Tips for Playing 78s

So, pardon my ignorance, but if you have a great adjustable EQ in your system, is there a need for this device?
Trying to get my head it.

 

As long as you're recording 78s, (and pre-RIAA early LPs), Audacity has EQ curves available as free extra downloads to reverse the RIAA EQ of your preamp to make a "flat EQ" file, then 78 and LP curves from the various record labels and times to apply or try. All detailed on this page, which has nearly the best information about all those EQ curves collected on one page:

Playback equalization for 78 rpm shellacs and early 33⅓ LPs - Audacity Wiki

 

Pre-RIAA 78s are all over the map in terms of frequency response. The microphone(s), electronics, and cutter used to make the original master, the duplication process (including how new or worn out the stampers were), the composition of the shellac and/or vinyl your record was pressed on, and the condition of the record itself all play a significant role in its tonal quality, regardless of what EQ curve the record label may or may not have been following at the time.

In fact, I have 78s on which the two sides of the same record have quite different tonality! So you really just have to play it by ear and go with whatever equalization sounds best.

And lowpass filtering can be very useful as well. On many old 78s, everything above 5 kHz or so is just noise, so filtering it out can really clean up the sound without affecting the recording. But others, even from early 1930s, were almost "hi-fi" and can have good response up to 10 kHz or more:

 

The RIAA equalization standard was introduced around 1954, when 78 rpm records were still quite popular. Some of the higher quality radio/phono consoles had a selector switch which included RIAA and a couple of other popular equalization curves.
Dating back to 1940, record companies had started doing their own equalization curves and there was no standard.
There is no need to use a flat pre-amp. Some of the 78's dating before 1940 may sound tinny with or without equalization, but that's what the tone controls are for on your amp. On modern sound systems, the 78's of the rock 'n' roll era, 1955-1960, which many obviously had RIAA curve equalization really kick-ass and sound better than the 45's or 33's, especially notable are the RCA-Victor "New Orthophonic" 78's.
There may have been an established speed standard of 78 rpm dating back to the 1920's, but not everyone had a standard groove width and Edison Diamond Discs used the "hill and dale" system, as well as some radio transcription discs which often played at 33 1/3 and 78 rpm. Because of lack of a groove type and width with early records, that is why there are multiple stylus widths available. With a standard 78 with the standard groove width of 3 mil, wear starts at the surface and goes down. Using a 4 mil stylus would put you in the highest wear area. If worn down to the bottom of the groove, the 78 is toast. The 2.5 and 2.7 mil stylii are ideal for worn and surface-scratched 78's, getting you below the worn and damaged areas. I've had many 78's which looked thrashed but played great with a sub-3 mil stylus.
As far as acoustic phonographs go, a higher quality needle often makes them sound better. For my Victrola VV-IX, with the No. 2 reproducer, I've used DuoTone Miro-Point needles on it for many years with no problems. Each needle is said to last about 1,000 plays and record wear is almost imperceptible. Of several different types of steel needles, the DuoTone is the best sounding I've heard. You don't want to play a vinyl or extended play 78 on an acoustic phono. I've seen the needle actually turn red.

 

If you have tape in/out jacks and monitor facilities, easiest and most practical approach for little cost.

Other tips:

Stylus options and various sizes are helpful for getting the best playback (especially pre 1940, but useful for all eras)
Best cartridge platforms with wide stylus choices (without custom retipping), with safe and easy stylus changes as needed!

Shure M 44, Stanton 400, 500, Pickering V 15 (Esoteric Sound offer just about every tip size an archivist or 78 RPM buff could ever want)

 

Agreed. I'd even back it up a few years (even without the RIAA standardization). Some of those later post-war 78s approach audiophile quality in their powerful simplicity and still beat any other formats I've heard. I'm thinking of Big Joe Turner and others on Atlantic, a lot on King (although King had some real weak ones, too), Hank Williams MGMs, and yep those RCAs: One I always play to amaze visitors is an early '50s RCA vinyl promo 78 of Sons of the Pioneers' "Diesel Smoke and Dangerous Curves" with its airhorn and sound effects. Sounds like an 18-wheeler is about to crash through the living room wall.

