[78-L] Victor label formats (was: Acoustic/electrical recordings on same disc)

[Michael Shoshani]

On Fri, 2010-01-08 at 03:21 -0700, Michael Biel wrote:

> As mentioned above, [the Bat Wing] label
> continued to be used for over a year after the first electrical records
> were issued, so the label type is NOT a good indicator of if the record
> is acoustical or electrical.

Indeed, it's also not a good indicator of when the record was recorded.
I have more instances than you'd care to think, in which I own a record
in its original very early (say 1904 to 1905) pressing, but I also own a
later Bat Wing label reissue - often still carrying the hand-inscribed
matrix number in the dead wax, a practice that Victor dropped over a
decade before the Bat Wing label was introduced in 1921. In almost all
those cases, earlier designations unique to the older label (the key in
which the piece is performed, or the recommended playing speed) are
omitted from the newer label.

MS