Gakken Premium Gramophone (was "Making 78s")

[MEGAMIKE]

ok iam not an expert but heres what i do....

what you need ...a lathe and a 78 gramophone turntable.

1 cut a blank groove on a blank poly (no audio),seperate the groove and cut it deep..

2 then take the horn off your gramophone and replace it with a horn thats more narrow(use carbord)all gramophone horns come off.

3 place the blank record with blank grooves on the gramophone wind it up.

4 place a loud speaker or yell and scream in front of the horn put the gramophone needle down and let it rip hahaah..

and "hey presto",well not the company but the ? well you konw what i mean..
.the downsyde is that you can only play it back on the gramophone a dozen times the steele needle is to harsh and scraches the surface..
but you can play it back on a modern turntable with 78 speed no problem..
.... Very Happy

[agfamatic]

that sounds a bit like those early pre groved homerecording discs that was made in the 1920s but i think they was made out of aluminium.

but well it sounds like a intresting lo-fi experiment if i had a lathe i probobly would try it out on my old columbia portable.

btw. what material did you use for your pre groved discs?

[Steve E.]

Well this is really interesting. Not only are you making a 78, you are making it non electronically. Pre- 1925! Old schooley! I am about to start a thread about the Gakken Premium Gramophone which goes into this.

Are you using a cutting needle or just a standard steel needle to record? You can minimize playback wear on your record with a cactus needle.

Heck, I think I will append that to this thread.

Can you post pictures or videos or sound samples? Maybe I am wrong to combine these into one thread.

[Steve E.]

Thanks to Ryan of Catbird Records, who lurks here sometimes, I just bought, used, the Gakken Premium Gramophone, a sort of hobbyist science kit version of a Berliner Gramophone.

I am thoroughly enjoying it!

If you are looking for a hand-crankable record playing machine with excellent sound, which will demonstrate the eventual pinnacle of sophisticated acoustic reproduction in the era of 78s, by all means look elsewhere. (Personally, for playback I recommend the portable HMV 101 or 102, or any of their later models built on these pinnacles of design. You can get a good one for $250-$300 USD.)

But, if you want a relatively inexpensive kit that allows you to play 78s, 45s, AND 33s, and allows you to record onto CDs and coated paper without using electricity, this is your baby.

Now! I should further warn you: Everything it goes, it does kind of badly. (The thing it does more or less adequately is to play conventional 78s, and even that is done better on "real" machines.) The reason I like it is:

1) I am amazed it works at all! This is the first time I have ever made an acoustic, entirely non-electronic recording. The kit basically does what MegaMike is describing above.

2) I like that it looks like one of those early, unrefined Berliner machines. I've never even been in the proximity of one of those.

So, here's an extended caveat emptor:

a) The sound you are recording is absolutely awful!!! You will hear only the faintest glimmer of a voice! It _does_ explain some of the strange enunciations and accents you hear in early recordings. People had to distort their speaking styles to be understood at all.

--My partial solution: I inserted one of my steel Recordio needles for the recording mode, and I actually could understand the resulting recording of my voice as a result.

b) Although it can play 45s and 33s, the bamboo needles track them VERY poorly and the steel needles will destroy them. Also, at least on the 33 setting, it barely makes it through one song before it winds down. And the speed is not very consistent.

--My partial solution: I have long used old-stock, shaped/manufactured cactus needles, and an antique cactus needle sharpener, for softer material records. It turns out that a sharpened cactus needle will track a microgroove record. So today I had the first-time experience of hearing a 33 RPM microgroove LP on a pseudo-Victrola. It sounded quiet, tinny and terrible, but again, I was impressed that it worked at all.

c) The motor is very loud and will actually drown out your quiet home recordings.

No solution yet.

d) The guide book is in Japanese. The diagrams are excellent, so you don't miss _too_ much as long as you pay very close attention to the drawings.

Ryan's tip to me: It turns out that one of the sellers of this device has translated the most confusing parts of the guide. I think that this is so cool, I want to give this person a little boost: Here is his/her ebay page:

http://myworld.ebay.com/minorinminorin
http://stores.ebay.com/mensgangu

The current page containing the actual kit is here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Windup-Premium-Gramophone-Kit-Gakken-SP-EP-LP-/360325048886?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e50bea36

It says "no English instruction" but if you scroll way down the page, the seller has actually included several translated pages, which are very charming. For now I won't post those here out of respect for the seller, but I did download them. If this page disappears, perhaps I will arrange to post them in this thread or in the manuals section.

