Wind-up Gramophones - better than you don’t remember.

have you ever touched a stylus on a peridot record player and the sound it makes that's the sound of your ridges on your finger moving across the stylus and being amplified don't worry it's a rubbish record player this is a cow board why not put together a few years ago I've got a video about it if you're really interested but trust me I'm not damaging some priceless heirloom here but anyway that's the sound it makes when it's switched on but of course when it's switched off it sounds like this we know that electricity isn't the only way to amplify sound it can be done acoustically and it can be surprisingly effective although probably not with the microphone down there but just take a look at this not really certainly pretty similar to the electric amplification but that was a steel needle on an acoustic gramophone no electricity involved whatsoever and that's what we're going to be taking a look at today a record player from the acoustic hearer this HMV 102 let me give you a demo [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] where most people think of music being played through a windup gramophone they'd probably associate it with a sound like we've just heard quite thin harsh metallic a lot of crackles and pops surface noise not exactly HiFi but again most people have formed that opinion not from personal experience of hearing one live but from seeing them in movies and TV shows costume dramas set in the 1920s and 30s when it knows if they did put a record on yeah it would have sounded like that the reality is of course in a production l overdub the music so they probably started off with a really the high sounding file added put it on top and equalized it down and I did a load of crackles or pops to make it sound like that the truth of the matter is we may have been a little bit misled because an acoustic wind-up gramophone like this can sound a heck of a lot better than that let me demonstrate with a different record or the same machine it's also important to understand that the crackles and pops and a lot of the surface noise that we now associate with 78 those things weren't there when these were new those have developed over time due to the materials aging in different countries they use different materials to make up the records it's it's shellac but it's mixed with a lot of different things in the UK particularly started in the 1930s just stuck a lot of abrasives in there things with sulfur which you've kind of broken down created microscopic cracks and craters on the discs and those are the things that you hear as crackles and pops getting picked up by the needle but yeah when these were new they didn't sound anything like this own now [Music] now let me tell you a bit about this particular machine it's the hmb 102 a record player the manufacturers claimed to be the world's finest portable of course they would say that were they but the 102 that was a follow-up to the very similar 101 the 101 was on the market from 1926 to 1931 which point a 102 replaced it so just for fun quick quiz what year do you think they stopped making the 102 model if you guess 1958 congratulations yes it's that 1958 the same year as the first transatlantic passenger jet service the first integrated circuit the first computer modem and while all those other things were happening the last model 102 wind-up gramophone was rolling off the production line to see what year mine was made I need to check the plaque that's located under the turntable so here's how this code works what our 2d is the model of the machine B over 10 well the B cereal range started in 1936 b1 were big 1937 and so on so beet and that's 1946 the 13 means it was made at the Hayes Middlesex Factory the 8 is the signifier for mechanical gramophones that came out to there at that point and 204 is the unit production number the production of these machines had been on hold during the war and only resumed in April 1946 so this is a two hundred and fourth model made after production resumed [Music] you may have seen a video I made about the introduction of the 45rpm in the 33 the third LP the vinyl records that came out in 1949 the work on both those formats started before World War two but of course was put on hold because of the war but that resulted in the 78 rpm record remaining on the market for far longer than anyone had anticipated in fact my grandparents who were born about 1910 when they were in their teens and twenties they were buying music on 78 but my parents when they were in their teens and twenties they were also buying their music on 78 but despite the delivery system remaining unchanged over that period there was a lot of technological advances in their areas of playback and recording of the discs not least of which was the introduction of electric recording this is a famous picture from 1925 it shows the victor studio in New Jersey setup for an acoustic recording session this is how recordings have been done up to this point it's basically the opposite process to acoustic playback the sound goes into the code and vibrates of styles that cuts it into a disc but here's the same studio a few days later set up for electric recording into a microphone by 1926 this new electric recording technique was commonplace any studios that wanted to stay in business had either switched over to this or were switching over it just so happened that 1926 was the same year the 101 grabber phone was introduced and in the catalog for that model they took the time out to mention that despite that record