[78-L] returning member with questions r.e. RCA Victor Home Recording Records

[Rod Brown]

Hello all,

I'm pleased to be back among you after a few years away.

I'm Rod Brown, 58, living in Oakland, CA. Have been collecting for about six
years. I lean toward Americana, Blues, R&B, and folk/trad music from around
the dear old globe.

I think I have the gene for appreciating things that are older than I am,
whether it be a house, a car, a guitar, an audio recording, a person, etc.

I worked as a digital audio tech for the education software company for
about five years, from 1996 through 2001. That first year, I started
transferring my LPs and tapes to wav files, and before long was doing
conservative audio restoration for friends and family. Have done quite a bit
of fussy manual de-clicking (wherever software failed) for Eric Records, a
local oldies re-release label. So, there you have my nutshell re-intro.

Just now, I'm scratching my head over how I might better reproduce and
transfer a handful of RCA Victor Home Recording Records for a client. The
sleeves and labels tell me I'm expected to use "the special RCA Home
Recording Needle." I haven't got one handy, so that may be why there seems
to be so little signal captured in these grooves. Or perhaps the person
recording these had the record volume set way too low?

Wider styli seem to do better than narrow ones, but the 78 r.p.m. styli I've
got available are not better enough! Does anyone know of an approximately
equivalent stylus to the RCA Victor Home Recording needle?

Or perhaps these records were vertically cut, which could explain at least
part of my signal to noise problem.

Any clues would be appreciated. If anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area is
an old hand at transferring this type of record, I could pass your info on
to the owner of these discs.

(The Wilcox-Gay machines may well have been toys when compared to the better
lathes--I don't doubt it--but the one W-G disc in this collection was a
breeze to deal with!)

Best,
Rod