Gakken makes or has made at least two related kits. The one which has been mentioned on this site is the "Cup Phonograph Kit in Edison Style" AKA "New Edison-style Cup Phonograph Kit". It records on cups as if they were cylinders. I look forward to checking it out. One minus I'd give that kit, compared to this one, is that it uses batteries for its motor. That seems a little impure, but geez, who are we to complain?

The other one I have found is the "Gakken Emile Berliner Gramophone," which seems to be an earlier, battery powered take on the same idea as the "Premium Gramophone" that I just bought. It may be out of production now. From its picture, it looks less like a Berliner Gramophone than the currently available kit. It is battery powered. I wonder how well it works.

I invite others to contribute their experiences with these kits in this thread! Any tips on getting them to work better are appreciated.

[Steve E.]

Another little thing about recording/playing back:

The grooves it cuts are very shallow. A playback needle will not stay in the groove on its own. It therefore requires the use of a "recording guide plate" to both record and play back the recordings. A second needle-like thing rides in the groove of a guide plate (which looks like a tiny black record) and determines the path of the recorded groove This is sort of the equivalent of the worm-gear found on Edison players. It is crucial to line the guide plate up with a marking or notch in the edge of the "record", and not deviate from the original lining up of the guide plate.

Also, if you switch out one needle for another one, you need it to maintain the same exact relationship to the groove that the original one had, otherwise it will not track. I do this by eyeballing the relationship of the guide needle and the reproducing needle. It gets complicated if you want to record at a more perpendicular angle, ("set the needle angle deeply"), which, I think, changes its relationship to the guide needle. I might be wrong on that....I find the geometry of tonearms confusing.

[MEGAMIKE]

HI Steve
didnot notice the new title and,, you said you were not and expert on all this ...well you know more than me ...
yes i just used the lathe to cut blank grooves with the diamond..
but all this extra info is awsome.
one thing i do notice, is the delay of the audio seems to go back and forth ,kind of like an echo from a large room..
cactus playback is fine the ones from oz are large and scary looking,but not all are native..
hope you had a good xmas and new year,iam just leaving for the bottle shop now and heading down the beach with my bag of records(no bootleggs) ..
31th dec 1230pm

[aidan]

firstly, thanks for sharing all this brilliant info.

I know less than nothing, but Im determined to record to disc acoustically, ideally on a medium that could be played on a modern player. some kind of sound quality would be a serious perk.

im gathering (from megamike's post) that you can record acoustically to a blank, 'pre-grooved' 'poly' by using a normal gramophone needle and a long cardboard horn replacement....

and Steve mentioned getting a better recording on the gakken toy by using a recordio needle and/or cactus needles....

from my naive perspective, it seems obvious to combine these ideas...

...Megamike's method of pre-grooved discs and horn replacement on a good wind up (such as an HMV 102) with a Recordio needle or similar, or a cactus needle, to get the best of both worlds?

im dreaming of unicorns and rainbows and compatible fittings, on a gramophone that does 33 or 45 rpm. but ...

does anyone know if there actually ARE wind-up gramophones that will play 33rpm or 45 rpm?

does anyone know if there is a theoretical hope in hell of combining a cutting needle with a wind-up gramophone to improve the sound?

megamike - I would love to hear what your recording sounded like. were you happy with it? Also, what was the material? Is 'poly' a normal standard material for blank records?

im expecting many hours of modifying and experimenting, but it would be great to get off in the right direction.

[Steve E.]

...Megamike's method of pre-grooved discs and horn replacement on a good wind up (such as an HMV 102) with a Recordio needle or similar, or a cactus needle, to get the best of both worlds?

I should try it sometime, since I have an HMV 102. I suspect the big hangup would be that the motor would not be strong enough to pull the disc forward, with all the weight of the needle that's needed to bear down to cut the record. As it is, I HAVE to use cactus needles to play an acetate on a windup (and understand, that acetate will wear out rather quickly). A steel needle will stop it in its tracks. You'd also have to LOCK the record to be cut to the turntable, in the same way you would on a normal lathe. So that's another modification to consider.

does anyone know if there actually ARE wind-up gramophones that will play 33rpm or 45 rpm?