 

Yes, I forgot about the Atlantic 78's. Those were also some real kick-ass recordings that will blow you away. Atlantic Records started small and well before the 1950's were over, had state of the art recording equipment better than anyone else. Ampex developed the first 8-track r2r tape deck for Les Paul and Atlantic wanted one too.
I have/seen vinyl 78 promos from the early 1950's and the first one I saw really surprised me. Many I've seen are scratched and don't have the advantages of the hard shellac discs. The scratches go deep, like any other vinyl record whereas the shellac 78's often didn't get scratched that deeply and a 2 to 2.7 mil stylus plays below them, just like they aren't even there.
Many of those 1950's R&B recordings were mixed and recorded hot, so they overcame most of the usual surface noise. The faster speeds, like 78 and 45 rpm allows higher levels and purer sound. This is one reason for the audiophile 45 rpm 12" discs that are popular now. The classical label Angel put out some 45 rpm albums back in the 70's, atleast.
People who don't have quality turntables with the 78 rpm speed are really missing out.

 

Every 78/80rpm record I have played on my crosley player sounds excellent! (I swear that thing is meant for older records)

 

78's are hard to predict. You can have a shiny unscratched disk and think you have a gem, only to find it's been played with an extremely worn steel needle and had the detail gouged out of the groove. Then again, you can have a 78 that looks really scuffed and dull, and find it plays ok - because the scuffs are on the surface, and the groove is deeper than on a microgroove (vinyl) record.

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This is a frustrating topic to read - hearing about all the Sun and Atlantic disks. I would love to find them here. I have no trouble finding Richard **** Tauber 78's though.

 

I'll also second the unpredictability of 78 quality: I have an absolutely mint (dead stock from a juke box jobber, so it was never played) copy of "Walkin' After Midnight" (and forgot to mention Decca above--some of those 78s are very sweet) that is a hazy mess, while a 78 of Sparkle Moore's "Rock-A-Bop"/"Skull and Cross Bones" that looks like it was cleaned with a Brillo pad plays big, loud, and clean.
But it's important to echo what AutomatedElectronics stated above, surface condition is often just that: surface. It's deep down in the grooves that the magic either lives or was ruined.
All that said, 78s are an absolute ball to collect and play.

 

First, thank you for the positive mention! 78's can be unpredictable. Surface scratches may not affect play that much when played with a modern sub-3 mil stylus. Due to the make-up of 78's, there's going to be surface noise, but the fidelity can be astonishing. Pre-WWII and post-WWII shellac formulas changed. The pre-WWII shellac discs are more durable. In the 1950's, 78's made of vinyl started popping up, and although highly flexible, are easily surface damaged. Also, 78's made of poly-styrene became popular after the mid-50's. Mercury used this material as well as many "kiddie" records, which were black in color. The colored 78's were made of vinyl. A 78 made of poly-styrene is noticeably lighter than a shellac 78, and is just as stiff. Vinyl 78's have some flex to them.
Damage to the grooves on a 78 from excessive wear or digging in can usually be seen. The grooves can have sort of a haze to them. Remember the old days when a record would stick or skip and we would tape a quarter to the tone arm? Sometimes there was only a certain section that had this trouble and we would play it over a few times and then remove the quarter. This left a noticeable discoloration in those grooves compared to the rest of the record.
Sometimes, even though the grooves still look black and sharp and the sound may not be that great, the 78 may just need to be cleaned.
DO NOT use an alcohol-based cleaner(most common) on shellac 78's. Warm water with a drop or two of dish soap(like Dawn) in it, along with a soft brush and sponge works great. Don't forget to rinse the 78. Stay away from the labels. Even water can damage the labels.

