Tips for Playing 78s

Bright and Shiny!

 

Usually like a nice shiny clean record. But you’d be surprised just how much damage a shellac 78 can take and still sound relatively decent, whereas you can’t really say the same for an LP in similar shape

 

unlike vinyl, I think shellac records are the hardest to judge. I've had shiny records that play
terrible, and scratched beat up records that play exceptionally well.
sometimes you can tilt the 78 and see whether a heavy or worn needle has been used,
but it's still only guess work. sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

 

The aforementioned Perkins 78 looked awful - I almost didn't buy it - but I took it home gave it a good clean and despite the scuffing that make it visually a nightmare, there is only the typical surface noise.

It's great, as someone said, a magical almost haunting listening experience at times.

 

I've got 2 Perkins Sun 78's. My copy of "Blue Suede Shoes" is only in VG condition but plays great. These old 78's were meant to and probably played with a 3 mil stylus. Even back in the 50's, there were 2 mil compromise stylii with could play both 78's and microgroove records. A modern 78 rpm stylus today is usually 2.5 or 2.7 mil, so they are playing below the surface scratches and the wear in the grooves.
For cleaning original 78's, never use anything with alcohol in it, the records will dissolve. I do have some cleaner safe for 78's, but I prefer to use a bowl of warm water with a couple drops of dawn dishwashing liquid, a toothbrush, a sponge and terrycloth towel to dry it after rinsing. Don't get the labels wet as they are delicate and water will wash away the ink.

If you like how the Perkins 78 sounds, get some of the Elvis RCA 78's, which have been plentiful, or any other RCA 78 that has "New Orthophonic" on the label. You will be blown away with how great they sound!

 

I have found a few pages I like, comprehensive info here, more than my original link from the early 2000's.
The 78rpm Record Home Page

This second link details how to box long term and transport 78's, I feel an excellent article
Preservation – The Great 78 Project

I am not an expert on how to clean 78's. I do know certain labels do not respond well to liquid. The Emerson Diamond discs should never be cleaned with water. No 78 should ever be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. Alcohol destroys the shellac. Before reading the original article back in the 2000's I attempted to wet clean a batch of 78's, discovered the hard way, Columbia 78's from the 50's made of pulp swell up. These records were not entirely destroyed, but swelled at the lead in area, certainly devalued them to zero. RCA Orthophonic high fidelity and some big band RCA's from the 40's (do not know the label style referred to, as I am not a 78's collector) these did clean up beautifully. I did not own a record cleaning machine at that time. For wet cleaning, I used a large Tupperware container filled with WARM water, just a dash of Ajax dish detergent. For scrubbing, I fashioned a cleaning pad from a clothing cleaning pad. The directional material was removed from the handle. The material was wrapped around a piece of 1/8 inch oak, rounded on the edge so that the cleaning surface is narrow. The bristles "stand up" and are directional, but free to lean under cleaning pressure. (the bristles really get in the groove) This worked very well for 78's but I think too harsh for LP's.

Wet cleaning should be minimal exposure, as shellac tends to be humidity sensitive and does not like water (as I have found)
I worked fast, used warm rinse for fast evaporation (luke warm not cold)
I suggest to hand dry with a lint free towel. Do not air dry a 78. (maybe this could be successful with some 78's but I still do not recommend)

If any swelling is noticed, the record is ruined.
The shellac may crack, micro-fissures (forget the tech term) from over-exposure to humidity or wet cleaning.
Opinions vary widely.

I am not an expert on 78's, only sharing my limited experience,
Steve VK

 

More info
78 RPM cleaning, not comprehensive so be vigilant of pulp centered records and other known materials which should never be wet cleaned, or a known wet clean procedure which does not harm them.
Cleaning Lacquer Discs

And the Library of Congress site, comprehensive on the care of all media formats, plus paper collectibles, applicable to album covers and 7 inch 45 paper sleeves, good info:
Care, Handling, and Storage of Audio Visual Materials - Collections Care - (Preservation, Library of Congress)

Collections Care (Preservation, Library of Congress)

 

Thanks for the suggestions! I've also noticed the Mercury pressing sound excellent with minimal surface noise - pop or easy listening.

My Fats domino 78 that has great deep bass and nice overall sound. Very surprising!!!

 

Some of the links posted by others may have contained this info, but if not, here's a link to some of the EQ curves used by various labels:
Equalization of Older Records

 

I'm not sure when they began, but Mercury was pressing 78's on styrene. These do sound pretty good and are way lighter than the normal shellac. They also don't break as easily, but are susceptible to edge chips. My Fats Domino 78's on Imperial sound pretty good. The worst sounding 78's are those on the Columbia label, probably due to their lamination construction. Very noisy and the surface often resembles lacquer paint spider cracks. As with RCA, Columbia radio station promo 78's were pressed on vinyl starting in the mid-50's.
Canada is a good source for 78's, many American records were on the Canadian Quality and Reo labels. Canada made 78's for a year or so longer than the U.S. The same goes for the U.K. Extremely rare, but most of the Beatles singles were made on 78's in India. Other American hit 78's were made in South America into the 6's.