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I am pretty sure that none were ever manufactured for sale. I think I'd have heard about that by now. You'd need to modify one. Actually, an HMV102 I just bought was running VERY slowly til I fixed it. I bet it ran at 45. Some of it was the old oil, and some of it was that the governor was misaligned. The machines ARE designed to allow readjusting of the range of speeds, and in a rather simple manner: There's a metal plate on the board, hidden under the turntable, connected to the standard speed adjuster, that can be loosened and slid to the right or left to adjust the range of speeds of the governor. Probably one of the most common secretly easy jobs a repairman had. That will be $10 in 1930's money, please.

Remember, 45s and 33's are microgroove records. A MUCH smaller groove than a 78. The basic problems playing them on even a modified machine:

1) Microgrooves are designed to be electrically amplified. They are inherently "quieter" on a physical level. A 78 with the same shape wiggle would be quiet indeed.

2) I can't speak to the exact physics, but the lower speed of the spinning disc corresponds to a lower mechanical energy being thrown at the diaphragm, which further "quiets" any mechanical reproduction of sound

3) These records are almost universally made of vinyl. They lack the hardness needed to survive the tracking force of the player's tonearm.

4) The narrowness of the grooves further makes them hard to track.

5) The machine will wind down before the end of a side, and depending on the nature of the engine mod, perhaps even before the end of the song.

I have one hand cranked machine with a double motor. It is an HMV 94 (specifically an HMV 94a). They seem much rarer than the HMV102s--I've only seen evidence of one other one on the internets. They use Columbia Vivatonal aluminum reproducers (soundboxes). The sound is NOT as good, but it's still pretty good. They seem to be related to the HMV 97 and the HMV 88...they may also be rebranded with other names, like Columbia, because that's who really made them. The point being that the double(-spring?) motor might be a good thing to get your hands on if you are going to do experiments. Mine runs for 9 minutes without rewinding, as opposed to the 6.5 minutes of an HMV 101 of mine. (I have not tested my 2 HMV 102s on that score yet.)

oh! Actually, I think my Brunswick Ultona from the mid-1920's also has a double-spring motor. They are out there.

megamike - I would love to hear what your recording sounded like. were you happy with it? Also, what was the material? Is 'poly' a normal standard material for blank records?

Poly is not a standard material for cutting blank records. it is harder than acetate. There are a couple of machines that are designed to handle it, and this is discussed around here a lot. The vinylrecorder annnnd....I am blanking. someone will chime in. There are things you can do to cut poly on other machines. The plus is that they are harder than acetates so they won't wear out so fast. The minus --I think--is that they will inevitably be a bit noisier, less hi-fi.

im expecting many hours of modifying and experimenting, but it would be great to get off in the right direction.

Please don't take anything I wrote here as a nay-saying. I would be VERY excited to see where you might go with this, in any number of directions. I simply hope to give you an awareness of what you are up against, perhaps to save you a little time and energy and to help you to focus your intent.

I forget what your record cutting experience is. If this is your first experiment, you MAY want to start out with something more conventional and work backwards. It could save you much grief and wasted money.

By the way, if you are going to buy an HMV 102, make SURE you buy one with a good 5A or 5B soundbox. The early ones came with a No.16 Soundbox. These soundboxes sound bad now, and they cannot be fixed. This is the voice of experience talking. I overpaid for one with a No.16 box, and I am now having to buy a 5A or 5B soundbox separately...and those are pricey! Worth it though, they truly do sound amazing. In general, for your playback device, I STRONGLY recommend an HMV 102....they are common, so you can get the black ones at a reasonable price. AND I have found they they are MUCH louder and do not put nearly as much wear on your experimental records. The other post-1931 machines made by the Gramophone company (HMV, Columbia, etc) are decent, too, as long as they have an aluminum soundbox. And they might be cheap.

I have a theory....I have not proven it yet....that if a reproducer is playing back your soft record more quietly that a 102, this very symptom is evidence that it is simultaneously destroying it. If you have a reproducer with a mica diaphragm and old, hardened gaskets, it will not "give" the way it should, and that rigidity means the needle is shaving the record. This may also be true of the shellac discs you play on such a device, but they may stand up to the abuse better--they certainly play louder, so they may "fight" back against the hardened gaskets. (I do know that my "quieter" 1920s machines wear out my home picnic plate discs faster, but this could also be due to poor tracking alignment or great weight pressure.)

