Re: [ARSCLIST] Fragile records,was Reel-to-reel tapes: storage conditions and potential content retrieval

[Roger and Allison Kulp <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>]

Not shellac,vinyl.Anybody who lives with a large collection of shellac 78s,knows how goddamn breakable they are.I will grant you this is more of a problem, with 78s from the 40s,50s,and 60s,than it is with pre-1920 records.I have accidentally knocked early single face records on the floor,and have them survive unscathed. But the later 78s (Later being after 1930 or so,from all countries.),are so fragile, that the slightest variation in temperature,or just a scintilla of too much pressure on them,will cause them to snap in two,or shatter into pieces.

 And as time goes by,these records seem to get more and more fragile.  

I recently had this happen with my Siemens/DGG Herbert Von Karajan set.The set had been sitting,outside of an album,in sleeves,in a box sandwiched between other 78s.I had not looked at these for years.I pulled them out last month,and to my horror,all but two of the records in the set were broken.In the past two years, I  have received four 78s,in the mail,that seemed very well packed,a late Australian Elvis 78,an Argentine Bill Haley,a Lord Kitchener,on Melodisc,and an unplayed Fee Bee Del Vikings.All of these arrived in pieces.I am having serious doubts if I will ever buy or ship any more shellac.

                                       Roger

"Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" 
> The point is that AudioTape claimed that its Mylar tapes would withstand the
> heat and humidity of the jungle. If so, they did better than Guiomar Novaes'
> lacquer discs from a Town Hall concert which I attempted to transfer some
years
> ago..they were so deteriorated (humidity plus storage in an acidy record
album)
> that only about half of each side was playable.
>
> If you want to hear about a tape that shouldn't have played well at all even
> when it was new, let alone 47 years later, I found a reel of Brand Five 1-mil
> acetate when I cleaned out my parents' basement last year. On it were two
> airchecks of concert broadcasts in Toronto by Sir Thomas Beecham, recorded by
> yours truly. 3 3/4 ips, quarter track mono, these two concerts on the outer
> tracks. No twists, no curl, and they played beautifully. And that was a brand
> we were told AT THE TIME was garbage.
>
Well, the message here is (IMHO) that if we plan to have our sound
recordings preserved forever (+/-) we should revive the production
of shellac-compound phonorecords!! I have shellac discs well over
a century old, which sound no worse than they ever did...!

Since we know that magnetic tape has a finite (or,often, less)
useful life...and that CD's and DVD's will return to their
totally-blank original state in one or more decades...we need
to:

1) save all extant sound recordings in the lateral-cut shellac-
discs format...AND...

2) Develop a method of saving digital data on shellac disc...!

Steven C. Barr


       
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