player coming out at the same time as the new recording techniques they wanted to assure everyone the new machine could also play your old acoustic records as well as these new electrically recorded ones as the recordings are the records improved these sound boxes on the record players were similarly re-engineered in order to keep up for instance using some of the range of HMV models of sound boxes as examples the exhibition and the number to the ones that preceded the electric era there only had a frequency response of a hundred and fifty Hertz to three thousand but that jumps up significantly on the number for sound box the first one for the Electric era the one that came along with the 101 record player that could deliver a much wider 80 to 5,000 Hertz but then we move on to the 5b that's the one that's on my 102 this goes from 30 Hertz to almost 10,000 Hertz that's another big improvement a 102 gramophone fitted with a 5 B sound box is really quite a desirable set up amongst collectors but this leads me on to addressing a factoid a bit of advice that's been relayed to me quite a few times and it's not quite as clear cuz the people who repeat it would have you believe it goes like this you're not supposed to or you can't play an electrically recorded disc like this on an acoustic gramophone like that now from the information that I've given you so far in this video you'll see there's a bit of a floor in this already I mean just imagine somebody walks into a shop in 1946 when this was made this is sat there on the counter brand-new and it's up for sale hello that wonder if you could help me please I want to buy a gramophone Oh what the gramophone a gramophone okay grab that there about this one a tape should be what are - yeah that looks good so I could play all B records on this know what this is an acoustic player alright oh that means it could only play acoustic records and they stopped making those in 1926 so you're telling me that you're selling a brand-new record player that could only play records over 20 years old while I was hoping to sell it but first I need to close the deal with a difficult customer but I wanted to play big Glenn Miller records a picnic no chance may it'll play Caruso though although other the Caruso records versus shame that's so great on this is this a wind-up yes it is the handle stored in the lid salt this for a game of soldiers I'm going back to the future yeah of course the idea that an acoustic record player can only play acoustic records is a nonsense of being exclusively playing electrically recorded records throughout this video the sandbox are here this off the phonic sound box author phonics we're designed specifically for playing back the enhanced electrically recorded records so yeah this thing's fine for records from the thirties and forties I think the message perhaps had good intentions but has been a little bit muddled up and simplified over the years because well it's fine for thirties and forties records 50s records SATs where things got a little bit more difficult you see it's not again down to the way the record was recorded although 50s records tend to be a little bit louder and therefore you'd need to reduce the volume down a little bit but it's bore down to the materials that the records were made out of in the 1950s the steel needles used on a gramophone like this were made to wear out after one plate of a record the hard shellac where's the needle down rather than the other way around at the top here you can see an unused needle and at the bottom that's one that's played a single record but as electric pickups with lighter tone arms as well as turntables capable of playing all three speeds of discs became common the 78 rpm records started to be made out of a softer blend of materials in order to minimize wear on the newer and more delicate equipment and therefore if you play one of the newer softer seventy-eights with a steel needle gramophone it does stand a good chance of causing excessive wear to the groove and just look how much tracking force this arm puts down that's right about a hundred and thirty grams again fine for the hardest shellac records but if you've got some precious discs some later 78 you probably want to play them on one of these however in a post-apocalyptic world without electricity it could play them and they'd probably sound fine well for the first couple goes at least another issue though particularly noticeable with 40s and 50s discs was that as time went on records tended to be recorded louder perhaps too loud in some cases for a machine like this and there's no volume dial to reduce the level you maybe heard of the origin of the phrase stick a sock in it being to do with reducing the volume of a gramophone by shoving a sock in the hole well this designer speaker on this particular machine that would be a bit awkward you need quite a few socks however that's where the type of needles come in you could alter the volume by swapping the needle I've got three types here medium tone soft tone and extra soft tone now this isn't anything to do with the hardness of the metal it's about the thickness of it the thinner the needle the quieter it is if you can't picture how that would affect things imagine the difference in volume between hitting and empty steel oil drum with a thin iron rod and then with a thick iron bar that thicker would of course be louder and to show the difference between these three needles when playing the same track on this record player the medium one averaged out at around 83 decibels the soft tone 78 decibels