose tinted nonsense. Anyways, what do you mean by, ‘warmer?’ I’ve had valve amps in my setup and they sound clean and fast whereas an old transistor amp can sound soporific or ‘warm’ if you like such as a, Technics SU-A900 from the 1990’s class A amplifier sounding quite good and blowing away a lot of valve amps in my humble opinion
@@naimusic362 Tube amplifiers sound warmer because they distort more. Some people like that sound some people don't. 90% of the time 78 where used transistor amplifiers didn't even exist so yes the recordings were made with and for tube gear.
@@trevor245 for a good chunk of the 78 era, they were played on non electronic photographs, even if they had electric platters. Just diaphragms and transfer pipes or sounding boards. Since this is a 49 RCA jazz vocalist recording, a 55 era console player is a good choice for matching the production and intent.
@@STho205 Ok fair point. But the ones that were produced during the time people used electronic systems it would have been for tube gear. Also just because of that it wouldn't mean that it can't sound good on transistor based stuff, it'll probably sound better tbh.
Nice records. Great find. These sound especially clean. Or as they used to say: "a noiseless recording." I've collected 78's for nearly 30 years. I cringed when you turned the pages the way you did in the video. I had done the same thing years ago thinking nothing of it and cracked the outer edge of the records that was closest to the binding. I try to always be sure the record is as far away from the album binding as possible when turning the pages to avoid causing those outer stress cracks. Happy collecting.
Well done on the follow up! That’s probably the best you can ever do to reproduce the sound on vintage hardware (without a crank, which would sound worse in my opinion). This was an awesome video. You now have a great setup for playing your 78s!
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@@Duckcalculator Depends what you are aiming at. If you want to hear the 40s 78 as people in the 40s did, then yes, use 40s equipment (for a few plays anyway); if you want to extract the most from the recording, i. e. get as close as you can to hearing what someone in the recording rooms would have, use modern equipment. (Not the horrible "vinyl revival" junk, I mean _proper_ kit.)
@@G6JPGI use a Victrola generally for my 78s, and most often I can’t tell that I’m listening to an acoustic machine. The sound quality isn’t horrible as you might think.
I'm surprised how good that sounded. It also reminds me that 78s weren't replaced by 33 1/3 because of sound quality, it was because 33 1/3 records had a lot more room for music, hence the name "LP" (Long Play).
And there were less breakable I am very careful with my 78 shellac records and I've still cracked a piece off of one of them but just moving it a little a little bit or picking it up, LPS and 45s are much less fragile if you drop them they're very unlikely to break apart or crack unlike shellac discs.
Keep in mind that although the unit has a 78 rpm stylus, unless the input selector has a seperate LP and 78 positions, you are hearing it through RIAA equalization for LP records. This EQ is wrong for 78 recordings, but was considered "good enough" by most manufactures as 78s were becoming obsolete. There are some preamps available with correct 78 EQ for most 30s and 40's 78 recordings.
If I recall correctly, the RIAA curve wasn't standardized until the 1960s. Before that different record produces used different compensation curves. Some hifis had a switch that could select two or more different curves. But as you note, they were all moderately close, so it wasn't that critical for most listening.
@@lwilton The RIAA curve was introduced by RCA around 1954 and RCA called it "new orthophonic" and very quickly became the standard industry wide. You are right that there were several EQ standards for LP and lots more for 78s of different eras and manufacture.
Sounds pretty good, I am suddenly interested in maybe getting into these, just the idea of listening to a 100+ Year old record sounds fun! Thanks for doing the video, not many youtubers wanna talk about this format for some reason.
I’m always blown away by the quality of the bass that some 78s can have. I always felt like primitive playback equipment, especially phonographs, probably lacked the ability to reproduce the bass very well, but on my modern (yet pretty modest) set-up the bass can rock the house
The best 78 playback I have ever heard was done with a Mono GE VR Cartridge with a 3mil needle. Either a mono cart or a stereo cart strapped for mono is the best. Then you have to get the EQ curve right for proper playback too. Most of these old 78's don't observe the later RIAA curve standard.
They sound pretty darn good on my 3 systems when played back with light tracking magnetic pickups, GE VR, Stanton and AT, and correct EQ curves. Surface noise, yes, but you have to concentrate on the reason for playback : what's in the grooves. 😊 I also have a 1926 Victor Ortonphonic Consolette with an excellent sound box that I enjoy .
That is either a 1962 or 1963 Magnavox which can be seen by the styling of the record player. I have a 1959 Magnavox stereo record player that has a Collaro Conquest(completely gold colored) changer which is how you tell it's a 1959. In 1957 they would have used an even older model Collaro player and would have been mono. A very nice unit indeed though!
I'm impressed at how quiet these recordings are. In Highschool I had a friend whose family had a cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin on a lake. They were a very eclectic group and owned very old books and 78's, and Columbia recordings from the very first catalog numbers. This cabin only had a floor standing tube radio and a windup tabletop Victrola with a brass horn and a stove for heat. Also a substantial collection of music to play. Even though I had a modern for the time(70's) stereo system, after spending a week there in the winter on a frozen lake, listening to nothing but 78's and tube radio(no tv) I was surprised at just how good a mechanical 78 player could sound. Yeah, there was noise and the dynamic range might be limited on the records, but if you get passed that, the surface noise becomes less intrusive and the music comes through and boy did it. I mean, most of the discs are recorded direct-to-disc and have a life about them, very different than a modern audio system but in ways just as enjoyable. I think of miss those times.
My parents had a Magnavox console with this phonograph and radio in it, in the early sixties. Damn belt kept breaking on the phonograph almost annually with next to no use. I still remember this appearance, though!
Those sleeves sound like sandpaper....makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up! Sounds really mellow on that old stereo.....reminds me of another time......
Shellac and filler, of which 78's are made, are extremely porous and hygroscopic material and water immediately penetrates the record deep under the surface. Washing a record with water does irreversible damage to a 78. To try and dry the record with a cloth or leaving it in a dry warm place is not going to do it. But the fatal effect of water on a 78 is not immediately visible; you'll think the record is clean and dry but the destruction will only show over time. Water, trapped inside the record, will cause the shellac/filler to expand; that is the reason why so few records from the 1920's (and later) are still really shiny, even if they have never been played; because they have not been kept in a dry environment. When new, all records, even the worst pressings, were shiny and without surface noise. It's getting wet and/or being kept in a damp environment that over time has deteriorated the surface, ranging from slight dulling to heavy gritting. Cleaning a record with water and not vacuum drying it will severely add to that deterioration. The only safe way to clean a 78 is to use special 78 cleaning fluid and a vacuum record cleaner/dryer; they can be expensive, yes, but it is the very best way to clean an preserve a 78, many of which (at least in my collection) are worth more than such a machine! Only an unplayed record, always kept in a dry environment and never been in touch with water can sound like when it was new - except for laminated 78's such as late 20's, early 30's Columbias and it's sister labels Okeh, Harmony, Clarion etc. which were made from a non-hygroscopic early plastic, much less sensitive to water and unplayed ones usually sound the same as when they came fresh out of the factory 90+ years ago. Playing them with modern sound equipment and a fitting stylus will ofren reveal a sound quality and frequency range which is hardly inferior to a modern recording.