Understand, too....when I say "cactus needles"....I mean new old stock of commercially milled and sold needles. They were an alternative to the steel needles. Then you'll need to buy an antique-era sharpener for them, on ebay. I forget that this is not common knowledge.

[Steve E.]

ok iam not an expert but heres what i do....

what you need ...a lathe and a 78 gramophone turntable.

Geez, I almost wiped out your original post by hitting "edit" instead of "quote"....the hazards of running the shop.

i didn't realize you've actually done this!!!! or have you? what kind of gramophone dd you use? can you post pix or a vid and sound samples???

[Steve E.]

While I'm at it, and revealing EVERYTHING I know on this topic.... the other secret bestowed on me: Pledge. As in, Lemon Pledge. The furniture polish.

I would not recommend it on your GOOD records or on things that will be tracked by your good stylus. But it works well as a friction reducer in a pinch. It is a good thing to have available to wipe into your grooves when experimenting.

Final trick, which I admit I have not tried: heat lamps. If you are working with unconventional media, warming them up might help. Remember, until the mid-30's, record originals were cut into a heated wax. You can hear an upsetting whistle at the end of the sides on a lot of Victor Records, right up through the early 30's. This was a byproduct of the heated wax cooling. As this even softer material was being used to cut the better-sounding records in the acoustic era, this could be an additional setback on returning to those days. I would guess that these would wear even quicker. Though....hmmm...don't people do instant playback demos of wax cylinder recordings?

[mossboss]

FYI
The noise was generated by the rather inconsistent particle size of the graphite that was sprinkled on the wax so as to make it conductive
Another source of noise again from the same material was the operator sprinkling it or if the stuff was a litle moist it would accumulate here and there but more so on the dead wax area as it was nice and flat
This source of noise dissapered when they started using vacuum and silver or even gold sputtering at around the early thirties and only after Vickers invented and patented the combined displacement and heated oil difussion vacuum pump letting out licences for its manufacture
The funny thing is they went away from it with the invention of lacquers as the lacquers released gases that ruined the sputtering process
My two bits worth
Cheers

[MEGAMIKE]

hi all sorry for lateness i was captured by monkeys,mated with the biggest one and then set free..

and no it does not work .it will only play back on a modern turntble with 78speed,but i gatherd that, as i was trying to play it back on the needle i cut it with ,even when pre cut with the vr....so it really defeats the whole purpose..

[skeffington]

Hi all - first post, so please be gentle!

I'm a composer from the UK and I'm working on a little project wherein I'm hoping to use either entirely acoustic recording or at least semi-electric (trying to rely as little on electricity as possible). So, yes, I find myself thinking along the same lines as the original poster - as to whether it would be possible to make recordings with a handcranked machine - obviously it's possible with the Gakken, so I was thinking of starting with the Gakken + mods as a prototype and then working towards a from scratch build...

So I was wondering whether you guys would reckon it feasible to mod the Gakken with either some sort of piezoelectric transducer type solution to pass signal from a mic/sound source to the 'cutting head' - or whether it would be possible to go further still and mod it towards being more of a 'traditional' type head with a tweeter type solution (as I've seen on so many of the great homebrew projects here already!)

Obviously the best thing I can do is get the damn thing and try it, but then if this sounds like the stupidest idea ever then maybe I'll save the cash and start from scratch instead!

That's all from me for now, I think, I'm off to browse some more of these brilliant projects!

[skeffington]

So - for an update - here's where I'm at:

I've received the Gakken kit and had a whole lot of fun putting the thing together and listening through a bunch of 78s. I started to experiment with various ways of putting sound through the diaphragm of the thing to try and cut something onto some CD-Rs/the little thin plastic discs it came with. All attempts have, thus far, failed miserably!

I'm currently trying to figure out - as a last ditch attempt with this approach - how I can most effectively attach a piezo-disc + steel needle combination to the arm of the Gakken. That is, to bypass the diaphragm entirely and go straight to the needle itself. I'll let you guys know if it works... But, as always, if anyone has any advice then it'd be much appreciated!

Unfortunately, if I can't get this to work I think the project will have to go on the backburner for a while as I can't really afford to buy in anything else (a proper handcranker like the OP and as per Steve's advice) to experiment with and am also pushing towards a deadline - so will need to work something else out! And quickly...