[linux-audio-user] Re: Companies Refusing to Release/Permit Linux Drivers

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 19 March 2006 01:03, Chris Bannister wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 08:39:29PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> And DO break the budget if you ever come across one of Cooks 78 rpm
>> lp's still in playable condition after all these years.  Use a
>> fresh, 0.3x0.7 thousanths eliptical tipped diamond needle, set at
>> about 3/4 gram, in a Shure V-15 cartridge in a good arm and on a
>> good turntable, sit back and enjoy the acoustic experience of a
>> lifetime.  But clean it first, with dish soap and warm water, and a
>> velvet pad to remove as much of the decades of grime you can from
>> the grooves, then rinse well with distilled water so you don't leave
>> its minerals behind as it dries.  Don't play it first as that will
>> just further embed the grit into the plastic.  They are priceless
>> recordings of yesterdays excellence, please treat them with the
>> respect they deserve.
>
>Arrrrrg, is washing really ok for old records? I have heard about it
> but never risked it, does the "dish soap" have to be a certain type.?
> ahh the memories ... the Shure V-15 cartridge :-)

AFAIK, any old dish soap that comes out of a bottle today will be fine.  
Dishwasher soap OTOH, is pretty darned caustic, which probably won't do 
the label (or the velvet & your skin for that matter) any good at all.  
Use the velvet going with the grooves, and rinse with lots of warm 
water at kitchen faucet spray pressures before the final rinse with 
distilled.  Its clean when you can see rainbows in the grooves as it 
dries.  Note however that I'm referring to vinyl records, not old 
shellac 78's which will absorb an amazing amount of water.  Those I've 
never used more than a velvet pad and just dampened it, rinseing it out 
when it shows dirt.  Back velvet, not showing the dirt all that well 
shouldn't be used.  If you can find it, a light colored mohair 
frizay(spelling checker please) would be even better as its fibers will 
stand higher and straighter, reaching into the grooves even better, but 
be gentle with it too.

Removing as much grit from the grooves as you can, before its pounded 
into the vinyl by the passing of the diamond needle, is a very 
desirable thing.  Once embedded in the groove walls, its essentially 
there forever.  A well produced LP of yesteryear, on a good turntable & 
good arm & needle, can easily do 55+ db of snr, with some approaching 
70 db, but they were rare indeed.  That takes either a weathers 
turntable, or an old fairchild battleship but I doubt any of them 
survive today.  Today, Techniqs is the best but its 20 db noisier than 
those were and has arm resonances you can actually see.  Its a lost art 
I'm afraid.

Another record I recall from the late 50's was a Mercury mono recording 
of the Overture 1812, using the canons at Harvard, and the bells from 
the Harkness Tower on the Yale campus.  Those canons were recorded with 
an Altec M-21 condensor mic about a yard from the muzzle, and the bells 
were so discordant that with any cartridge but a weathers, they were 
like fingernails on a blackboard by the 4th play.  The Altec M-21 was 
said to have recorded, without any flat-toping of the waveforms, a 
Ruger Super Redhawk in 44 magnum from 2" below the muzzle.  It was also 
fairly high output, haveing 150 volts on the plate of the 6AT6 in the 
base of it, this being LONG before electret condensors & FET preamps 
that could run on a watch battery, and which cannot do sounds over 
115db, ever.

I took one of them once to go record the SUI Scottish Hilanders bagpipe 
band, but it was raining so we all retired into a 20x40 quonset hut.  
With the sound of about 15 bagpipes all focused at the center of that 
thing by the rounded roof, I plugged that mic into the line input on a 
pretty good tandberg tape recorder that could do 15 ips, and had to 
leave the line gain control down at about 1.5 on a 0-10 scale.  I think 
my tinnitus & carhart notches started then.  But I also got some quite 
usable recordings they used as promo's for quite a while.

Yeah, I've been to a few places, and done a few things in my 71 years.  
Thats just one story.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.