Thanks for redoing this on this much better equipment! This sounds a lot like I remember a living room hifi sounding like in the 50s and early 60s. To me (and this is just my personal opinion) it sounded like there was some lack of highs I expected, but this could have been TH-cam, or a slight maladjustment of the tone control on the player, or even just lack of highs in the recording. I also thought I heard some overdrive or perhaps crossover distortion. Again, this could have been in the TH-cam recording or reproduction. Or it could have been a fault in the amplifier or speaker in the hifi. Or I just could have been imagining it. In any case, I thought it sounded pretty good, and about what I would have expected. (Note that you won't get the full audio range you are used to with digital recordings out of a 78. The frequency response was from around 40Hz to about 10Khz for shellac 78s. They needed to roll off the low end volume to keep the groove excursion from being excessive, and the shellac was a somewhat grainy medium that made a considerable amount of hiss from 10KHz upward. Usually you could hear this in almost any recording, and it would be worse on a well-played record. It wasn't at all unusual to have the hiss be different on half the record, so that as it played you would hear hiss--hiss--hiss as the record spun.)
A friend had a small weekend program on local radio station where he played mostly records from 1950s. On occasion he would play older 78 rpm records and the station had top notch equipment for record playing including 78 oriented turntables. He played some pristine 78s one day that were so clean you could not tell if they were records or CDs. 78 rpm records were some of the best media believe it or not because they traveled ‘ fast ‘ ( 78 revolutions per minute ) for steady speed and they had big coarse grooves with a lot of sound in them. I had some 45 rpm records and 78 rpm of the same recordings and the 78s were WAY better.
I acquired some 78 in album box from the 40s with the original cellophane on it. I opened and played the "virgin" 78s on a modern record player. Despite being in pristine condition, they still had a lot of surface noise.
I saw a very similar radiogram to this, it may have even been the same model on Shango's channel except his was in very poor and sick condition. He had issues with loose Valves in their sockets and needed lots of work to get it running properly. These old things were well built not like the crap of today.
sounds great. But who knows how much the years have affected the shellac material. Now if only someone would press a new shellac record at 78RPM, 3mil as a novelty, that would be amazing.
@@cactusjackNV Columbia in the 1940s, pressed sandwiched records made of 3 layers of shellac pressed together. The two outer layers were made of the quieter (but more fragile) shellac for the A side and B side with the inner layer being made of the sturdier (but noisier) material.
I usted to have an old Gerratd turntable with a 78 needle and I hooked it up to my amp aloung with a GE and they sonded very good however even the best 78 have al lot of thats why you can hear it to this day on new copies Still I love the old 78 records
1962 is said to be the last year that 78rpm records were made in the mainstream. The late ones made by the 1950's were made out of vinyl instead of shellac. 1962 may have been the last year they were made as a mainstream item, but they still made them decades after 1962 for specialty purposes. I saw a brand new pack of 78rpm records consisting of 50's oldies meant for people who have old vintage jukeboxes that play 78's.
I'm not sure if it's the case, but I find the UK 78s stayed very hard much later, into the 40s at least. I wouldn't play the very special ones on acoustic gramophones but we had austerity for a long time post war and people kept their wind up gramophones for a long time. HMV made wind-up gramophones into the 50's, possibly even early 1960's
By the time the average enthusiast gets hold of a 78rpm record there, is surface wear, tear and damage and a consequently higher noise floor. The leading edge of a wavefrom in the track groove may have become eroded causing distortion. The correct stylus which reaches deep into the groove and mono reproducer may give you a better chance. Before the RIAA equalisation became a standard, I think in the early to mid 1950s, different labels applied their own equalisation curves to their recordings. There was also some variation introduced by the recording technicians for individual recordings. When you apply those equalisation curves to the raw recovered audio, the apparent fidelity of the recording improves but often at the cost of a higher noise floor. First you need to "de-RIAA" the recordings made on modern reproducers in an audio software. RIAA equalisation yields playbacks which suppress the higher frequencies. The RIAA equalisation curve attempted to emphasise the higher frequencies which on playback were de-emphasised in order to also de-emphasise the noise floor which tends to be more prevalent at higher frequencies. Whilst many older recording equalisations were also intended to allow playback de-emphasisation of high frequency noise, the equalisation curves were not as aggressive. My go to for restoring original equalisation curves was Cool Edit Pro v1.5, which was aquired by Adobe and became Adobe Audition. Once you have arrived at close to an unprocessed recording, then apply the equalisation curves of the particular record company of the time. Prior to the electric microphone around 1929, recordings were made acousto-mechanically. Their signal level over the noise floor introduced by wear and the surface texture of the disks themselves was very low. However with care, the tinny sound introduced by feedhorns can be levelled out. The noise floor remains a problem. Noise cancelling software can achieve only so much. Old 78rpm electric recordings seem to have a greater brilliance than 33.3 rpm vinyl "microgroove" long-play records. th-cam.com/video/SGB8k2RZ3zc/w-d-xo.html My understanding is that for vinyl long-play, the dynamic range had to be compressed to avoid waveforms in the tracks crossing over into adjacent trackspace. Some of the old Parlophone electric recordings seems to have been the most faithful, in particular the German ones. However, when a record has been played to within an inch of its life there is not much to be done about damaged waveforms and stylus slap. Interestingly when re-released long-play 33.3rpm albums were made from recovered 78rpm recordings for which there remained no master, a technique was devised where several copies of the same 78rpm record were re-recorded. Because the surface noise was different in each recovered recording, when several recordings were mixed down to a single track, the effect was to diminish the surface noise as the recovered music was the constant.
I've had a few 78's and I recorded them off of a standard turntable with Stanton 500 stylus and 45 speed, then fixed the speed in software. It sounds surprisingly good.
Your console here likely has a full-range paper cone (no tweeter) and for 78 listening it's ideally suited. But you can do even better when recording your 78s. You would capture an even more detailed digital representation of the disc if you picked up a receiver or amp & preamp combo with line out RCA jacks, and pair that amp with a good turntable. This gear with an RCA-to-mini phono cable you could make super clean dubs with a computer. You would bypass this speaker cone and the cell phone mic (both of which introduce phase problems and lose a lot of high and low frequencies).
Two 4 inch paper tweeters per side in front. 6V6 tube amp push pull for 14-18 watts per side. Side firing 12 inch woofers. That model was one step below TOTL, which had horns in front. That system was most definitely decent for 78 reproduction and most definitely considered Hi Fi.
This was uploaded a few months after I had finally acquired some shellac 78s on Record Store Day, a new turntable with the means to play them in the form of the Technics SL-1210GR which was an overall upgrade over my U-Turn Orbit I had for 4 1/2 years until then, my Nagaoka MP-78 stylus for my MP-110 cartridge, etc. I've been a vinyl fan since 2015, had the means since 2017, and 2022 was my year to officially get into 78s as well.
If you really want a great system for playing 78 records, get a Heathkit WA-P2 preamp This preamp has four position turnover and rolloff controls to match the brand of record you are playing. It's an investment, restored WA-P2 units go for around $300. They originally sold for $19.95 in kit form, in the late 1950's. It is best paired with a vintage Heathkit W6-M amplifier from which it gets its power. To use with other amplifiers you will need to come up with a 6.3 VAC filament supply and a well filtered 300 volt DC supply capable of 10 mA. The turntable does need to have a "standard", ,not "microgroove" stylus in the cartridge.
I have an acoustic Christmas record from the 1910s that was stored in an improvised sleeve consisting of two sheets of cardboard taped tightly together. I have since stored it in a plastic sleeve. I'm going to guess the record was only played a handful of times back in the day on a bamboo needle because when I tried it on my modern electronic setup it sounded absolutely phenomenal (considering it's acoustic). It was very much like your recording in the sense that it had practically no noise in the background.
I assumed that the loud hiss went with the shellac until I got a NM copy of “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts (1954). I also discovered that many of the noisy 78s just needed a thorough cleaning to get rid of most (if not all) of the surface noise.