 

This video has audio samples demonstrating the before-and-after results of cleaning a shellac 78 using soap and water:

 

Yup thats how I clean ALL MY RECORDS with soap (78s I use warm water...... Reg records I use cold as I dont wanna risk warping them)

 

Actually, SOME 78s use the NAB curve (Decca, Coral, Brunswick), some use the AES (Capitol & Columbia) curve, London used their proprietary FFRR curve, and RCA Victor used their New Orthophonic curve, which was later accepted as the RIAA standard. Only RCA Victor, Groove, and Vik 78s are totally RIAA compatible, and "New Orthophonic" is not to be confused with "Orthophonic" or simply "Ortho." Those curves are for 78s older than 1950. Most 78s from pre-1950, such as Brunswicks and Victors of the swing era use the NAB curve. Microgroove records even create a paradox before 1955. Until 1952, RCA Victor's LPs and 45 used the NAB curve. Columbia's LPs used their LP curve, but their 45s used the AES curve, just like Capitol's 78s, 45s and LPs. Get this, though: MGM's LPs and 45s used the NAB curve, but their 78s seem to reproduce best using the RIAA curve! I have some George Shearing Quintet, Hank Williams, Joni James and Connie Francis 78s on MGM that really do sound best using the RIAA curve. Believe me when I say that I have years of experience with 78s, and have always believed that a better, cleaner dub can be obtained from a 78 found in a Goodwill shop than from a dub in a major label's tape vault made in the 1950s, provided a good mono cartridge with the proper stylus tip is used. Of course, an equalizer put in the recording chain after the preamp with EQ settings for 78s will compensate for any imbalances between curves used from any era. Since acoustically recorded discs have little dynamic range, spectrum analysis will show in which bands the bulk of the surface noise is so that it can be EQ'd out without messing with what little audio bandwidth there is on such a disc.

For those interested in who used what equalization curves and when, a good chart can be found at Equalization of Older Records

Tom Daly

 

Optimizing 78 rpm playback

 

That is somewhat what I was getting at, however see my other post relative to who used what curves and when. For instance, Columbia 78s used a proprietary curve, while RCA Victor and Brunswick used the NAB curve. Capitol used the AES curve since 1942 when the label was started, as did American Decca since 1937. Rolling off the highs on a dub of a late '30s to 1950 78 doesn't bring out what is actually in those grooves. 78s have highs and lows, but most tape vault copies have the highs all muddied to mask the surface noise and the lows squelched to mask the 78 rpm turntable rumble. 78s are not supposed to sound like your old LP reissues! There are dynamics in those approximately 3.0 mil grooves, but you have to know what you're doing to coax them out of the record. Using digital restoration tools (not the ones I used 20 years ago!), it's possible to get a clean dub from a 78, properly EQ'd with balanced sound, and minimal surface noise. Now, if you think I'm jiving you, here are links to two samples of 78s from two different decades that I've dubbed and digitally cleaned:

Kay Kyser & his Orchestra - "Pushin' Sand" (Columbia 36676, 1942) Dropbox - Kay Kyser - Pushin' Sand (Columbia 36676, 78 rpm dub).wav
Nelson Riddle & his Orchestra - "Lisbon Antigua" (Capitol 2387, 1956) Dropbox - Nelson Riddle & his Orchestra - Lisbon Antigua (Capitol 2387, 78 rpm dub).wav

IMHO, these two dubs sound better than any compact disc or vinyl pressing mastered from either Columbia or Capitol's tape sources, and incidentally, NO parametric or graphic equalizers were used on either of these dubs. What you hear from these files is exactly what was in the grooves of my 78s, tracked with a GE RPX series cartridge with an aftermarket 3.0 mil sapphire stylus. I don't recommend the use of diamond styli on 78s because I've found them to be harder on shellac grooves than sapphires which, while the styli wear more quickly, the records last longer. Needless to say, I keep a drawer full of replacement styli for the bevy of cartridges I have mounted in head shells. Anyone wishing to further debate me on this topic is welcome to do so!

Tom Daly

 

So that's why so many 78 styli are sapphire!

