Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Tue, 28 May 91 08:42 EST From: "Chuck Bennett (919)966-1134" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Did Western Electric Also Produce Sound Recordings? Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 405, Message 1 of 7 Lines: 51 "Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> writes: > At WTSP in St. Petersburg, FL we did all those things, right > up into the late 1950's. We had two major "transcription libraries," > The World Transcription Service and the Standard Transcription > Library. Both were 33-1/3 rpm recordings on "16-inch" disks, as the > size was called. Western Electric's piece of this was evidenced on the > Standard transcriptions, which were "vertical cut," that is, the > needle action was vertical in the groove as opposed to lateral in > consumer records. There were claims that "vertical cut" was > higher-fidelity than lateral cut. > To play them back, we had "transcription heads" on the > turntables that could be switched to use either vertical-sensitive or > lateral-sensitive pickup windings. (Yes, windings ... these were > BIG, clunky, long playback arms that while very well-balanced, weighed > a pound or so it seemed. To play a warped record, we'd set a line of > lead type from the composing room on top of the > playback head! Other stations had to use a 50 cent or dollar coin.) The "verticle cut" transcription was of higher fidelity for various reasons. One was that very little equalization was applied (as I recall there were only two or three curves where as lateral had two families and about three or four members in each family), another was that the disks themselves were virtually impervious to the rough treatment that was typical at a radio station (a radial scratch or abrasion was not picked up by the vertical, "hill-and-dale", tracking cartridge). The tonearm was the WEco 5A. Typically in black crinkle finish it had a five pound lead counter-weight. The cartridge was the WEco 9A also in black crinkle or natural satin finish and weighed in a 1 pound! The cartridge had a four pin, male connector that mated with the 5A arm and a thumb screw on top that secured it to the arm. These were the (I believe) very first "moving coil" cartridges which are so much in vogue in highend audio circles today. The stylus was removable/replacable and was a 3 mil spherical diamond on a short vertical shank. My dad did some of the design, engineering and testing of these devices as well as WEco's line of speakers. There is a picture of him in the anechoic chamber at Bell Labs in either Murray Hill or Whippany, NJ. Chuck Bennett INTERNET: uchuck@med.unc.edu Medical Sciences Teaching Labs BITNET: uchuck@unc CB# 7520 University of NC PHONE: 919-966-1134(w) Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7520