Shellac records do have hiss. It is usually very quiet on a new record, but becomes worse (possibly much worse) after repeated playings, at least with the cartridges available at the time. A modern cartridge likely leaves very minimal wear on these old records. (And the shellac is a lot more 'set up' now than when the record was made 80 years ago. For the first few years it was somewhat softer, so easier to damage.)
It’s not high fidelity, but it didn’t suck like those old mechanical crank driven record players with the steel needle, or even the cheap one from the previous video. Well done! Now I can see a 1950s home enjoying these types of records.
I wouldn't gripe about the old crank phonographs. Some of the high-end ones sound pretty damn good for being a century-old technology. Also, at the time that's all that was available, so it was either one of those or you did without.
I have an HMV 102 gramophone I found at the tip for cheap. The soundbox while original hasn't lost the give in its rubber, and the motor is good and strong and incredibly stable. It sounds marvellous. I wouldn't play the later 78s made from less hard materials and less shellac on them, but here in the UK we seemingly kept our discs very hard well into the 40's. HMV made wind-up gramophones here into the 50's! I don't think it's truly possible to record the impact these acoustic machines have in person. They really are very impactful and have a sound like no other
Very neat. The vocalist Arnie's is a local Pittsburgh Legend Billy eckstine. I'm interested in this set now. So cool to see a pristine one very rare, unopened 78 RPM stock from 1949
For comparison purposes, there is a recording of this same song in the Internet Archive. It seems that here we are hearing the "flat" sound, without EQ which would improve the sound!
As an FYI, you did this fully serviced, right? That stereo has a tube amplifier in it, and there's some things that absolutely must be done if it's put back in daily use again. No exceptions. There's small, readily available parts called capacitors that must be replaced in the amplifier and power supply, if it's not done, you can cremate a tube or worse, the power supply if one these small parts shorts out. And the likelihood of this happening is very high. Also getting it properly serviced will improve sound quality, even better than it sounds now.
I found that console at a Goodwill store and took a chance and purchased for $19. When I got home and disassembled it, I found that the previous owner had done a beautiful restoration and had replaced all the capacitors. I only needed to buy new tubes and it fired up and has worked perfectly. I think the owner died and the kids didn't know what it was worth and without good tubes, sounded like it was a mess, so they dumped it at Goodw ill and then put a price on of $19.00. Right place at the right time.
By modern standards, very poor. I started my collection in the Shellac era , and although new records were free of surface damage, Shellac, is granular in texture, and so surface noise was accepted. The playing equippment back then, although very low fidelity, added to the noise, because ,not only were the playing arm heavy, before the steel needles were replaced by diamond tipped Needles, the steel ones would gauge out the shellac in the grooves vey quickly, and so you would hear the pop's and clicks, over the background of a continuous hissing noise.
One thing I would suggest- stop storing the records in the original paperboard sleeves. I'd definitely keep the originals, but I'd be storing the records in a modern acid-free soft plastic master sleeve with backing like the Mofi or "Invest in Vinyl" types you can get on Amazon, et al. Those light scratches you mentioned probably came from insertion into the sleeve. Those sleeves (and all paper/paperboard sleeves) do abrade the surfaces of the record. Just a thought. Thanks for the follow-up- we're all learning, even those of us who have been into it for years.👍
Yeah, you know those sleeves are just the worst material possible for record storage - you can hear them abrading the discs as the discs are removed and replaced.
I think you have put the lie to an urban legend. This legend says the reason 78s sounded so crackly was they added some sort of abrasive to keep the needle sharp and that abrasive made the crackly sounds. Kooky theory but I hadn't seen any real debunking of it until I listened to the recording you played thanks!
@@jamesslick4790 Hey Slick. I did not know Mr. B was from Pittsburgh. Keith Richards once said that his mom used to listen to Billy on the radio, and Keith spoke of him very fondly and even cites him as an influence! Regards..
Post war 78's were often not pressed using the best shellac. First thing is that a record this old - new or not - should be washed. Some of the surface noise is due to dust that got into the grooves. Second, playing them with the proper sized needle is also important.
I wish that some day someone would go to the trouble of making shellac 78's the way they were made so long ago, from recording to final pressing. That would be the only true way to see what they would have sound like when brand new, by making new record with a shellac mixture that was used back in the day and recording in a similar fashion. It would even be interesting if someone was to not only record using the original techniques but even try recording using more updated techniques and more modern technology just to see how good one of the old gramophones could sound. I'm willing to bet the original equipment is still out there, sitting in old barns and sheds just waiting for a good reconditioning and finally have a wax disc carved with new music for the first time in 60 or 70 years.
If you take the back off that Magnavox Hi-Fi stereo, you will likely find AUX-OUT RCA jacks, which put out line level. If you use the right adapter cord, you might be able to use that line level out directly into the line level in of your recording apparatus. That would take away any colorations of the Magnavox speaker, or, the microphone picking up the sound from the speaker. That would give you the most accurate sound possible. Don't use the wires that go down to the power amplifier, since the "output to amplifier" jacks are colored by the tone controls on the preamplifier. you want the 'dry' output from the AUX OUT, or perhaps, LINE OUT. jacks. None the less, it DOES sound much better, than I would have ever thought from a ~1949 monophonic recording!!
There's some surface hiss and a bit of crackle, but to my ears at least given I have tinnitus, they sound really beautiful, that magnavox unit does a great job. I'm not 100% convinced those records truly are new old stock, to have gone the better part of 73 years without once being played is difficult to believe, however they still sound great regardless of the truth.
A lot of things just kind of sit to the side for ages. Some people buy things and never use it, sometimes things don’t sell, sometimes companies discontinue things that still have stock.
A couple years ago I found a small stash of classical 78's which appear to have been unplayed. There are no fingerprints, no marks of any kind, and they are completely shiny (78's tend to lose the shine in their grooves after playing). There's no way for me to "prove" that they're unplayed, obviously, but they certainly look it. Given that this Hines/Eckstine set appears to have been sealed, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if they were "new."
The standard RIAA curve was adopted in 1954. Since the console dates back to 1959 or 1962, it would be the RIAA curve. For the photograph record, the RCA EQ curve was pretty close to the RIAA curve.
You should never record these demonstrations with a mike in front of the speaker! It´s totally useless! You cant judge the fidelity of the disc in this way. The pick up should be directly and electrically connected to your recording equipment. You should listen to and learn from the "78 Prof" and his superb transcriptions of 78s.
It sounds very good with almost no surface noise. I would like to hear it on a modern audio system with a cartridge installed with the proper stylus. I know that many modern turntable do not have the 78 RPM speed, but some of them do. There were some in the vintage years as well. I am not sure what the proper equalization was for the 78s but I think it was similar to the ceramic cartridges. Maybe RIAA, I do not know.
If you want to be rid of those fingerprints, try Dawn dishwashing soap - just a drop - on already wet grooves. That or Dawn Powerwash for tough stuck food or insect poop(one spray, diluted with water) - it usually takes care of both but you must make sure it has been thoroughly rinsed and dried, as the soap will continue to attract dust and debris if still present. I loved this song and am looking for it now - thanks for posting - I hope you're enjoying your collection on that lovely old tube machine:>
There are new high quality 78 speed turntables with high quality cartridge and stylus. If you are a collector, that would be an excellent for maintaining the quality of your records. What you played sounds excellent, but for how long? Rega, Denon, and Teac all make very good ones, but you would need an expert to choose the best sounding cartridge. Schiit makes a top notch preamp to send to a amplifier (every price point), and speakers are also. I have records (33.3) that I bought in 1963 that sound just like new with my Thorens turntable with a Vessel line contact cartridge 1.4 gram. You don't have to do all this, but there are degrees that will protect your records for life with a warm accurate sound.
