[78-L] Dumb Question du jour

[Royal Pemberton]

It depends on the type of cylinder and the time period it was recorded.  As
I understand it the very early Bell-Tainter and earliest brown wax
cylinders ran at around 120 rpm (some talking cylinders were slower).  Then
in the early 1890s the speed was raised to 144 rpm.  Somewhere toward the
end of the 1890s it was raised to 160 rpm which remained more or less the
standard ever after.  (Home-recorded cylinders will be different, of
course.  IIRC I understand Lionel Mapleson's live recordings at the Met
were actually recorded at something like 200 rpm!)

Others here with better memories, more experience and clearer facts will
get the dates more accurate for you....

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 12:20 AM, Clifford Bolling <78records at cdbpdx.com>wrote:

> Here it is - How many rpm for a cylinder player?  For some reason, I
> always thought it was 78 rpm, but I guess I'm wrong.  My new Amberola 50
> gets about 171 rpm and that is too slow, I think.
>
> Thanks for not laughing!  CDB
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