Wax cylinder recording?

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zebra50

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Jun 4, 2004
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Location
York, UK
Hi!

This is way out, but we have a great depth of expertise here, and I'm hoping someone might have some experience.

I have bought an old Edison phonograph wax cylinder player as a gift for my dad's 70th birthday, and would like to record some birthday messages from the family for him to play on it.

I have managed to find a guy that makes and sells new cylinders, and have ordered some to play with. Now for the fun bit...

I'd like to put the messages together on protools, and then 'bounce' it onto the wax.

My thinking is to play it out to a small speaker or reversed dynamic mic with a cutting stylus to the diaphragm.

Does anyone see any problems with this approach? And what could I use as a cutting stylus - would a reversed playing stylus work?

Any thoughts and experiences would be very welcome.

Stewart
 
I would research how the originals were cut.. most likely a megaphone with a diaphragm and stylus at the small end.

It seems logical a small maybe 4-6" loudspeaker with perhaps a lever to translate the VC range of motion down to appropriate for cutting wax.

Sounds like a lot of work to get it decent fidelity, but just to say happy birthday may not be that crazy. 

JR
 
JohnRoberts said:
I would research how the originals were cut.. most likely a megaphone with a diaphragm and stylus at the small end.

Thanks John,

Yes, that is exactly how it was done - just the reverse of the payback process, and often using the same horn. I haven't managed to track down a cutting 'transmitter' for it, and don't want to wreck the receiver & stylus that I have.

The cylinder gearing takes care of the tracking - there is a lateral arm that moves across as the cylinder rotates. So we just need something that will move in and out of the wax.

I think an old disposable steel gramaphone needle of the right size might be just the thing.

>Sounds like a lot of work to get it decent fidelity, but just to say happy birthday may not be that crazy. 

I'm not expecting very hi-fi, but will be fun finding out!
 
Wax dictation machines used the same diaphragm and needle for record and playback.

You will have to make a LOT of test-cuts to find the optimum level. Here you might well use ProFools to splice-up a sequence from -30dB to 0dB, 6dB steps 5 seconds each. Try a 2-tone such as 600Hz+1400Hz. The rise in 800Hz and other inharmonic partials should be clear to the ear.

Wax can be erased and re-used by scraping or melting.
 
A friend makes styli for a museum in Ohio.  His playback stylus is made from thin glass rod that he melts and pulls to make a point, breaks, then flame polishes the tip.  Record might be the same.

I will get the full skinny later this morning.
Mike
 
Martin Fisher at Middle Tennessee State University (which has a big recording program) makes cylinder recordings, and is pretty knowledgeable about the techniques. You might try getting in touch with him.

Peace,
Paul
 
http://www.google.com/search?q=wax%20edison+site:aes.org

http://www.aes.org/press/?ID=140
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=11902
 
Thanks guys,

I got some good tips and tricks from George (thanks to Mike!),

The birthday is on the 17th, so the thinking time is over and it is time to start doing...

From .wav to .wax

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
> birthday is on the 17th

Belated Happy Birthday to your Taurus.

Too late, but the Vulcan Cylinder Record Company will put sound on a cylinder. "Sound" can be live, a cylinder, or MP3/WAV. Basic cost is £50.00 plus postage and packaging.
 
Thanks for that.

I should say that I did get as far as building a prototype cutting head, and managed to get a weak 1KHz signal onto the cylinder, but was not nearly good enough for transferring an intelligible message.

CylinderCutter.jpg


The main problem was one of stiffness - the speaker-stylus assembly had too much lateral flexibility and tended to bounce and skip rather than cut. With another month I might have managed something, but ran out of R&D time.

PRR said:
Too late, but the Vulcan Cylinder Record Company will put sound on a cylinder. "Sound" can be live, a cylinder, or MP3/WAV. Basic cost is £50.00 plus postage and packaging.

Looks like pretty good value - I certainly spent more than that on my experiments.

Nonetheless, Dad was very pleased with his phonograph.  :D
 
No, I doubt you could work a cutting stylus with a soft speaker.

I kinda assumed you'd use a compression driver to make sound, and couple that to the original recording diaphragm and stylus. It was made to take sound, feed it sound. That way stylus support and diaphragm resonances are as-original. I'm not sure what "EQ" is supposed to be on a one-octave device, but wiggle-recording should be constant-amplitude versus frequency, which means stiffness-controlled not mass-controlled, which also means main resonance at the top of the audio band, not the bottom as with a cone speaker.
 
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