 

Yes I've noticed the red Columbia labels sound terrible (and are the most common, unfortunately).

The Beatles 78s are a holy grail collectible for me, but outside my price range at the moment.

Cool info though, I had no idea about styrene 78s, just the much maligned 45s!

 

Yeh. Columbia 78's were a sandwich with a layer of cork in-between. They were proud of them and touted them to more durable.
I have one Beatles 78 on the Prime label, but it was part of a set pressed on vinyl for jukeboxes in the 70's and maybe 80's. Most probably it was a bootleg. Many of these 'un-authorized' vinyl 78's were confiscated before they could be sold.
Now, on the other hand, Rhino legitimately made several boxed sets of heavy vinyl 78's marketed to the jukebox crowd. They do sound excellent and were digitally mastered. Most were from 60's records but some had actually been available on 78 in the 50's. A couple of drawbacks though. They were cut at 2 mil, so a 1 mil stylus didn't work well at all and a 3 mil stylus is barely acceptable. Also, being made from vinyl, they weren't as flat as the 78's of the 50's were.
The major record companies did produce some vinyl 78's in the 60's and 70's for promotional purposes. Two that I have, an anniversary edition of Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons" and "Mr. Bojangles" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Warner Bros. issued a stereo 78 of Leon Redbone doing "Alabama Jubilee" b/w "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" in 1978. The latest 78's being issued, I believe, was the special Record Store Day issue of two 78's by the Beach Boys with different takes of "Good Vibrations" b/w "Heroes And Villains" in 2011.
As far as bass is concerned on 78's, the faster speed allows more bass while retaining the higher frequencies. Bing Crosby, during the 78 era, was considered the 'King' of jukeboxes. With their limited sound systems, with 15 and 12" speakers to compensate, Bing's baritone came through with brilliance and you could feel his voice as well as hear it clearly. Possibly, the best way to hear the quality of 78's would be on a vintage hi-fi setup. You will be surprised with how good 78's can sound.

 

If a 78 sounds bad, it was restored with incorrect equalization, and many were. Thinking that all 78's sound bad is like thinking that silent films are "supposed to be" fast. They're not. They're just fast because they were transferred at the wrong frame rate.

 

Who's saying 78's sound bad????????? They don't. Most 78's since the late-40's sound great and are capable of reproducing the entire human hearing range. The 78's of the late-560's are the best by far and can outdo other speeds for hi fidelity.
Really old 78's had different equalization curves and it was best to play them with the correct one, if they even followed any of the different curves. The better phonographs had selector switches to switch to the proper frequency curve .

 

Great info - and plenty of stuff to look for. I have a few Crosby 78s which sound okay. Slightly more so than the early Capitols.

The Good Vibrations 78 sounds great, and is cut with a standard stylus so folks can play it without having to customize anything.

 

I did say "IF a 78 sounds bad..." and a great many do. Listen to a Louis Amstrong CD sometime. Or an album made from Big Band 78's. Not only did they louse up the EQ on Louis Amstrong, it's some of the worst noise reduction I ever heard. It's absolutely unlistenable.

 

Many of the original master recordings which had been preserved on metal discs or metal core discs, pre-WWII , were destroyed due to the metal drives for the war effort. All retained recordings were saved on non-ferrous lacquers or regular commercial pressings. All re-releases and future compilations were made from these in many different formats. The result was like if the only remaining masters were on tape which made them 2nd or 3rd generation. The recordings preserved on disc were becoming worn out from being used for re-issues over the years.
Talking Big Band 78's, realizing that the archived records were wearing out, famously, in the case of Glenn Miller's RCA recordings, someone took the best record copies available out of the archives and recorded them to tape. Like many of us are doing with needledrops today. In the case of the 78's, tape was another step away from the original masters. Consequently, all Glenn Miller re-issued recordings were made from these tapes. After that, it was up to the re-issuer to re-master these multi-generational recordings. Some did a good job and some didn't.
With Louis Armstrong, all his remaining Decca 78rpm masters were destroyed in the fire at Universal Studios a few years ago along with hundreds of thousands other masters and studio props. The earliest masters available were all destroyed. Therefore, all re-issues came from previously re-issued material. Often they didn't have much to work with.
Lack of original masters has plagued many re-issues. For 1992, Rhino released their "Troubadours Of Folk" CD series. They weren't able to obtain all the original masters, so when it was time to master the CD, for example in one case, they had included "The Banana Boat Song(Day-O)" by the Tarriers. Playing it the first time, I realized something was wrong. I listened to it several times to determine if it was my equipment or I got a defective CD. What it sounded like was a cue-burned, scratched 45rpm record. I sent a letter to Rhino asking them what was going on. A few days later, Bill Inglot called me. He confirmed my suspicions. He explained the all the printed material had been printed, with the song included, and they were searching for the original master. They couldn't find it and they were pushed for time because they had to get the CD's made. In desperation, they went to Dr. Demento(Barry Hansen) and he provided the 45 they used. I told Bill that I had an original 78 which had a crack in it but sounded better than the 45 they used. Noise reduction wasn't as good as it is today. Since, the original master tape has shown up and been used in other collections. I also found a couple mint 78 copies and 45's.