So I don't know the califone, and I don't know if what people say about it is true. What I do know is that the best way to play electronically cut 78's is on a modern record player, with a proper cartridge and a 78rpm stylus. That way the player actually tracks the grooves properly, and you have a precisely cut stylus that fits the groove perfectly. I would recommend getting a modern "DJ type" record player if you want something new, that has 78rpm (like the Pioneer PLX500) And an AudioTechnica AT-VM95E cartridge. Alternatively you can go for something from the 60's or 70's like a Pioneer or Lenco that has 78rpm. Bare in mind that these oldies often need maintenance. The notion that a 78 will only sound good on old equipment, is a bit ridiculous :)
Whoever said that the Califone is "The worst thing possible" clearly has no idea what their saying. I've heard hatred towards Califones for a while, but I'm getting the impression that's coming from people who used the ones back in the 50s and early 60s, not these later ones. I've heard a lot of stuff about certain 50s & 60s players, jukeboxes, etc being notoriously harmful, though there's also alot of blatant hate with no actual proof behind what's said also, pushed by audiophiles that have a fetish for Audio Technica superiority. I swear there's so many people who act like playing a 78 on any machine from more than 30 years ago is the same as playing a 78 from 1960 on a Victor Victrola from 1906 and does the same type of damage from misuse. The reality is, no record will survive 50-100 years of constant play on ANY MACHINE staying at E++ or M- grading without some sort of wear or otherwise usage damage being done to it. No object in existence can.
@@CPorter Exactly. The only issue with school record players is the "power point" cartridge. They are fine for 78 rpm and can sound quite good, but do not play modern styrene records on them, it will destroy them. Other exceptions are 1950's R and B like Little Richard should NOT be played on players earlier than 1950. The reason is that the stylus and cartridges were different, along with tracking forces. Pre 1950 players tracked much heavier. After 1950, cartridges used the correct needle size and most consumer grade phonos that were a step up from "kiddy" phonos, were using proper cartridges, such as the Zenith Radionic. While record wear wasn't eliminated, it was certainly reduced. That being said, using 60's as the starting point, the changer DOES matter. Magnavox changers have very little record wear, and slightly newer models than the one in the vid, used a cartridge that could track pretty much anything, and sound better than some lower end magnetics.
I'd need an audio spectrum analyzer to know for sure, but to me it sounds like the upper frequencies are weak or missing. This may be a limit of the technology of the day. Kind of like AM radio can't reproduce anything 5,000Hz or higher, but FM can go to 15,000Hz.
Ya, it did sound a bit dull actually. Even the pops and sizzles/crackles were very subdued. Even for 1949, recording tech was improving drastically from the 30's.
You're correct: the Magnavox and the ceramic cartridge are suppressing quite a bit of sound. More modern equipment with a magnetic cartridge, proper stylus and proper equalization and mono playback will "brighten" up the sound of that record considerably, but also add back some noise in the upper frequencies. I know from experience that 78 rpm records can produce a lot of sound well over 5,000 cycles. There's more in those grooves than people realize and like all records, 78's benefit from proper playback equipment. I bristle when people say cheap modern suitcase players are sufficient for 78 playback. Having said all that, this video probably captures quite well the sound of a decent console unit of the '60's.
Early 78s could go up to about 5khz, later recordings about 8khz and in the '50s maybe 10khz. But the frequency response is higher at the beginning of the song than at the end. Mathematically, the highest frequency response is 16.25kHz at the beginning of the record and 7.7kHz by the end of the record. The sound would be limited by the quality of the microphones as well.
I love collecting old 78's. I also play mine on an old Magnavox Astro-sonic. I've a few in really good condition. I'd never claim they sound better than LP's, they don't. But considering from where they come, (my oldest ones are over 90 years) to me, they sound amazing.
I was a little sad to hear you say I've been told my player was too modern. Yes, in the years since analog records ceased to be mainstream some horrible players have appeared, especially in the recent "vinyl revival" era, but going back to a 1950s radiogram is a bit too far back: some of the high-quality, low tracking weight, players of the 1970s and '80s (I _think_ you can still find such made today, too) would be my preference. Ideally even linear tracking (after all, that's how the records were made, even back into the 78 era). [Though I'm not sure I've seen a linear tracking one with a 78-compatible stylus, but it ought to be possible.] Sure, use 1950s equipment if you want to hear what they sounded like to purchasers at the time, but not if you want to get the best out of the recording (and minimise wear of it too).
we had a Magnavox console when I was a little kid....I spent many magical hours listening to the records....
This is so cool. I feel so privileged to be able to hear this 1949 record in 2022 as if it were new. Thank you! And yeah this sounds so much better than the first one.
different companies used different proportions of shellac and other substances. When the material gets old, miniscule damage occurs automatically, which we hear as hissing. Unfortunately, we will never hear anything like it was back then!
A while back, I bought a Shure stereo cartridge with a 78 RPM diamond needle wired at the 4 posts for mono reproduction. I mounted it to a Dual 1219 turntable tracking at around 2.5 grams. I was amazed at the decent sound quality of the less than good condition 78 RPM record.
There was this customer at one of the best audio dealers in town who was an Uber 78 lp fanatic. He used a modified Thorens table, with an SME arm, with some high quality cartridge. He would record them to tape on a Studer-Revox Open reel deck. He first cleaned them on a Keith Monks record cleaning machine. Now that's commitment.
This is so much better, has a warmer sound than 33 1/3 vinyl. I remember my granddad playing 78s on his record player with a valve amp and needle that would last 10 sides. They sounded wonderful.
Of course it sounds warmer. It's more distorted due to the entire setup being tube driven. And the recordings are also made for tube gear.
The recordings made back in the day were not made strictly for tube gear at all, they made music to sound great with all the technology available at the time like microphones and recording equipment. The old gear I’ve heard 78’s on was very limited in the final stages like stylus quality and type along with loudspeakers which were not very clear sounding back then. All this crap about valve sounding warmer is just pure rose tinted nonsense. Anyways, what do you mean by, ‘warmer?’ I’ve had valve amps in my setup and they sound clean and fast whereas an old transistor amp can sound soporific or ‘warm’ if you like such as a, Technics SU-A900 from the 1990’s class A amplifier sounding quite good and blowing away a lot of valve amps in my humble opinion
@@naimusic362 Tube amplifiers sound warmer because they distort more. Some people like that sound some people don't. 90% of the time 78 where used transistor amplifiers didn't even exist so yes the recordings were made with and for tube gear.
@@trevor245 for a good chunk of the 78 era, they were played on non electronic photographs, even if they had electric platters.
Just diaphragms and transfer pipes or sounding boards.
Since this is a 49 RCA jazz vocalist recording, a 55 era console player is a good choice for matching the production and intent.
@@STho205 Ok fair point. But the ones that were produced during the time people used electronic systems it would have been for tube gear. Also just because of that it wouldn't mean that it can't sound good on transistor based stuff, it'll probably sound better tbh.
those maggie 6v6 amps sound really good. I love hearing clean fresh recordings without surface noise too
Nice records. Great find. These sound especially clean. Or as they used to say: "a noiseless recording." I've collected 78's for nearly 30 years. I cringed when you turned the pages the way you did in the video. I had done the same thing years ago thinking nothing of it and cracked the outer edge of the records that was closest to the binding. I try to always be sure the record is as far away from the album binding as possible when turning the pages to avoid causing those outer stress cracks. Happy collecting.
