[78-L] The Absolute Nadir of Quality Control

[David Lennick]

There's a Bruno lp of a Shostakovich Quartet or Quintet which is bootlegged 
from a Russian lp, and the damn thing is at least 10% fast by the end of the 
side..I say "at least" because 9.9% in either direction was all the variation I 
could do on the Technics turntable.

There is also a Mills Brothers CD which plays about 6% slow because of a weird 
technical problem in processing. It was transferred by John R. T. Davies, who 
would never be that far off, and I could only surmise that somehow a DAT 
recorded at 48k was reproduced at 44.1k instead of being converted. I also once 
heard an entire concert being played too fast on WXXI-FM. I knew all the music, 
and I also knew that it was at least a tone sharp..and I knew something was 
wrong when it ended 5 or 6 minutes early and was followed by 5 or 6 minutes of 
dead air.

As for that Grey Gull record, anything's possible..I think some early Maurice 
Chevalier Columbia electricals are recorded at 73rpm.

dl

On 8/18/2012 9:06 PM, neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com wrote:
> 70.59 rpm on my calculator.
>
> joe salerno
>
>
> On 8/18/2012 7:38 PM, Taylor Bowie wrote:
>> Dime store labels used to pull all kinds of crap,  as all they cared about
>> was moving a lot of cheap product.
>>
>> One of the worst things I ever found was the Broadway dance band issue of
>> "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee"  (forget the name on the label)  which
>> turned out to be dubbed from the Hit of the Week recording.
>>
>> Imagine stealing a decent 15 cent record to make a crummy 20 cent record.
>>
>> But my latest discovery is even worse.
>>
>> Everybody knows that recording speed of 78s used to vary by some amount.
>> Some records were recorded at 78,  80,  etc.
>>
>> I bought a red wax Grey Gull of Arthur Fields singing Ain't She Sweet #2331.
>> I put it on and it starts off with Sanella on clarinet playing like
>> crazy....then the voice came on and I thought for a minute it was Cliff
>> Edwards.
>>
>> Then I realized that it was playing too fast...at 78rpm.
>>
>> I'm not very techy about records but I have a dial on my turntable which is
>> labeled pitch control and it can slow or speed up the turntable.  I made it
>> go slower and slower until it sounded like Arthur...I  went all the way to -
>> 9.5%.
>>
>> Am I correct that this means I actually ended up playing the thing at
>> approx. 90% of 78rpm?
>>
>> That would be barely 70rpm.
>>
>> Can anyone think of a "78" more "off" than that?
>>
>> Any info appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks from
>>
>> Taylor
>>
>>
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>