Re: [ARSCLIST] Exit Grooves on Shellac and Early Vinyl

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Shoshani wrote:

> But what is interesting - and seems sort of pointless -
> is that Victor cut an additional concentric groove just outside the
> recorded material.  This groove BREAKS to permit the runout portion to
> exit. Why this was added is anyone's guess, but it stayed on until
> Victor switched to a spiral-out system in the mid 1930s. The broken
> concentric continued with Victor's low-priced Bluebird label, which
> did not abandon the double-eccentric until the early 1940s.

This extra groove didn't disappear until about 1940, actually, along with the
double-eccentric (which seemed to disappear in New York before the Chicago
studio stopped using it). Canadian Victor did not add this groove on its
electrical recordings, nor on matrices it pressed from HMV and which were not
issued in the US, but American Victor DID add it to imported matrices. It's
also worth noting that post-war reissues which came from unused parts or
alternate takes don't have the extra groove (at least not on Canadian
pressings..the US was probably more inclined to dub to a new master at this
point anyway).

dl