Well done on the follow up! That’s probably the best you can ever do to reproduce the sound on vintage hardware (without a crank, which would sound worse in my opinion). This was an awesome video. You now have a great setup for playing your 78s!
If it were an earlier record then a wind-up model would be appropriate. A 40s 78 should be played as you said.
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We must repent and trust in Jesus to be saved.
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@@Duckcalculator Depends what you are aiming at. If you want to hear the 40s 78 as people in the 40s did, then yes, use 40s equipment (for a few plays anyway); if you want to extract the most from the recording, i. e. get as close as you can to hearing what someone in the recording rooms would have, use modern equipment. (Not the horrible "vinyl revival" junk, I mean _proper_ kit.)
@@G6JPGI use a Victrola generally for my 78s, and most often I can’t tell that I’m listening to an acoustic machine. The sound quality isn’t horrible as you might think.
I'm surprised how good that sounded. It also reminds me that 78s weren't replaced by 33 1/3 because of sound quality, it was because 33 1/3 records had a lot more room for music, hence the name "LP" (Long Play).
And there were less breakable I am very careful with my 78 shellac records and I've still cracked a piece off of one of them but just moving it a little a little bit or picking it up, LPS and 45s are much less fragile if you drop them they're very unlikely to break apart or crack unlike shellac discs.
It sounds amazing!! I never knew a 78 could sound this good!! Great job on the record and the console!!
Keep in mind that although the unit has a 78 rpm stylus, unless the input selector has a seperate LP and 78 positions, you are hearing it through RIAA equalization for LP records. This EQ is wrong for 78 recordings, but was considered "good enough" by most manufactures as 78s were becoming obsolete. There are some preamps available with correct 78 EQ for most 30s and 40's 78 recordings.
If I recall correctly, the RIAA curve wasn't standardized until the 1960s. Before that different record produces used different compensation curves. Some hifis had a switch that could select two or more different curves. But as you note, they were all moderately close, so it wasn't that critical for most listening.
@@lwilton The RIAA curve was introduced by RCA around 1954 and RCA called it "new orthophonic" and very quickly became the standard industry wide. You are right that there were several EQ standards for LP and lots more for 78s of different eras and manufacture.
That's an amazing Magnavox console stereo you have their sound so beautiful
Sounds pretty good, I am suddenly interested in maybe getting into these, just the idea of listening to a 100+ Year old record sounds fun! Thanks for doing the video, not many youtubers wanna talk about this format for some reason.
I’m always blown away by the quality of the bass that some 78s can have. I always felt like primitive playback equipment, especially phonographs, probably lacked the ability to reproduce the bass very well, but on my modern (yet pretty modest) set-up the bass can rock the house
OMG!! My parents had that exact same Magnavox stereo when I was a young pup. Magnificent tube sound!
I'm a rock, pop and country musician and this sounds amazing and the guy singer and the instruments playing are incredible!
Yup Billy eckstine vocal... has a deep grateful range wonderful voice
The best 78 playback I have ever heard was done with a Mono GE VR Cartridge with a 3mil needle. Either a mono cart or a stereo cart strapped for mono is the best. Then you have to get the EQ curve right for proper playback too. Most of these old 78's don't observe the later RIAA curve standard.
Exactly!
Yes with correct EQ they sound even better,The GE VR cartridge is a most suitablen choice.I use one mointed in a "GraY" viscous damped arm.
They sound pretty darn good on my 3 systems when played back with light tracking magnetic pickups, GE VR, Stanton and AT, and correct EQ curves. Surface noise, yes, but you have to concentrate on the reason for playback : what's in the grooves. 😊 I also have a 1926 Victor Ortonphonic Consolette with an excellent sound box that I enjoy .
That is either a 1962 or 1963 Magnavox which can be seen by the styling of the record player. I have a 1959 Magnavox stereo record player that has a Collaro Conquest(completely gold colored) changer which is how you tell it's a 1959. In 1957 they would have used an even older model Collaro player and would have been mono. A very nice unit indeed though!
Thank you sharing this very unique experience with us!
I'm impressed at how quiet these recordings are. In Highschool I had a friend whose family had a cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin on a lake. They were a very eclectic group and owned very old books and 78's, and Columbia recordings from the very first catalog numbers. This cabin only had a floor standing tube radio and a windup tabletop Victrola with a brass horn and a stove for heat. Also a substantial collection of music to play. Even though I had a modern for the time(70's) stereo system, after spending a week there in the winter on a frozen lake, listening to nothing but 78's and tube radio(no tv) I was surprised at just how good a mechanical 78 player could sound. Yeah, there was noise and the dynamic range might be limited on the records, but if you get passed that, the surface noise becomes less intrusive and the music comes through and boy did it. I mean, most of the discs are recorded direct-to-disc and have a life about them, very different than a modern audio system but in ways just as enjoyable. I think of miss those times.
My parents had a Magnavox console with this phonograph and radio in it, in the early sixties. Damn belt kept breaking on the phonograph almost annually with next to no use. I still remember this appearance, though!
That sounds lovely. If only all 78s sounded like that.
Those sleeves sound like sandpaper....makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up! Sounds really mellow on that old stereo.....reminds me of another time......
Love the record player/cabinet
Shellac and filler, of which 78's are made, are extremely porous and hygroscopic material and water immediately penetrates the record deep under the surface. Washing a record with water does irreversible damage to a 78. To try and dry the record with a cloth or leaving it in a dry warm place is not going to do it. But the fatal effect of water on a 78 is not immediately visible; you'll think the record is clean and dry but the destruction will only show over time. Water, trapped inside the record, will cause the shellac/filler to expand; that is the reason why so few records from the 1920's (and later) are still really shiny, even if they have never been played; because they have not been kept in a dry environment. When new, all records, even the worst pressings, were shiny and without surface noise. It's getting wet and/or being kept in a damp environment that over time has deteriorated the surface, ranging from slight dulling to heavy gritting. Cleaning a record with water and not vacuum drying it will severely add to that deterioration. The only safe way to clean a 78 is to use special 78 cleaning fluid and a vacuum record cleaner/dryer; they can be expensive, yes, but it is the very best way to clean an preserve a 78, many of which (at least in my collection) are worth more than such a machine! Only an unplayed record, always kept in a dry environment and never been in touch with water can sound like when it was new - except for laminated 78's such as late 20's, early 30's Columbias and it's sister labels Okeh, Harmony, Clarion etc. which were made from a non-hygroscopic early plastic, much less sensitive to water and unplayed ones usually sound the same as when they came fresh out of the factory 90+ years ago. Playing them with modern sound equipment and a fitting stylus will ofren reveal a sound quality and frequency range which is hardly inferior to a modern recording.
Get a life.
@@fabrizio483 Idiot. But by all means wash your 78's with water.
that stereo was actually made around 1962
Thanks for redoing this on this much better equipment! This sounds a lot like I remember a living room hifi sounding like in the 50s and early 60s.
To me (and this is just my personal opinion) it sounded like there was some lack of highs I expected, but this could have been TH-cam, or a slight maladjustment of the tone control on the player, or even just lack of highs in the recording.
I also thought I heard some overdrive or perhaps crossover distortion. Again, this could have been in the TH-cam recording or reproduction. Or it could have been a fault in the amplifier or speaker in the hifi. Or I just could have been imagining it. In any case, I thought it sounded pretty good, and about what I would have expected.
