[78-L] Long playing early lacquer

[David Lennick]

No brand name on the blank side of this disc and I don't think there's a paper 
label under the studio label on the A side. This is a very thin disc, like 
later blue label AudioDiscs. (It's also not mine and the owner doesn't want to 
be identified.)

dl

On 10/6/2010 3:08 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
> I can't believe that all of you are forgetting the Columbia ARC "Longer
> Playing Record" as well as the Durium Hit of the Week 5-minute record.
> Both are around 1931-32 and were the 78 answers to the Program
> Transcription.  Frank L. Dyer had taken out several patents in the late
> 20s about thinner grooves and even threatened his former employer Edison
> with suits over their LP and the RayEdiphonic slow-speed broadcast
> recordings.  Indeed, if you look at the Library of Congress Talking
> Books label you will see that they are noted as being made under the
> Dyer patents and that the discs are part of a project named after (I
> believe) Dyer's mother.  Those discs are made using the Victor Program
> Transcription grooving, as evidenced by the L in the first position in
> the matrix prefix.  I looked up those Dyer patents a month or so ago,
> and they are valid narrow groove patents.
>
> I might also add that there are some listings in the Bell Labs BTL
> matrix book from around 1927 detailing several narrow groove test discs
> they made for Victor.  I saw a photocopy of the book listing BTL 1-1000
> in LC in the 1970s.  (Note that this book post-dates the Western
> Electric recordings made in the early to mid-20s before the
> establishment of Bell Labs.)
>
> I am interested in that July 1934 lacquer, and am wondering if it might
> be from the same studio of the discs seen very briefly in Leah's
> documentary when Seth Winner is showing a box of discs.  They ones with
> bright green paper labels are from July-Aug 1934 and look like they
> might be demo blanks that Presto was releasing to a few studios for
> evaluation.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>
>
> On 10/6/2010 12:48 PM, Elizabeth McLeod wrote:
>> on 10/6/10 12:27 PM David Lennick wrote:
>>
>>> I've just played an early lacquer 78RPM aircheck (July 1934) that runs four
>>> minutes and fifty seconds AND has a large label, meaning that at least
>>> another
>>> minute could have been accommodated. It looks almost microgroove. This was
>>> cut
>>> by Sound Reproductions, 67 West 44th Street, New York. Was anyone using a
>>> really small groove experimentally at that time? Edward Wallerstein says
>>> this
>>> was happening, in a memoir that a few people have questioned for credibility
>>> and timelines.
>>
>> I have a 12" lacquer aircheck from "Super Sound Recording Studios" in New
>> York from March of 1935 which packs a full fifteen minutes onto one side
>> at 33 1/3, which seems to be pretty tightly grooved -- the sound isn't
>> especially Super, however, and gets positively fuzzy as it approaches the
>> center of the disc. It's not microgroove in the modern sense, but it
>> plays best with a 2.0 stylus.
>>
>> Elizabeth
>> ____________________________
>
> Viotor got 15 minutes per side on Program Transcription L7001, Stokowski
>
> conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The early "Red, White and Blue"
> programs
> (pre-AFRS) ran a very tight 15 minutes a side, usually at low level and
> with no
> bass. This disc sounds very good indeed at 78. Its owner would have
> played it
> on a normal record player of the day but didn't manage to wear out the
> grooves.
>
> I notice a bunch of Titan Transcriptions in Kurt's current auction,
> listed as
> 12-inch and which look to contain a lot more audio than you'd expect
> (the
> equivalent of 16-inch discs).
>
> dl