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Wax Cylinders

paddlissimopaddlissimo 58 Posts
edited May 2009 in Strut Central
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  Comments

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    Probably not.

    Though it sounds cool to me.
  • jammyjammy remixing bongo rock... 813 Posts
    D.I.T.C. - Diggin' In The Cylinders
  • karlophonekarlophone 1,697 Posts
    i have one, in a great box/container, in beautiful deep blue wax. i forget the song (have no player). id actually buy more just to have them kicking around if i ever saw any. i could have bought a box of like 50 of them back in '92 for almost nothing, but didnt know what i was looking at at the time.
  • hemolhemol 2,578 Posts
    Pow:

    http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/
  • AKallDayAKallDay 830 Posts
    yes.

    unfortunately my entire family has the record bug in some way shape or form.
    here are some, they are made of beautiful thick bakeite:



    .....belonging to one of my uncles who has one of the oldest existing working edison record players in the world:



    here of course is his edison, he is nothing short of obsessed with it and knows how to fix it too. it's actually very cool to watch, you wind that thing there on the side and you watch the arm spin through the glass, the sound through the horn is pretty serious:




    this was at a holiday dinner, he had everyone geeking out about it, that's him and my brother to the left, and a cousin and my grandfather to the right, all of whom collect records. i need to be the one to break the cycle someday:

  • hemolhemol 2,578 Posts
    b/w

    I'm reading this book on the history of the phonograph/gramaphone, and did y'all know that the cylniders were not manufactured? Each one was recorded in person, with the maximum amount being 10 simultaneous cylinders. In order to keep stocked Columbia et al. hired musicians that played the same songs over and over and over again....
  • jammyjammy remixing bongo rock... 813 Posts
    remember way back when at the roosevelt that seller held onto those cylinders until prince-b arrived?
  • anasarcasmanasarcasm 365 Posts
    AKallDay, thanks for sharing the great pics/story. I've never seen a cylinder in person. Read an interesting, related story here.

    "Bishop Museum hopes that the long-lost voice of King David Kalakaua ??? recorded on a wax cylinder as he lay on his deathbed 118 years ago ??? might be heard again through modern technology."
  • hemolhemol 2,578 Posts
    Whatup A*a? How's music?
  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqZWsJ2oO_E
  • paddlissimopaddlissimo 58 Posts
    wow AKallday, thanks for sharing the photos!



    This is the model I have, the edison home phonograph. Not quite as snazzy as your uncles.

    it's kind of mind boggling that people are still making cylinders, whereas 78's are dead and buried.

    http://www.berlinphonographworks.com/
    http://www.poppyrecords.co.uk/CXP000/cxp000.htm
  • karlophonekarlophone 1,697 Posts
    b/w

    I'm reading this book on the history of the phonograph/gramaphone, and did y'all know that the cylniders were not manufactured? Each one was recorded in person, with the maximum amount being 10 simultaneous cylinders. In order to keep stocked Columbia et al. hired musicians that played the same songs over and over and over again....

    thats the crazy part - every cylinder is a unique recording. Every one that was ever destroyed, destroyed the only copy of the specific recording that was on it.
  • paddlissimopaddlissimo 58 Posts
    later on they did figure out how to mass produce them, those early brown wax cylinders really are treasures though.
  • holmesholmes 3,532 Posts
    i got a hold of a huge trunk of cylinders & early records of all sizes from my great uncle when i was in my early teens, i had nothing to play the cylinders on & then at a drunken party a while later we thought it would be fun to smash/squash/melt/bend them, there was probably a good 50 or so cylinders in there, all demolished. the records were all binned later on too, heaps of those super thick edison discs etc. the jazzy stuff was the last to go a few years back when i got shot of most of my 78s.
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