(Note that you won't get the full audio range you are used to with digital recordings out of a 78. The frequency response was from around 40Hz to about 10Khz for shellac 78s. They needed to roll off the low end volume to keep the groove excursion from being excessive, and the shellac was a somewhat grainy medium that made a considerable amount of hiss from 10KHz upward. Usually you could hear this in almost any recording, and it would be worse on a well-played record. It wasn't at all unusual to have the hiss be different on half the record, so that as it played you would hear hiss--hiss--hiss as the record spun.)
Wow! I am so impressed. I didn't realize a 78 could sound so good.
A friend had a small weekend program on local radio station where he played mostly records from 1950s. On occasion he would play older 78 rpm records and the station had top notch equipment for record playing including 78 oriented turntables. He played some pristine 78s one day that were so clean you could not tell if they were records or CDs.
78 rpm records were some of the best media believe it or not because they traveled ‘ fast ‘ ( 78 revolutions per minute ) for steady speed and they had big coarse grooves with a lot of sound in them.
I had some 45 rpm records and 78 rpm of the same recordings and the 78s were WAY better.
I just found the first part and check to see if there was a follow up and jeez, it sounds much better.
I acquired some 78 in album box from the 40s with the original cellophane on it. I opened and played the "virgin" 78s on a modern record player. Despite being in pristine condition, they still had a lot of surface noise.
I saw a very similar radiogram to this, it may have even been the same model on Shango's channel except his was in very poor and sick condition. He had issues with loose Valves in their sockets and needed lots of work to get it running properly. These old things were well built not like the crap of today.
When new vinyl records are played on high quality equipment they sound AWESOME!
Thank you for such a wonderful experience! Wow!
sounds great. But who knows how much the years have affected the shellac material.
Now if only someone would press a new shellac record at 78RPM, 3mil as a novelty, that would be amazing.
th-cam.com/video/jaqpj-R7Zkk/w-d-xo.html
The closest option today is probably a straight to vinyl cut 45rpm 12"...
@@cactusjackNV Columbia in the 1940s, pressed sandwiched records made of 3 layers of shellac pressed together.
The two outer layers were made of the quieter (but more fragile) shellac for the A side and B side with the inner layer being made of the sturdier (but noisier) material.
Excellent video, lots of good tips. ive spent along time looking for shellac records, and rebuilding gramophones.
I usted to have an old Gerratd turntable with a 78 needle and I hooked it up to my amp aloung with a GE and they sonded very good however even the best 78 have al lot of thats why you can hear it to this day on new copies Still I love the old 78 records
1962 is said to be the last year that 78rpm records were made in the mainstream. The late ones made by the 1950's were made out of vinyl instead of shellac. 1962 may have been the last year they were made as a mainstream item, but they still made them decades after 1962 for specialty purposes. I saw a brand new pack of 78rpm records consisting of 50's oldies meant for people who have old vintage jukeboxes that play 78's.
I know 78s were produced in India right until about 1970. They had Beatles on 78s.
@@michaelturner4457That's wild!
I'm not sure if it's the case, but I find the UK 78s stayed very hard much later, into the 40s at least. I wouldn't play the very special ones on acoustic gramophones but we had austerity for a long time post war and people kept their wind up gramophones for a long time. HMV made wind-up gramophones into the 50's, possibly even early 1960's
By the time the average enthusiast gets hold of a 78rpm record there, is surface wear, tear and damage and a consequently higher noise floor. The leading edge of a wavefrom in the track groove may have become eroded causing distortion. The correct stylus which reaches deep into the groove and mono reproducer may give you a better chance. Before the RIAA equalisation became a standard, I think in the early to mid 1950s, different labels applied their own equalisation curves to their recordings. There was also some variation introduced by the recording technicians for individual recordings. When you apply those equalisation curves to the raw recovered audio, the apparent fidelity of the recording improves but often at the cost of a higher noise floor.
First you need to "de-RIAA" the recordings made on modern reproducers in an audio software. RIAA equalisation yields playbacks which suppress the higher frequencies. The RIAA equalisation curve attempted to emphasise the higher frequencies which on playback were de-emphasised in order to also de-emphasise the noise floor which tends to be more prevalent at higher frequencies. Whilst many older recording equalisations were also intended to allow playback de-emphasisation of high frequency noise, the equalisation curves were not as aggressive.
My go to for restoring original equalisation curves was Cool Edit Pro v1.5, which was aquired by Adobe and became Adobe Audition. Once you have arrived at close to an unprocessed recording, then apply the equalisation curves of the particular record company of the time. Prior to the electric microphone around 1929, recordings were made acousto-mechanically. Their signal level over the noise floor introduced by wear and the surface texture of the disks themselves was very low. However with care, the tinny sound introduced by feedhorns can be levelled out. The noise floor remains a problem. Noise cancelling software can achieve only so much. Old 78rpm electric recordings seem to have a greater brilliance than 33.3 rpm vinyl "microgroove" long-play records.
th-cam.com/video/SGB8k2RZ3zc/w-d-xo.html
My understanding is that for vinyl long-play, the dynamic range had to be compressed to avoid waveforms in the tracks crossing over into adjacent trackspace. Some of the old Parlophone electric recordings seems to have been the most faithful, in particular the German ones. However, when a record has been played to within an inch of its life there is not much to be done about damaged waveforms and stylus slap.
Interestingly when re-released long-play 33.3rpm albums were made from recovered 78rpm recordings for which there remained no master, a technique was devised where several copies of the same 78rpm record were re-recorded. Because the surface noise was different in each recovered recording, when several recordings were mixed down to a single track, the effect was to diminish the surface noise as the recovered music was the constant.
I've had a few 78's and I recorded them off of a standard turntable with Stanton 500 stylus and 45 speed, then fixed the speed in software. It sounds surprisingly good.
Your console here likely has a full-range paper cone (no tweeter) and for 78 listening it's ideally suited. But you can do even better when recording your 78s.
You would capture an even more detailed digital representation of the disc if you picked up a receiver or amp & preamp combo with line out RCA jacks, and pair that amp with a good turntable. This gear with an RCA-to-mini phono cable you could make super clean dubs with a computer. You would bypass this speaker cone and the cell phone mic (both of which introduce phase problems and lose a lot of high and low frequencies).
Two 4 inch paper tweeters per side in front. 6V6 tube amp push pull for 14-18 watts per side. Side firing 12 inch woofers. That model was one step below TOTL, which had horns in front. That system was most definitely decent for 78 reproduction and most definitely considered Hi Fi.
This was uploaded a few months after I had finally acquired some shellac 78s on Record Store Day, a new turntable with the means to play them in the form of the Technics SL-1210GR which was an overall upgrade over my U-Turn Orbit I had for 4 1/2 years until then, my Nagaoka MP-78 stylus for my MP-110 cartridge, etc. I've been a vinyl fan since 2015, had the means since 2017, and 2022 was my year to officially get into 78s as well.
If you really want a great system for playing 78 records, get a Heathkit WA-P2 preamp This preamp has four position turnover and rolloff controls to match the brand of record you are playing. It's an investment, restored WA-P2 units go for around $300. They originally sold for $19.95 in kit form, in the late 1950's. It is best paired with a vintage Heathkit W6-M amplifier from which it gets its power. To use with other amplifiers you will need to come up with a 6.3 VAC filament supply and a well filtered 300 volt DC supply capable of 10 mA. The turntable does need to have a "standard", ,not "microgroove" stylus in the cartridge.
I have an acoustic Christmas record from the 1910s that was stored in an improvised sleeve consisting of two sheets of cardboard taped tightly together. I have since stored it in a plastic sleeve.
