recording
Today we took the kids to one of our local sources of amusement, a place called crossroads village, where one of Michigan’s better known folk musicians has a daily gig, Neil Woodward, and we bought his new CD, a collection of mostly train songs, and on it he included a recording he made on an Edison wax cylinder.
(Big Rock Candy Mountian, incidentally).
It is a great way to end the CD.
Signal to noise must be, well, slightly above 0.
but it is such an intersting sound - the wax when overloaded distorts in an odd way, not nice like tubes, almost like digital, actually, although not as annoying, and there’s all that background hiss, varying in unpredictable ways, and slight variations in speed…
So what would you do to mimic this in digital?
It’s not just a matter of narrow bandpass and add some speed variation and some hiss.
It’s very organic.
Here come the ads:
Crossroads Village - click here
Neil Woodward - click here
Hi TomS:
That would be worth a “Google” to see how the AES People view one of those Early recorders…
I sort of think that those machines are older than the AES…
and outside their boundaries…
I have a radio that was given to me by my Uncle…
It is a combination Crystal/Vacuum Tube Battery operated radio, "Filament or “A” supply and a Plate or “B” supply…
But NO Bias or “C” supply… Maybe, one of the first radios operated up here in Bluenose Land…
There’s nothing to DATE it…
TOO Bad…
I’d say it is 1903…
but were there any radio transmitters in 1903? My best knowledge of it is…
It may have been built as a Kit…
Ordered in from in-and-around New York…
In the early days of radio…
a crystal set with a good antennae and swamp ground would get decent reception from anywhere in the world…
So-they-say…
Bill…
Post a picture of it, Bill, I bet we can figure out an approximate date. First radio program broadcast was Christmas Eve 1906, by a fellow who played his violin and sang a christmas carol, but serious commercial broadcasting wasn’t until 1920s, IIRC, so I’d bet that’s when your radio was made. BTW, the first new broadcast was in Detroit, on station 8MK, in 1920. Our local history museum, the Sloan Museum, just had a great show on radio history, and had a picture of the guy who did the 1906 broadcast, with his violin all wired up. Wonder if I can find that on the web.
AH, here it is: and good Canadian, too!
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden
http://www.fessenden.ca/
Hi TomS:
Holy Mackerel…
What a page that is…
Is that gonna put a hole in my concepts of Marconi?
The story as I know it centers around Marconi in Newfoundland tell the kids that he was sending Morse Code to Ireland, or something like that…
I have a series of photos of that radio posted up there somewhere, but the quality of the images are pretty poor…
I used a 29.00 camera to take them…
Now I have a better camera and It warrants taking some photos to replace them…
I should take it out on the deck and take some day-light photos of it…
I also have …
and it could be one of the first portable record players…
It folds up to a small box with a leather handle on the top…
It’s a spring driven motor that drives a fold-up platter with a fold-up acoustic horn driven by a mica membrane diaphragm to amplify the record’s groves…
I believe it was made for the clay versions of 78rpm records…
It a little bigger than the size of a Brownie Hawkeye Box Camera…
Is that what they were called?
The problem is, I put the record player somewhere where I could find it…
That was some years ago…
It might be in the attic…
but why would I put it up there?
I don’t remember seeing it sense I got broken in-to… in’96…
That page is still loading…
I’d like to see the video clip that’s on the page…
Modems…
Modems…
Now my Quick-Time isn’t behaving with that file very well…
If it ain’t one thing it’s 5-or-6 things…
Bill…
Hi TomS and Gents:
I prepared those photos this morning to show you what this antique Radio looks like…
It was given to me in the early-to-mid '50’s…
Maybe '52-'53…
The original tube was missing and so was the headphones…
My father knew this WW 11
RAF Radio Man, so off we went to see if he could fashion a tube from his collection…
Sure enough…
he got it working…
The batteries became a 1.5 volt #6 dry cell… (for those of you who remember) and a 67.5 volt B+ cell…
However, I put the tube in a safe place so it wouldn’t get in Harms Way…
and the same with the Crystal…
but I remember that the original crystal never worked very well…
I searched this rock pile and found one that worked perfectly in the radio…
I put them is the safe place, as well…
Anyway, here’s what it looks like…
I should have taken the chassis out of the cabinet and captured some of the circuitry…
I’ll get busy and do that… while I have thew camera set up…
Bill…
I have the chassis removed from the cabinet…
For anyone who is interested in seeing the inside of it…
There happens to be an Input Transformer made by Peerless Thansformers of Massachusetts…
They may still be making transformers…
Here’s the link to the photos…
Bill…
Eyup!
Fantastic piece of history Bill!
It’s certainly a very early receiver, early 20’s I would say and probably homebrew, although Westinghouse made similar looking sets.
Steve
That is really neat, Bill.
What’s mystifying me and occupying a lot of mental energy is trying to remember where that portable record play may be…
I’ve looked in just about every corner I can think of… Still no record player. Who knows what else might be there?
There might be an unclaimed lotto ticket there or something…
Well…
Those Cylinder Players? I wonder if they had the ability to record… as well as… play??
Bill…
yes, there was no microphone you just inserted a blank wax cylinder and shouted into the horn whilst it was running - first recording was done with tin foil covering the cylinder -
Dr J
This is so cool!
Hey Yaz! That radio of Bill’s is almost as old as you! 
LOL!
D
Diogenes - saw your name pop up in the HARMONY forum - persume you are one and the same ? if so, how are you getting on with HA -
Dr J
Quote: (DR Jackrabbit @ Sep. 04 2007, 10:57 AM)
Diogenes - saw your name pop up in the HARMONY forum - persume you are one and the same ? if so, how are you getting on with HA -
Dr J
Errr... nope not me. It's a sordid state of affairs if there is more than one of us running around!
D
Quote: (Diogenes @ Sep. 04 2007, 9:00 AM)
Hey Yaz! That radio of Bill's is almost as old as you!
LOL!
D
D, yer right, "ALmost", but not quite!
I’m trying to catch up… I hope I don’t though. That’d be bad news for ol’ Yaz. I hit the double quattro Thursday… where did it go?
D
Quote: (Diogenes @ Sep. 04 2007, 1:22 PM)
I'm trying to catch up... I hope I don't though. That'd be bad news for ol' Yaz. I hit the double quattro Thursday... where did it go?
D
I'd prefer not to answer that question.
Eyup!
If you want to hear some really early cylinder recordings there are lots HERE, even one from 1878
Also some technical info too (they use cool edit to “preserve” the original recordings)
Steve
Beefy, that is soooo coool.
edit: I have to change my opinion of that website - it is more than totally cool.