[78-L] Speaking of cuing transcriptions..wuz Re: Edward VIII Abdication on records

[Sammy Jones]

I thought tape was available in the U.S. as early as about 1946 or '47. 
Wasn't the second season of Crosby's Philco Radio Time edited on tape (as 
opposed to disc to disc like the AFRS did)?

I don't know specifically about Columbia's early LPs, but I have the 
impression that methods of disc to disc editing (dubbing from  several 
source discs to a new master disc) were pretty refined by the late '40s. 
They were pionered by sound on film editors (early Vitaphone, etc.) and 
perfected by the Armed Forces Radio Service which edited dozens, if not 
hundreds, of radio programs every week to remove whole commercials and 
sometimes single words.

I have an AFRS Fibber McGee show where the quality drops tremendously and 
then returns to normal quality during one section within a 15-minute side, 
but the edit is otherwise imperceptible.  That says to me that the section 
in bad sound may have been edited down to a sub-master disc because of 
complications, then played back in to the new master disc at precisely the 
right time.  Very complicated stuff...

That being said, I don't know how they did it!  I imagine there were 
turntables that were mechanically linked together and some sort of counter 
to count revolutions, or parts of revolutions.  This is a fascinating 
topic...

Sammy Jones

David Lennick wrote:
Hijacking the thread, thank you.

On 7/2/2012 7:01 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
>
> That (arrow) is what you find on soundtrack
> discs so that they can be cued up without backspinning them.  It doesn't
> point to the beginning of the groove, but to the point in the disc where
> the sound begins.

When Columbia began cutting 33rpm microgroove masters for the new Lp format,
they dubbed from 16-inch lacquers that had previously been used as source
material for 78s. Classical works consisted of movements in 4 minute chunks
spread over several 16-inch sides (contrary to what people have written, 
they
did NOT record the works non-stop). The dubbing team had to be right on the
note to make the side joins, and they usually got it right, but how did they
cue to music without back-cuing and ruining the original? Did they work from
safeties? Did they carefully note the number of turns and cross their 
fingers?
Remember, this was all before tape. I've heard one 78 issue (not on 
Columbia,
but on Mercury) where the music is preceded by an entire rev of cue scratch.

dl