I'm going to guess the record was only played a handful of times back in the day on a bamboo needle because when I tried it on my modern electronic setup it sounded absolutely phenomenal (considering it's acoustic). It was very much like your recording in the sense that it had practically no noise in the background.
No sir, thank YOU for YOUR time!
Thank you for sharing this wonderful Time Machine.
I assumed that the loud hiss went with the shellac until I got a NM copy of “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts (1954).
I also discovered that many of the noisy 78s just needed a thorough cleaning to get rid of most (if not all) of the surface noise.
Shellac records do have hiss. It is usually very quiet on a new record, but becomes worse (possibly much worse) after repeated playings, at least with the cartridges available at the time. A modern cartridge likely leaves very minimal wear on these old records. (And the shellac is a lot more 'set up' now than when the record was made 80 years ago. For the first few years it was somewhat softer, so easier to damage.)
It’s not high fidelity, but it didn’t suck like those old mechanical crank driven record players with the steel needle, or even the cheap one from the previous video. Well done! Now I can see a 1950s home enjoying these types of records.
I wouldn't gripe about the old crank phonographs. Some of the high-end ones sound pretty damn good for being a century-old technology. Also, at the time that's all that was available, so it was either one of those or you did without.
I have 3 old crank phonographs that I have restored and they sound great so I don’t know what you’re talking about
@@Cave4590
Neither does he.
I have an HMV 102 gramophone I found at the tip for cheap. The soundbox while original hasn't lost the give in its rubber, and the motor is good and strong and incredibly stable. It sounds marvellous. I wouldn't play the later 78s made from less hard materials and less shellac on them, but here in the UK we seemingly kept our discs very hard well into the 40's. HMV made wind-up gramophones here into the 50's!
I don't think it's truly possible to record the impact these acoustic machines have in person. They really are very impactful and have a sound like no other
Sounded great!! Good job! Thanks for sharing. I didn't see the first video.
Very neat. The vocalist Arnie's is a local Pittsburgh Legend Billy eckstine. I'm interested in this set now. So cool to see a pristine one very rare, unopened 78 RPM stock from 1949
For comparison purposes, there is a recording of this same song in the Internet Archive. It seems that here we are hearing the "flat" sound, without EQ which would improve the sound!
Beautiful record. Thanks for sharing
As an FYI, you did this fully serviced, right? That stereo has a tube amplifier in it, and there's some things that absolutely must be done if it's put back in daily use again. No exceptions. There's small, readily available parts called capacitors that must be replaced in the amplifier and power supply, if it's not done, you can cremate a tube or worse, the power supply if one these small parts shorts out. And the likelihood of this happening is very high. Also getting it properly serviced will improve sound quality, even better than it sounds now.
Yes, this was completely restored. All new capacitors and tubes.
It sounds good but its still recorded through a mic, its too bad we cant hear this with a direct line out/in recording.
I've some 78rpm records and those are used and old still I love to listen to them.
Beautiful record player! Wonderful song too!
The console sounds really good. Did you do any electronics restoration to it? would love to hear more from your collection.
I found that console at a Goodwill store and took a chance and purchased for $19. When I got home and disassembled it, I found that the previous owner had done a beautiful restoration and had replaced all the capacitors. I only needed to buy new tubes and it fired up and has worked perfectly. I think the owner died and the kids didn't know what it was worth and without good tubes, sounded like it was a mess, so they dumped it at Goodw ill and then put a price on of $19.00. Right place at the right time.
@@icemanfreeze1 Amazing find!
What a great find!
@@icemanfreeze1 SCORE!
@@icemanfreeze1 Ensure that the crossover caps were replaced. If not, going to impede the audio quality potential big time
I've never heard a cleaner shellac record before this! Awesome!
By modern standards, very poor. I started my collection in the Shellac era , and although new records were free of surface damage, Shellac, is granular in texture, and so surface noise was accepted. The playing equippment back then, although very low fidelity, added to the noise, because ,not only were the playing arm heavy, before the steel needles were replaced by diamond tipped Needles, the steel ones would gauge out the shellac in the grooves vey quickly, and so you would hear the pop's and clicks, over the background of a continuous hissing noise.
If you haven't had an electronic restoration done on the Magnavox amplifier / tuner then the sound will be distinctly inferior.
One thing I would suggest- stop storing the records in the original paperboard sleeves. I'd definitely keep the originals, but I'd be storing the records in a modern acid-free soft plastic master sleeve with backing like the Mofi or "Invest in Vinyl" types you can get on Amazon, et al. Those light scratches you mentioned probably came from insertion into the sleeve. Those sleeves (and all paper/paperboard sleeves) do abrade the surfaces of the record. Just a thought. Thanks for the follow-up- we're all learning, even those of us who have been into it for years.👍
Yeah, you know those sleeves are just the worst material possible for record storage - you can hear them abrading the discs as the discs are removed and replaced.
I think you have put the lie to an urban legend. This legend says the reason 78s sounded so crackly was they added some sort of abrasive to keep the needle sharp and that abrasive made the crackly sounds. Kooky theory but I hadn't seen any real debunking of it until I listened to the recording you played thanks!
Billy Eckstine, the great "Mr. B". One of the best vocalists of that era.
One of Pittsburgh, PA's top exports! Back when we STILL had a Jazz "scene".
@@jamesslick4790 Hey Slick. I did not know Mr. B was from Pittsburgh. Keith Richards once said that his mom used to listen to Billy on the radio, and Keith spoke of him very fondly and even cites him as an influence! Regards..
I love spinning 78's. On the right gear they come alive just like in this video.
We used to call them Slate records. I remember them well. Better than 33s? No . There's a lot of romance goes on.
Those Micromatic turntables are awesome! I have one to.
Post war 78's were often not pressed using the best shellac. First thing is that a record this old - new or not - should be washed. Some of the surface noise is due to dust that got into the grooves. Second, playing them with the proper sized needle is also important.
Wow so there was some amount of crackle allready when they were new. Now I feel better about mine 78s collection.
Sound good! Thanks for the posting.
Love that console
Beautiful sound
I wish that some day someone would go to the trouble of making shellac 78's the way they were made so long ago, from recording to final pressing. That would be the only true way to see what they would have sound like when brand new, by making new record with a shellac mixture that was used back in the day and recording in a similar fashion. It would even be interesting if someone was to not only record using the original techniques but even try recording using more updated techniques and more modern technology just to see how good one of the old gramophones could sound. I'm willing to bet the original equipment is still out there, sitting in old barns and sheds just waiting for a good reconditioning and finally have a wax disc carved with new music for the first time in 60 or 70 years.
That sounds fantastic. And I was born into the peak of solid state stereo 😉
☺️☺️☺️☺️
What a wonderful find. very enjoyable
That is definitely new old stock. Great find!
If you take the back off that Magnavox Hi-Fi stereo, you will likely find AUX-OUT RCA jacks, which put out line level. If you use the right adapter cord, you might be able to use that line level out directly into the line level in of your recording apparatus. That would take away any colorations of the Magnavox speaker, or, the microphone picking up the sound from the speaker. That would give you the most accurate sound possible. Don't use the wires that go down to the power amplifier, since the "output to amplifier" jacks are colored by the tone controls on the preamplifier. you want the 'dry' output from the AUX OUT, or perhaps, LINE OUT. jacks.
None the less, it DOES sound much better, than I would have ever thought from a ~1949 monophonic recording!!
There's some surface hiss and a bit of crackle, but to my ears at least given I have tinnitus, they sound really beautiful, that magnavox unit does a great job.
I'm not 100% convinced those records truly are new old stock, to have gone the better part of 73 years without once being played is difficult to believe, however they still sound great regardless of the truth.
