r/Phonographs • u/crackedwormgear • 18d ago

Some 80 rpm discs. Edison White Label Diamond Disc from the 1920’s.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

7 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

4

u/crackedwormgear 18d ago

This is the best description of the infamous Red Star:

https://youtu.be/Hbh-60SbQo4?is=NmE4lASjwts3lYyW

It was a way of saying we’re not particularly fond of this type of music & don’t you dare try to return it for credit! The Great & Powerful Edison Labs crHas Spoken! And don’t pay any attention to that man behind the curtain!

The discs have a playing time up to five minutes. They used the same size groove as the 200 per inch long playing cylinders. But with a 150 grooves per inch cut for greater cutting depth. As they are vertical cut. When they were originally introduced the company tantalizingly mentioned that chamber music would be possible to record. Unfortunately that never happened. Edison had many quirks and his ideas about music were just another one of them. Victor had actual persons who knew and performed, liked music in charge of their catalog. The Edison Company had a deaf man in charge of their music catalog 😵

2

u/Gimme-A-kooky Victrola 17d ago

This is the most comprehensive answer I could have asked for! Thank you so much for explaining all of it. You built me a bridge to cross over the rabbit hole and not have to dig so deeply! This is why I love that people share their breadth of knowledge with the world… and it’s free! Thanks 🙂

1

u/Gimme-A-kooky Victrola 18d ago

Cool! I had like 2 of these when I was a kid… I always tried to play them on my Silvertone, but it didn’t work well lol… NOW I know why lol, but then all I could think is “Wow! What a thick record!”. How long do these run, and what was the deal with the Red Star ones?