Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: New recording released on wax cylinder.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-27-2010, 05:11 PM:

Only 40 copies made, so no doubt it will be expensive if actually sold.

BBC news page

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing recorded Sewer on a wax cylinder to commemorate to the recording methods of the past.

A recording studio has produced 40 copies for general release.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-27-2010, 10:01 PM:

How do they duplicate wax cylinders? Is each one a first-generation recording? I thought that the major reason for switching to disc recordings was the difficulty of duplicating cylinders, as such would require a two-piece mold, which would result in two "pops" per revolution of the cylinder.

Supposedly, someone, somewhere is making new 78-rpm discs for jukebox collectors. I don't know the details, however.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-27-2010, 10:28 PM:

The process of pressing cylinders in mass production:

They coated the wax master with a thin layer of gold by an electrical process, coated the gold layer with a copper layer for strength, then melted out the original wax. This left a negative metal mold. Then they put a wax blank inside and applied heat and pressure. When the wax cooled, it shrank a little. In addition, the master and blank were tapered slightly--one end was slightly wider than the other. The combination of shrinkage and taper was enough to let them slip the master off the copy without (a) damaging it or (b) leaving a seam.

Course, Edison came up with the 'black wax' pressings - a much harder wax. Then the usage of celluloid came along and finally the "blue Ampenol" process to replace the wax pressings.

When shellac came into being, then came the manufacture of the disc which can hold two songs instead of the one on a cylinder, and goodbye to the cylinder in 1929.

-monte

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-28-2010, 04:03 AM:

quote: Scott Norwood
How do they duplicate wax cylinders? Is each one a first-generation recording? I thought that the major reason for switching to disc recordings was the difficulty of duplicating cylinders, as such would require a two-piece mold, which would result in two "pops" per revolution of the cylinder.

Scott, there's page on the BBC site where they show it being done; this batch of 40 were all direct recordings made from a modern recording; I forget what media that was on. They also set up a microphone for the BBC reporter, and she recorded something. If I can find it again this evening I'll post a link to it.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
When shellac came into being, then came the manufacture of the disc which can hold two songs instead of the one on a cylinder, and goodbye to the cylinder in 1929.

Until now

Seriously, I'm surprised they lasted that long; there were competing disk systems around from a similar date to when the cylinders were introduced.

Monte, I've wondered how cylinders were mass-produced; your answer seems to confirm that there was enough shrinkage to release them from the mould.

Didn't somebody here have a cylinder phonograph? I can't remember who it was.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-28-2010, 06:44 AM:

This clip shows both an attempt to build a machine to play a cylinder and the process for recording this batch of new ones.

I think there might actually be a market for new cylinders since it's possible to make them in small batches. There must be quite a few of these machines still existing in the hands of collectors around the World, and new cylinders would enable them to use/demonstrate their machines without wearing out the irreplaceable original ones.

If you want a cylinder recorded, these are the people, or maybe person, that do it.

web page

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-28-2010, 11:22 AM:

Cheap Trick released a recent album of theirs on 8-track. I thought about buying one just for the novelty but never got around to it.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-28-2010, 11:41 AM:

In a nutshell, if the cylinder recording technique could come back, they would sound great since the vertical cuts didn't have to worry on groove distortions and the linear speed of the groove was faster than the 78 rpm speed of the disc.

My father has a cylinder phonograph with some cylinders-mainly the blue ampenol type.

History on the RCA Victor "HMV" trademark: The phonograph that was originally used in the painting was a cylinder unit, but the artist drew over the cylinder phonograph with Berliner's disc phonograph machine.

...and that is the correct way to remove a cylinder from the container tube: the two finger method. Heat from the fingers can distort the wax.

It's actually fun to relive and experience some history ...

-Monte

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-28-2010, 01:53 PM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
In a nutshell, if the cylinder recording technique could come back, they would sound great since the vertical cuts didn't have to worry on groove distortions and the linear speed of the groove was faster than the 78 rpm speed of the disc.

That can't be right surely? The rotational speed of the cylinders is given as 160 RPM. The diameter must be something like 60-65 mm; that would put the linear speed of the cylinder somewhere close to the innermost grooves of a 78 disk, maybe slightly faster, so for most of the time the disk would be faster than the cylinder. I've heard a couple of original cylinders played, and the quality was better than I expected it to be.

Magnetic drums were used for data storage at one time of course, with fixed heads which gave faster access times than with disk, but lower capacity. I remember seeing a 1 MB drum once, this was in the days when a typical disk was around 4 MB.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
My father has a cylinder phonograph with some cylinders-mainly the blue ampenol type.

What are they actually made of? The man who is making the new blank recording cylinders mentions not being able to play these when he first got some of them, due to not having a suitable machine. What was different about them to require a modified machine to play them?

The cost of having a cylinder recorded by the place I linked to above is surprisingly low. Why not have one recorded with a message to send to him on his next birthday? It would be an unusual birthday greeting.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
It's actually fun to relive and experience some history

I'm seeing renewed interest in a lot of old technologies.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-28-2010, 02:00 PM:

I have never operated a cylinder phonograph, but have seen them demonstrated.

What is the capacity of each cylinder? I had always just assumed that it was comparable to one side of a 45-RPM disc (i.e. 3-5 minutes, maximum), but this subject has me curious now.

Monte--thanks for the info on duplication methods. Very interesting.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-28-2010, 02:08 PM:

2 minutes at 100 tpi or 4 minutes at 200 tpi it seems. Sounds hopeless by today's standards, but it's not much less than a 10 inch 78 disk. You'd need a box of the things for a symphony, but a typical music hall song would fit on one. It's not that long ago, only a few years before I was born, that microgroove LP records were introduced.

Scott, go to the link that I posted above for Poppy Records who record the cylinders. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and there are two links, one to a very detailed description of the dimensions of both the cylinders themselves, the grooves and other things, such as the cutting stylus. The other link goes to a picture of their recording lathe, and a pdf file about it.

Interesting company. Have a look at this format which they can reproduce:

web page

I've actually seen one of these machines. The big advantage that they offered was a very long recording time on a small, reasonably portable machine, ideal for an application such as this:

web page

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 05-29-2010, 01:41 PM:

I have wax cylinder phonographs, plus a large collection of cylinders, ranging from the soft wax through hard bitumen to the blue amberol. My first Edison Home Phonograph played at two (or three?) speeds via a belt and gear shift system. There were longer-playing discs even then!

Of interest was the individual Edison containers which bore the photograph and signature of Thomas Edison. His portrait was changed from year to year, so if you lined up the containers you could see how he aged through the decades. Another feature of his cylinders was the titles printed in white letters on the rim, plus a spoken title such as "Xylaphone Solo, My Heart is in the Highlands, played by John Doe: Edison Records."

The containers--about the size of Campbell Soup cans, were lined with fuzz and had removable lids. Wooden cases holding cylinders on fuzz-coated pedestals, about a dozen to a box, were aso available, especially for sets used for language study.

I have one brass horn bigger than a tuba bell, and a small repro with a diameter of about 7 inches.