Nat King Cole: "Hittin' the Ramp" - early-period set from Resonance, rel. Nov. 1, 2019*

1938 label for Nat's very first session recordings as a leader (as opposed to being in his brother's band). This 16" transcription disk is from the collection of a wonderful guy named Harry Arends in Hollywood, who had me over to his house to go though his collection last month, and he dubbed this disk for us right there on the spot. (Mr. Arends, by the way, missed his calling as a professional audio archivist, as he is better equipped to do transfers of vintage disks than most archives are. He knows his stuff! I was very impressed, and he's a heck of a nice guy, to boot. He could not have been kinder or more supportive of our project.)

 

Just to be perfectly clear: The set contains everything Nat King Cole recorded prior to his first session at Capitol: Transcriptions, small label recordings, Decca recordings, private recordings, a jukebox-only track (in poor sound, but at least it exists, which is a minor miracle), tracks from his radio-show appearances -- everything except his recordings with Lionel Hampton, which have been released many times by RCA/Sony and Mosaic (as discussed earlier in the thread).

 

The recording of Nat waiting in line at the DMV never turned up.

 

A disk that turned up a UC Santa Barbara in June. Note that the label indicates "start inside," meaning that the disk plays from the label area to the outer edge -- backward direction from what we are used to. (This was pretty common with transcription disks.) Note, too, that the label errantly states a speed of "3.33 RPM" - - That, I assure you, was not accurate! (Place value matters, kids.)

 

Exactly. It's like putting the frog in water and slowly heating it up, as opposed to putting the frog in boiling water. Translation: For 2-sided programs, side one would run, say, ouside to inside (normal), with high frequency response gradually worsening as the stylus approached the center, then side two -- which would often be on a different disk played on a different turntable, to facilitate instantaneous "changeover" from side one to side two, just like changing film reels in a theatre -- would start in the center, where high frequency response was just as poor as it was at the end of side one, and there would be no sudden jump in sound quality. High frequency response would then gradually increase as the stylus approached the "end" of side two, which was actually the outer edge of the record. It was a pretty ingenious and practical workaround to the problem of losing high frequency quality at the later portions of the 16" disks.

 

@CBackley -- Not dumb questions!

The playback stylus on a turntable, generally speaking, is very happy to be dragged wherever the groove will take it. "Start Inside"-type transcription disks are, as you suggest, cut differently, but only insofar as direction of travel across the disk goes. Aside from that, they are just like "Start outside" (normal) disks. All that changes is where you drop the tonearm -- near the label, or near the edge. Turntable spins the same way.

As far as different turntable design needs, the only things that are different are 1.) you need to be able to physically accommodate a 16" record -- regardless of where the groove starts (and most turntables cannot physically handle a 16" disk); and 2.) The tonearm needs to be longer compared to that needed for 12" playback.

Typically, the groove on a transcription disk is (nominally) about 2.5 mil, which is very close in size to the groove on a 78 (nominally 3.0 mil or so), so most people or facilities who have to handle these disks have a number or styli at their disposal, as groove size varies a bit, and sometimes, to avoid baked-in damage in the grooves, you want to be able to ride a little high in the groove, so maybe you'll use, say, a 3.3 mil stylus, and you may also play around with stylus shape a bit (conical, elliptical, truncated). Lots of variables to fiddle with to milk the most you can from the grooves.

When I took my system on the road to do dubs, I had a number of styli with me, ranging from 0.7 mil to 3.3 mil, but only wound up actually using my 2.5 and 3.0 mil styli for dubbing the disks.

 

Original 1943 16" disk containing non-circulating versions of "Solid Potato Salad" (CD 6/LP 9) and "I Know That You Know" (CD 7/LP 10).