The moral of this story is, those who do these re-issues don't always have the best masters because the originals no longer exist. Therefore, sound quality may suffer.

 

Anyone wanting to play 78 rpm discs PROPERLY needs a phono preamp stage that bypasses RIAA groove compensation, as 78s were cut FLAT. Esoteric Sound has a number of high quality preamps for this purpose, but if you're not all that serious about twiddling knobs and fussing with complex gear to get the sound "just right," then this unit will do nicely: TEC TC-778 RIAA / 78 Phono Preamp; Switchable EQ & Separate Inputs for 78 or LP! | eBay

I have one turntable (a 1957 Collaro Coronation) on which I play my 78s with a GE RPX series cartridge via this preamp, although for dubbing and restoration, I use more sophisticated gear. Several things I don't recommend, which is using steel needles for more than one play on reproducers with thumbscrews to hold the needle in. Sapphire replacements are available, but don't use those in acoustic reproducers. Esoteric Sound carries a variety of cartridges and styli for 78s. I use a Stanton 500 series and have 2.5, 3.0 and 4.0 mil styli for it. Why so many, you may ask? Electrical transcriptions (radio shows) have 2.5 mil grooves, whereas most 78s are 3.0 mil. The reason for the 4.0 mil stylus is that if a record is severely worn, a 4.0 mil stylus will only trace the upper sidewalls and won't fit into the very bottom of the groove where all the wear is, although if a record was played with a worn stylus, either steel or jeweled, it probably should be trashed and you should go in search of a cleaner copy.

Tom

 

Ha! very cool! never seen one of those before!
would make a great electronics kit I would imagine.

 

The thing I hate is every time I find a cool 78 worth buying I then have to treat it like a baby to get it home in one piece.

 

Ironically I have 4 aluminum discs from NBC radio, 1933 with a speech by the Fuhrer.

 

This is not completely correct information.

78s (and early LPs & 45s) were pressed using a wide variety of EQ curves depending on the label, and that is what lead to the RIAA developing an EQ curve and getting the record industry as a whole to adopt it in 1954. From 1954 to the present, there has been consistency in how all records are mastered in regards to EQ compensation. (When you see "high fidelity" written on '50s LPs, that was a marketing term developed to inform the public that the record was cut with the "improved" RIAA curve. Later on, the term "high fidelity" came to distinguish mono pressings from stereo in a way that still sounded positive.)

What you're likely thinking of is the need for modern listeners to reverse the EQ compensation built into most phono preamps - making it flat - so that the appropriate EQ curve for a particular disc can be applied

 

I don't concern myself with the esoteria of which EQ curve goes with which 78. I really can't be bothered, it's too confusing... so I use my ears.

I recently dubbed a collection of bebop jazz 78s, and my method was quite basic, and it came out very satisfactorily. I used a Dual 1019 with a Stanton 500 fitted with an OEM Stanton 78 stylus. My preamp only has RIAA, so some finessing was required.

I recorded the disc in stereo in case one channel is cleaner than the other, although in most cases it sounded best summed to mono in the end. I first ran the tracks through ClickRepair in both directions to remove the loudest ticks. After summing to mono, I experimented with EQ in Audacity, rolling off pretty much everything above 15k or so. On really noisy records, I went down to as much as 7 or 8k, but that was a drastic but necessary compromise. Basically I was aiming to remove any top-end harshness and as much distracting noise/distortion as possible without sucking the life out of the recording. What I found was the mids were able to come forward in a more pleasing way and the recordings are much more listenable that way.

When just listening casually in real time, I find that the treble cut switch on my Fisher X-100 tube amp is very handy for playing 78s.

 

Another vote for not getting too hung up on proper EQ. I don't worry too much about speed variations, either (but I mostly play post-war 78s when things were a bit more standardized). I just run my dedicated mono/78 setup (Dual 1229 with Grado mono and 78 carts in separate headshells) into a regular RIAA phono preamp (AES AD-3) and have a ball.

 

If you have the means to roll off the top end a bit, that helps!