[78-L] acoustic recording

[David Lennick]

Indeed, the dates vary. Columbia actually discontinued 78s in the US in 1957, 
as did a few other labels (a very late RCA Elvis from '59 was mentioned here a 
few weeks ago) but Canadian labels kept 78s into 1959 and '60 in some cases. 
And the speed stayed in use for production libraries till 1968 because of 
superior fidelity and ease of cuing in studios.

dl

Royal Pemberton wrote:
> Certainly RCA Victor and Columbia released their last US 78s in 1958, but
> didn't Atlantic/Atco release their last ones in February 1960?  And what
> about Chess and their labels?  (I have the Argo release of Rod Bernard's
> 'This should go on forever' on 78 from 1959.)
> 
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 3:28 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:
> 
>> 78s didn't disappear till 1958, stereo LPs didn't disappear in 1982 (in
>> fact
>> they're still being manufactured).
>>
>> dl
>>
>> Royal Pemberton wrote:
>>> And if you include the Phonautograph in the chronology (c.1857) that
>> makes
>>> acoustic recording the only method for 69 years.
>>>
>>> I remember seeing a photo in THE FABULOUS PHONOGRAPH showing three horns
>> in
>>> use on a  Victor recording, of a quartet....three of the singers on one
>>> horn, the lead singer on a second horn, the musicians playing to the
>> third
>>> one.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:35 AM, DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> Michael Biel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Caruso's daughter Gloria was three years old when Caruso died.  Masters
>>>> could not be played back without ruining them, so when they played back
>>>> a wax master it was either a test that they weren't planning on using
>>>> anyway, or a duplicate master on a parallel machine.
>>>>
>>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>>
>>>> Were they able to record two discs at once in the acoustic era?
>>  Certainly,
>>>> if a single horn is feeding two recorders, such an arrangement would cut
>> the
>>>> available power to each recording head in half.  I think I would opt for
>>>> your first thought - that it was a test recording.  If the blank waxes
>> were
>>>> larger than the final record, they could use the area beyond the useful
>>>> diameter for the test.
>>>>
>>>> So far, the acoustic era has been the longest era in recording history.
>>>> Although comercial recording didn't get under way at the beginning, from
>>>> 1877 to 1925 acoustic recording was the only recording - 48 years.
>>>> Electrical 78s had their era for 23 years from 1925 to 1948.  Mono LPs
>> from
>>>> 1948 to 1957, a mere 9 years, stereo LPs from 1957 to 1982, 25 years and
>> the
>>>> CD from 1982 to the present - 28 years and counting.
>>>>
>>>> I'm curious to know if they ever tried multi-horning - using one horn
>> for
>>>> the voice and a second for the piano or orchestra or whatever.  They
>>>> certainly had long enough to try this kind of inovation, they were aware
>> of
>>>> the complications of trying to get all of the musicians around a single
>>>> horn.  Flexible tubing should enable the horns to be moved around and
>>  the
>>>> recording engineer could even have chokes, similar to those used to
>> control
>>>> the volume of an acoustic gramophone, to control the recording volume
>> from
>>>> each horn.  I'm sure that likely they didn't but it's an interesting
>>>> thought.
>>>>
>>>> db