[Audio Empire]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:13:59 -0800, MIKE--- wrote
(in article ):

Back about 65 years ago, I was a teenager and my ears were much better
than they are now. In those days there was only one good amplifier -
the Brook which used 2A3 output tubes and produced 30 watts. Speaker of
choice was the Altec Lansing 604. As I recall, the sound was excellent
from SOME of the 78 RPM records especially the London FFRR ones. There
was no FM but AM sounded good if it was a live broadcast from a station
in the same city as the concert AND the station was detuned just enough
to get the sidebands (NBC Symphony for example). Things don't sound as
good to me now.

---MIKE---

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
(44=EF=BF=BD 15' N - Elevation 1580')


One thing that has always surprised me was how good the British-made London
(Decca in England) FFRR 78 RPM recordings sounded. While all other 78s from
companies like RCA, Columbia, Capitol, et al, were lucky to have anything on
them above about 7.5 KHz and none went above 10 KHz the FFRR recordings were
fairly flat to 14 KHz. almost all "electrical" 78s were capable of pretty
good bass, but limited high frequencies and the "shellac rush" surface noise
of the material used to make 78's kept the medium from any semblance of
"high-fidelity". Another problem was distortion. The whole recording/playback
process in those days was pretty high in distortion. This gave those big-band
recordings that we['ve all heard from that era their unmistakably
characteristic sound, a sound that was pretty much gone by the late 40's.

However, the 78's that most of us have heard are not representative of even
the average 78 quality. Those that have survived suffer from damage that
pretty much assures that what we hear has little relationship to what was
actually put on the disc. In the 30's 40's and early 1950's, when
electrically recorded 78's were in their hey-day, the average record player
was, a crude and primitive bit of kit. The chief culprit when it comes to
ruining 78 rpm discs was the stylus or "needle" as it was commonly called
then. Most players, whether electronic or an acoustic/mechanical portable,
all used the same kind of stylus - a steel one. Record players generally had
two semi-spherical cups in the record deck chassis. Usually one cup was on
the left side of the platter, and it was there to hold new styli, and the
other was on the right, near the tone-arm (often right under where the arm
rested), and it was there for used styli. The drill was that the operator
replaced the stylus with a new one for EVERY PLAY of every side. To
facilitate this, there was usually a knurled knob on the pick-up head that
turned a screw for a "chuck" to tightly hold the stylus. One one take a new
stylus from the left cup, turn the knob on the pickup arm and the old one
would fall out and a new one fitted in its place. The styli were sold in
boxes or paper envelopes at any "five and dime" store and were usually
ten-cents to a quarter, depending on the number of styluses in that package.
They were pretty much standard, regardless of the of the make of player.
Unfortunately, most people only changed the stylus when the sound got so
scratchy that it was difficult to listen to. But by that time the record was
ruined. This is the kind of 78 that most of us have heard.

Record "collectors" and enthusiasts often used styluses made of cactus thorn.
They couldn't harm the record and with those, one had no choice but to change
the stylus after each side. Many enthusiasts bought professional broadcast
record playing rigs from companies such as Presto and Weston, and these often
had magnetic cartridges and used osmium (a metal that is much harder than
steel) sapphire, and even diamond styli. In those days, even the industrial
gem stones used for sapphire and diamond styli were natural, not man made,
and therefore very expensive. I had an uncle who owned a very high-end RCA
console from the late 1940's. It had a 12-watt push-pull amplifier, a bass
reflex speaker cabinet (inside the furniture cabinet and mounted on springs!)
and it sported a 12-inch woofer and a 2-inch tweeter.
It had a 78 rpm record changer and a diamond stylus. I remember him telling
me that the diamond stylus was an extra $50 over the basic cost of the unit.
In 1948, $0 was a fortune. Probably close to $1000 in today's worthless
money.

So-called "clear-channel" AM radio stations could broadcast a bandwidth up to
about 10 Khz (though most, again for noise reasons, restricted their
frequency response to 7 -7.5 KHz). The average AM station, however limited
their high-frequency response to 5 KHz. This latter is true even today. A
good local clear-channel (lower end of the dial; 550 to about 800 KHz) AM
station could sound pretty good, especially in the winter when thunder storms
were "out of season". I remember, as a small child, my parents listening to
Toscannini and the NBC symphony concerts over WNBW AM in the very early 50's
with the family's big Stromberg-Carlson console radio. I was already
interested in records and sound at that time, and I recall that the NBC
Symphony sounded pretty good.

Most people though could have cared less about about wide-band radio or phono
playback. Radios and phonos in those days had something on them called "tone
controls". What they REALLY were, were treble-cut controls, and the vast
majority of people kept them set all the way to the "bass" setting - IOW,
full treble cut. Most people thought that the treble sounds were too
"scratchy" and with the background noise, distortion, and damaged records
that they were playing, who can blame them?