 

...and for a similar reason, sapphires and not diamonds are used to cut the lacquer discs from which the metal mothers are plated to make disc stampers. Diamonds are perfect for microgroove vinyl playback, as vinyl is a more pliable material and after being played, the vinyl can relax back into its "normal" state. Shellac (and those Monarch and CBS polystyrene 45s) is too hard to do that, so just imagine a diamond stylus chiseling away at the sidewalls of a 78 with each play. At least steel needles would conform to the groove wall after so many revolutions, which jeweled styli can't do, but with sapphire being a less tightly compacted carbon jewel, the shellac discs will wear the stylus as opposed to having the grooves of the discs worn to hell. Imagine that! Steel needles being more suitable for playing certain types of records than diamond styli! Now, there are some elliptical diamond styli for 78s available from Esoteric Sound. The VTF is more evenly balanced across the record groove and therefore will wear the record less than your typical conical stylus for playing 78s. I frequently will try an elliptical 3.5 mil stylus that rides higher in the groove wall than a 3.0 mil, since most record wear from previous plays is at the bottom of the groove. 78s that have been in jukeboxes or have been played with a steel needle that has been used too many times are virtually hopeless, as there's little left to the groove that isn't damaged. Jukebox operators, while sapphire styli were good for about 75 hours of play, were often reluctant to change them on schedule, resulting in many destroyed 78s. There was also another villain out there: osmium. Osmium styli had metal tips that were good for about 10 hours of play before changing them was required. Juke operators would shove those into the cartridges in not-so-profitable locations and people on limited budgets would by them for their home machines because over time, they were actually cheaper to buy up front than paying $0.25 per pack of steel needles, with osmium styli costing about $1.00 apiece. Eventually, the price of synthetic sapphires came down, so that osmium styli went the way of the button-shoe.

I suppose here would be a good place to mention the Edison Diamond Discs. Vertically cut as opposed to laterally cut, Edison's phonographs for reproducing these discs ONLY used diamond styli. Now, bear in mind that these records were about 4 times as thick as standard lateral discs, and scratching a vertically cut disc was less damaging than an equivalent scratch on a laterally cut disc, because the scratch wouldn't cross the groove modulation. These can be played back on modern equipment with a stereo cartridge wired out-of-phase prior to summing the two channels and a 3.0 mil stylus, but bear in mind that the correct speed for playing them is 80 rpm, not 78.26 rpm (the exact speed of 78s). Use of a larger stylus than 3.0 mil on these is not recommended, because with the modulation being vertically cut, a larger stylus would cause the stylus to ride too high in the groove and whatever sound WAS reproduced would be compromised.

I own a copy of "Down on the Old Camp Ground" by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet on Victor 1714, recorded and issued in 1902. It's a damned shame, but the record was played with steel needles that have had too many plays on them. None of my unusual styli for tracking 78s can salvage that disc. Alas, copies of this rarity don't turn up on eBay or Discogs for me to obtain a disc in better condition.

 

Many of the modern wide-groove stylii are diamond, which I have used for many years without record wear problems. Dating back to the early 1900's, all Edison phonographs used a diamond stylus. It was a floating design and put very little pressure on the records. What drove the reproducer across an Edison record was a feed screw. Edison used a 'hill and dale' type of groove unlike the conventional side-to-side groove still used today.
If you want to wear a 78 out, play it with a steel needle. For multiple plays, especially with automatic record changers, Osmium was the material of choice.

 

This has been an unusually informative thread.

 

Very good advice! For those preferring to use cleaning machines, I can confirm that Spin Clean, Record Doctor, and l'Art du Son fluid are all safe for cleaning 78s (and acetates).

 

Phoenix with enzymes is also alcohol-free and safe for 78's.

 

I'm in a bit of a time crunch at the moment, so I can't write anything specific, but for starters, I write a column devoted to vintage recordings, particularly 78s, for the webzine TNT-Audio. If you're feeling particularly sleep-deprived, here's a link that you can follow to peruse what I've written: [Vintage column] On an Overgrown Pathé - [English]

 

Yeah me too! I can't think of any real brilliant 78's we got here, maybe I've never come across them.
I do like some of the red Coronet and blue Philips 78's, Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine etc....
I've got a few Rodeo Tex Morton and Reg Lindsay which sound pretty good, but probably not as
good as the one's mentioned by the American releases.
Qwerty, do you have or heard any good ones?

 

I've got lots of red+green RegalZono's and some Rodeo, Deccas, Columbia, etc. plus misc. others. Just about all from op shops. A select few classical. Need to be very lucky to get something interesting.