[78-L] 78 grove spacing

[David Lennick]

But what of Columbia alternating wide and narrow pitch on some 78s in the late 
30s? You can see it on the Orson Welles Julius Caesar 5-disc set and the 
Maurice Evans Richard II album, possibly if memory serves on "Through the 
Looking Glass" with Barlow and the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony. (Does that 
Sweet Sue also vary the pitch or is it all that narrow one? That was probably 
an experiment and was used by mistake in later copies of the Bix album since 
the liner notes refer to the chopped intro and that's on the earlier pressings.)

dl

On 8/16/2019 11:44 PM, Rodger J Holtin wrote:
> Years ago in some jazz book there was a picture of a Victor master card for
> some monumental jazz record - Jelly Roll Morton's Black Bottom Stomp,
> methinks - and clearly on the card it enumerated the groove pitch setting.
> I'm pretty sure that it was labelled as "pitch."  I had a Victor Revelers
> record of Dinah (I think) that had exceptionally wide pitch, short record
> but took up all the available space.
>
> The school library here used to have a set of some piece of classical music
> on a 12" blue wax Columbia of European origin (six discs as I recall) that
> had spacing so narrow that some of the sides played for nearly six minutes.
> And some of us have the 10" red label Columbia of Whiteman's Sweet Sue that
> was dubbed from the 12" and plays in its entirety on the 10."  Some of the
> early copies of the 10" lop off the first flowery intro to squeeze it onto
> the 10".
>
> I used to have an RCA promotional LP from the 1960s that had an inner sleeve
> that told how they had an additional set of heads on the tape playback unit
> that monitored music/sound volume and it controlled the groove pitch
> accordingly before that passage reached the actual playback heads that fed
> the cutter.
>
> Rodger Holtin
> 78-L Member Since MCMXCVIII
>
> For Best Results Use Victor Needles
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com
> [mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of
> ron at fial.com.invalid
> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 6:59 PM
> To: 78-L at 78online.com
> Subject: [78-L] 78 grove spacing
>
>
> I saw no activity, so I was just testing that everything was OK on the 78-L
> server.
>
> Here is a question.   I know that grove excursion must be limited to keep
> loud low-frequency
> passages from breaking to an adjacent grove when cutting a record.  This can
> be done with level limiter, volume compression and (egads) clipping and low
> frequency limiting.
>
> I recall that in the vinyl era there were automatic means to create greater
> grove spacing for loud passages.  I could be mistaken.
>
> What methods were used for 78-RPM records.  Was someone riding the volume
> control and watching the VU meter, when that came along.  What technologies
> if any were used and when did they come along.  There may have been
> allowance for the grove getting wider with many playings, right?  I suppose
> a microscope used on acoustic and early electricals would
> reveal much.    Any one here already know?
>
> Ron Fial
>
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