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

[Royal Pemberton]

They are lateral, not vertical....for recording, the machine's pickup was
connected to the output of the power amplifier.  You'll need something on
the order of a 5 mil stylus to play these discs as best they can.  Suitable
styli for use with the Stanton 500 cartridge can be obtained from Kurt Nauck
(www.78rpm.com) or KAB (www.kabusa.com).

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Rod Brown <raudiobrown at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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