and their extra soft 71 now let me move on and show you a few more features of this particular machine you might have spotted the auto stop that comes in at the end of the disc I think that's a pretty cool feature to have on an old machine like this but you could buy new record players today that guy even do that this one is switchable as well you've also got auto starts if you want it the arm moves into two positions when you take it out of its holder there's one for swapping the needle and then you move it further and that starts the rotation all this is achieved with just an intricate series of levers if you prefer to do things manual you can apply a manual brake and this is spring-loaded and holds a powder against the inside edge of the turntable there's a speed control and yes some of the samples of this video are no doubt being played a little bit quick I don't quite got used to it yeah a verified movements of this control can make a big difference to the speed now I bought this machine refurbished so it runs incredibly smoothly and I was surprised just how quite it all is when it's spinning away I mean the whole thing is is almost silent you'll have seen the Handy pop-out stylus tray at the beginning of the video but also next to the storage for the crank at the back of the case is another clip that can hold a stylist in however that one's really there to hold a tin of tongue style needles these were supposed to last for approximately a hundred and fifty plays but that long life came at the expense of wear on the discs and nobody makes those kind of needles anymore I'm missing one accessory from my set that's a record holder it was a tray that sat on top of the turntable when you had the case closed it allowed you to carry around twelve to fourteen discs and that would have added significantly to the already considerable weight my plain black 102 is one of the less desirable models the rarer colored versions are the ones that collectors tend to go for these pictures come from their website gramophones this was a site created by Graham barber who was a collective and restorer of these things who sadly passed away suddenly the website is still being maintained though in his memory and I think that is an excellent thing to do as I've learned so much from reading through the articles on here looking at Graham's videos hopefully when I'm gone these YouTube videos I make will carry on for people to see for years to come as well I've got to say listening to music on this machine for me as being a quite a magical experience the idea that you can playback a record with no electricity involved whatsoever and yet the reproduction of it is really still quite impressive yes not up to the standards of a modern-day record player but the people who collect things like this and restore them they've got modern-day record players as well this is a whole different area this is an antique this is a functional antique and I think that's what interests me about it I left cold with things like old paintings and vases and things something like this though this is this is my street I think I like old things that still do things and still do it as well as they did when they were new those are the things that really interest me but I'm just an amateur passing through I just picked up a couple of machines off eBay that were already restored if you want to know more about this you'll need to speak to the experts I'm sure a few bits of information I've skirted over there should have included found things that are maybe said that weren't a hundred percent accurate so yeah if you want to know more about it I'm not you guy I'd suggest going on forums the Talking Machine forum is well that I found useful but for me the most use was from an individual there was a chap who signed up on patreon his name is G who and I've got to thank him because he was asking me about these things I said I got a couple and we had a exchange of e-mails back and forth because I had loads of questions I hadn't got the answers to he helped me out so without his help I wouldn't have been able to put this video together so yeah sometimes you just need to speak to an expert not just some Rando guy hi Bob YouTube who's passing on a bit of information probably half of its wrong if you want to listen to a couple of these records being played in full well I had to skirt around the copyright still these things are still in copyright many of them apart from you know so getting back to the early 1920s which don't sound so good so the better sounding ones I can't really play you normally in this video but I'll put a link in the video description to a playlist they'll be a couple records in there that you'll bear to hear being playback in full on this device but I hope you've enjoyed having a look at this one here today and that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 705,675

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, HMV 102, Gramophone, Soundbox, 5B, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Wind up, Acoustic, Shellac, Electric Recording, Acoustic Recording, History, Audio, Music, Record Player, 78s, Vintage, Antique, Portable, Music Player, Wartime, Picnic, Demonstration

Id: AYn7aZZBMRA

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/YourNextPurchase]

Add this to the list of things I've seen on Techmoan that I now want.

[u/vwestlife]

There were acoustically amplified record players made as late as 1974 (!), but not anywhere near as good-sounding as Mat's HMV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFvNGVNd4mA