A lot of things just kind of sit to the side for ages. Some people buy things and never use it, sometimes things don’t sell, sometimes companies discontinue things that still have stock.
A couple years ago I found a small stash of classical 78's which appear to have been unplayed. There are no fingerprints, no marks of any kind, and they are completely shiny (78's tend to lose the shine in their grooves after playing). There's no way for me to "prove" that they're unplayed, obviously, but they certainly look it. Given that this Hines/Eckstine set appears to have been sealed, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if they were "new."
Would be interesting to know which is the equalization curve applied by the turntable during the play
The standard RIAA curve was adopted in 1954. Since the console dates back to 1959 or 1962, it would be the RIAA curve. For the photograph record, the RCA EQ curve was pretty close to the RIAA curve.
Nice, although a direct connection for recording onto the video would be best - as I don't think that old radiogram would have a line-out
You should never record these demonstrations with a mike in front of the speaker! It´s totally useless! You cant judge the fidelity of the disc in this way. The pick up should be directly and electrically connected to your recording equipment.
You should listen to and learn from the "78 Prof" and his superb transcriptions of 78s.
Great collection, thanks for sharing 💗🌺💓👌💖
This was interesting . I have a lot of my grandparents records from the 40s not a collector . Just find all this interesting
It sounds very good with almost no surface noise. I would like to hear it on a modern audio system with a cartridge installed with the proper stylus.
I know that many modern turntable do not have the 78 RPM speed, but some of them do. There were some in the vintage years as well.
I am not sure what the proper equalization was for the 78s but I think it was similar to the ceramic cartridges. Maybe RIAA, I do not know.
If you want to be rid of those fingerprints, try Dawn dishwashing soap - just a drop - on already wet grooves. That or Dawn Powerwash for tough stuck food or insect poop(one spray, diluted with water) - it usually takes care of both but you must make sure it has been thoroughly rinsed and dried, as the soap will continue to attract dust and debris if still present. I loved this song and am looking for it now - thanks for posting - I hope you're enjoying your collection on that lovely old tube machine:>
For 1949 amazing sound quality I would love to know how exactly how it was recorded
typically in those days they'd have one mic for the band and one mic for the singer. I'd love to see how the recording studio was set up for this
Great sounding stuff!
There are new high quality 78 speed turntables with high quality cartridge and stylus. If you are a collector, that would be an excellent for maintaining the quality of your records. What you played sounds excellent, but for how long? Rega, Denon, and Teac all make very good ones, but you would need an expert to choose the best sounding cartridge. Schiit makes a top notch preamp to send to a amplifier (every price point), and speakers are also. I have records (33.3) that I bought in 1963 that sound just like new with my Thorens turntable with a Vessel line contact cartridge 1.4 gram. You don't have to do all this, but there are degrees that will protect your records for life with a warm accurate sound.
Wow a wonderful song and sound.
The sound is fantastic.
So I don't know the califone, and I don't know if what people say about it is true. What I do know is that the best way to play electronically cut 78's is on a modern record player, with a proper cartridge and a 78rpm stylus. That way the player actually tracks the grooves properly, and you have a precisely cut stylus that fits the groove perfectly. I would recommend getting a modern "DJ type" record player if you want something new, that has 78rpm (like the Pioneer PLX500) And an AudioTechnica AT-VM95E cartridge. Alternatively you can go for something from the 60's or 70's like a Pioneer or Lenco that has 78rpm. Bare in mind that these oldies often need maintenance. The notion that a 78 will only sound good on old equipment, is a bit ridiculous :)
Whoever said that the Califone is "The worst thing possible" clearly has no idea what their saying. I've heard hatred towards Califones for a while, but I'm getting the impression that's coming from people who used the ones back in the 50s and early 60s, not these later ones. I've heard a lot of stuff about certain 50s & 60s players, jukeboxes, etc being notoriously harmful, though there's also alot of blatant hate with no actual proof behind what's said also, pushed by audiophiles that have a fetish for Audio Technica superiority. I swear there's so many people who act like playing a 78 on any machine from more than 30 years ago is the same as playing a 78 from 1960 on a Victor Victrola from 1906 and does the same type of damage from misuse. The reality is, no record will survive 50-100 years of constant play on ANY MACHINE staying at E++ or M- grading without some sort of wear or otherwise usage damage being done to it. No object in existence can.
@@CPorter Exactly. The only issue with school record players is the "power point" cartridge. They are fine for 78 rpm and can sound quite good, but do not play modern styrene records on them, it will destroy them. Other exceptions are 1950's R and B like Little Richard should NOT be played on players earlier than 1950. The reason is that the stylus and cartridges were different, along with tracking forces. Pre 1950 players tracked much heavier. After 1950, cartridges used the correct needle size and most consumer grade phonos that were a step up from "kiddy" phonos, were using proper cartridges, such as the Zenith Radionic. While record wear wasn't eliminated, it was certainly reduced.
That being said, using 60's as the starting point, the changer DOES matter. Magnavox changers have very little record wear, and slightly newer models than the one in the vid, used a cartridge that could track pretty much anything, and sound better than some lower end magnetics.
I'd need an audio spectrum analyzer to know for sure, but to me it sounds like the upper frequencies are weak or missing. This may be a limit of the technology of the day. Kind of like AM radio can't reproduce anything 5,000Hz or higher, but FM can go to 15,000Hz.
Ya, it did sound a bit dull actually. Even the pops and sizzles/crackles were very subdued. Even for 1949, recording tech was improving drastically from the 30's.
You're correct: the Magnavox and the ceramic cartridge are suppressing quite a bit of sound. More modern equipment with a magnetic cartridge, proper stylus and proper equalization and mono playback will "brighten" up the sound of that record considerably, but also add back some noise in the upper frequencies. I know from experience that 78 rpm records can produce a lot of sound well over 5,000 cycles. There's more in those grooves than people realize and like all records, 78's benefit from proper playback equipment. I bristle when people say cheap modern suitcase players are sufficient for 78 playback. Having said all that, this video probably captures quite well the sound of a decent console unit of the '60's.
Early 78s could go up to about 5khz, later recordings about 8khz and in the '50s maybe 10khz. But the frequency response is higher at the beginning of the song than at the end. Mathematically, the highest frequency response is 16.25kHz at the beginning of the record and 7.7kHz by the end of the record. The sound would be limited by the quality of the microphones as well.
They also sound amazing on the original console players of the time the records were produced.
great vintage sound
These records can sound amazing when played on good equipment.Using the correct stylus is crucial here.
Is there a collectors market for old 78s. Local record stores say they are essentially worthless.
The problem is that most of them are in poor shape
Easy to listen to, even thru YT's compression. 👍
I love collecting old 78's.
I also play mine on an old Magnavox Astro-sonic.
I've a few in really good condition.
I'd never claim they sound better than LP's, they don't.
But considering from where they come, (my oldest ones are over 90 years) to me, they sound amazing.
That's the jam!!
I was a little sad to hear you say I've been told my player was too modern. Yes, in the years since analog records ceased to be mainstream some horrible players have appeared, especially in the recent "vinyl revival" era, but going back to a 1950s radiogram is a bit too far back: some of the high-quality, low tracking weight, players of the 1970s and '80s (I _think_ you can still find such made today, too) would be my preference. Ideally even linear tracking (after all, that's how the records were made, even back into the 78 era). [Though I'm not sure I've seen a linear tracking one with a 78-compatible stylus, but it ought to be possible.]
Sure, use 1950s equipment if you want to hear what they sounded like to purchasers at the time, but not if you want to get the best out of the recording (and minimise wear of it too).