[78-L] RE; Record Noises - Identify and Understand Cause

[Ken Matheson]

I know this will not answer your question directly.
But  shellac is bug barf and will deteriorate over time
and will get needle drops, and scratches. There 
Will be wear from steel needles,  You may want
to Google to find articles to read on record noise.

It is not as simple as one may think.
Depending what quality of recording you want
to end up with, will determine your procedure.

Generally I do a number of steps.

Clean the record. This will reduce some of the noise
I use dish soap and water. Some others on this list
use cleaning machines and special cleaning fluid.
There are cleaning tips on You tube.

Turntable, I use 2 DJ turntables with adjustable speed.

Cartridges with proper needles. Stanton 500 series seem
to work OK for 78s. On vertical cut 78s, i.e. Edison, you
will need to rewire the cartridge outputs.

I use a DJ mixer, And a preamp for cartridges
with low outputs. The mixer works OK for the 500s.

Forget the sound card in your computer for quality. I use
A Masterlink 9600 for recording. There are a couple of
other good ones also. I use an EMU 0202 for recordings
off the air. This is a USB external sound card. It may be
a low cost alternative for recording.

The Masterlink makes a CD with AIF files, or a standard CD.

I put the AIF files on the hard drive.

I use Sony Sound Forge to process the music. This has a
number of ways to remove the noise. I edit the big clicks
by hand. One of the things I use often is to take a noise print
of the lead in, or lead out and use this to remove some noise
of the record. There are other noise reductions in the Sound
Forge that I will use also. There are many special effects in
Sound Forge I use once in a while. You can set the level,
Add fade in, out to your finished product. Etc. You can create
Wave, MP3, WMA, etc. also.

CD Architect comes with Sound Forge to create CDs.

I have made a transformer coupler to remove some of
the harshness and match balanced TRS, to unbalanced RCA
Jacks.  when recording off the air.

I am sure many of the people on this list are more knowledgeable
than me and they will be willing to share their expertise.