I've always heard about Alan Lomax making his field recordings of songs the common people in the South sang, but never gave much thought to what equipment he would have used. Today I find an article in the latest (9 April) New Yorker about the Presto direct-to-disk recorder, which is what he used. This device produced one 78 rpm record directly from a person singing, playing the blues, or whatever, directly into a microphone.
Apparently there are a few of these devices still in existence and still operational. Here's an item about the company that made them. http://www.televar.com/grshome/Presto.htm Tom Hawley -- Lansing Michigan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/folksingers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/folksingers/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: folksingers-dig...@yahoogroups.com folksingers-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: folksingers-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
