I've been meaning to ask this for some time now...how do the Edison  
electrical reproducers sound, when playing diamond discs?

Sent from my iPhone

-- Peter
[email protected]

On Mar 21, 2008, at 1:41 PM, "Bruce Mercer" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yes to all of the above. A C-2 I purchased some time ago had both  
> the 12"Roth and Martinelli records (among others) in the albums  
> along with a bunch of pop black with gold lettering on the labels.  
> Ha anyone ever seen a 10" classical with a gold label with black  
> lettering?  Needle cuts, as far as I remember were sold from mid  
> July to mid October 1929. They were superior sounding records.
> Bruce
>
> _______________________________________________
> Phono-L mailing list
> http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
From [email protected]  Fri Mar 21 17:41:49 2008
From: [email protected] (Greg Bogantz)
Date: Fri Mar 21 17:42:15 2008
Subject: [Phono-L] Edison C2 performance
References: 
<[email protected]><004901c88b93$f972c1c0$5ca6b...@vaio>
        <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <000401c88bb5$8423cfa0$6400a...@hpa1514n>

    I have a C-2.  The pickup is essentially the same horseshoe magnet 
pickup design as used in most of the contemporary models sold by Victor, 
Brunswick, Atwater-Kent, etc.  But Edison included a "scratch filter" 
(Edison may have had another name for this, but I can't remember what they 
called it) module located under the turntable motor board which was a 
resistive-capacitive low-pass filter.  This was ostensibly to filter out the 
"needle scratch" noise which was supposedly indigenous to needle-cut 
records, according to Edison company blather.  Truth be told, it filtered 
the noise from Edison DDs more effectively.  DDs have inherently lower 
signal to noise ratio (are noisier) due to their low modulation level 
compared to the typical electrical Victor record of the day.  This made the 
DDs sound particularly noisy when compared with laterals played on the C-2, 
so Edison included the filter which was not switchable.  Consequently, all 
records played on the C-2 are somewhat lacking in treble response compared 
with, say, the superior sound obtained from the Victor micro-synchronous 
RE-45 or RE-75 of 1929 which also used a similar horseshoe pickup without 
the scratch filter.  The C-2 generally has a tubby, boomy sound which is 
fairly common with the early large console radios.  Again, the Victor 
micro-synchronous radios were a major exception to the rule.  Their advanced 
speaker design is largely responsible for their superior sound - good, 
well-balanced sound over the audio spectrum without excessive bass boominess 
while still providing extended bass response to quite low frequencies. 
Curiously, this speaker (which is generally attributed to a Kellogg design) 
was used by Victor and/or RCA in only that one model year of 1929.  The 
earlier and later speakers for many years were audibly inferior to the 1929 
model.  I don't know why RCA didn't continue using the better design from 
1929 in their later models.  Probably had something to do with patent 
royalties on the Kellogg design that RCA didn't want to pay.

Greg Bogantz



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Fraser" <[email protected]>
To: "Antique Phonograph List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Edison C2 performance


> I've been meaning to ask this for some time now...how do the Edison 
> electrical reproducers sound, when playing diamond discs?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> -- Peter
> [email protected]
>
> On Mar 21, 2008, at 1:41 PM, "Bruce Mercer" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Yes to all of the above. A C-2 I purchased some time ago had both  the 
>> 12"Roth and Martinelli records (among others) in the albums  along with a 
>> bunch of pop black with gold lettering on the labels.  Ha anyone ever 
>> seen a 10" classical with a gold label with black  lettering?  Needle 
>> cuts, as far as I remember were sold from mid  July to mid October 1929. 
>> They were superior sounding records.
>> Bruce
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Phono-L mailing list
>> http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
> _______________________________________________
> Phono-L mailing list
> http://phono-l.oldcrank.org 

Reply via email to