# Any Shellac Collectors?



## bigshot

Sometimes I feel like I may be the last person on earth who maintains a large collection of classical music and opera on 78s. I have run into a few others in my travels, but they tend to be "postage stamp collectors" who care more about the rarity of a particular record than the music on it. I like the sound of 78s... Electricals have rich, full bass and a super strong midrange that suits vocal records in particular. Acoustics have an unearthly presence that makes it seem like the performer is in the room with you. They almost never sound like that when they're reissued to CD.

About ten years ago, I dove into shellac collecting and amassed quite a lot in a very short time. Most of it was given to me by collectors who were abandoning records. I set up a transfer and restoration station on my computer and experimented with capturing the true sound of the 78. It was much more difficult than I thought. A lot of digital tools wipe out the upper midrange frequencies that give 78s their unique presence. I finally arrived on a needle size and shape strategy that totally contradicted general theory among other transfer guys, and a workflow of equalization pre-emphasis, impulse noise reduction, equalization correction and very light broadband noise reduction that smoothed out the noise without dulling the signal. I haven't heard many commercial recordings that sound like mine.

Then I started searching out pristine copies of the iconic recordings that I loved... Schnabel's Diabellis, Walter's 1935 Walkure Act 1, Kajanus' Sibelius, etc. and set to work creating my own transfers that were the absolute best I could manage. Schnabel's Diabellis were the toughest. I invested hundreds of hours of restoration, going over the waveform inch by inch. I threw out what I had done three times and started over, refining my technique as I went. I spent so much time with these recordings that I ended up putting them away five years ago so I wouldn't burn out on the performances I loved.

I moved into a new house and finally had the chance to build the listening room that I've always dreamed of. Over the holidays, I pulled out my 12 year old rsstoration computer and set it up so I could pull the files off its hard drive. I've begun listening to the transfers I made again and I'm falling in love with them all over again.

I'm completely committed to digital audio, and my music server is the best thing that ever happened to my listening hobby. But there is something in those old dusty grooves that the record labels are missing. I just listened to Walter's 35 Walkure Act 1 and it was as if Melchior was standing in the room with me. Phenominal. I've never heard anything quite like it, even on modern recordings. The power and driving force of the Vienna Philharmonic in the opening practically knocked me to the floor.

Next up to listen to is Rodzinsky's third act with Traubel and Bohm's Act 3 of Meistersinger from 38. Then perhaps the Diabellis. Hog heaven. Now I need to upgrade to a new restoration computer and set up my transfer station again. At this rate it might tae me 1000 years to get through all my records.


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## Sofronitsky

How would you recommend starting to collect to someone without a record player, or a clear way to acquire them? Or would you recommend it at all I wonder... hehe


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## Guest

I still have a few 78s but never play them the 10 inch only had a playing time of 2 1/2 min per side from memory and the 12 inch not a lot more, imagine having to change records every 2-3 min in a symphony, what ever the faults of the CD they are user friendly.


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## bigshot

78 collecting is the cheapest hobby imaginable. You can get a great turntable and needle for $200, and all you have to do to get records is to scan the classifieds and call up sellers and offer to haul away their records for free. I was given a huge collection... it filled the bed of a pickup truck. Lots of great stuff.

I transfer them and join the sides and burn to CD, so the short running time isn't an issue.


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## bigshot

Just as an example, here is a section of my transfer of Bruno Walter's 1935 Die Walkure Act 1 with Melchior, Lehmann and List. I have several copies of this recording on CD, but none of them sound like this. I don't think most record labels really care about making these old recordings sound like clean 78s. Instead they try to make them sound like flawless modern recordings by cranking up the broadband noise reduction and they end up neutering the sound. Listen to the presence of the voices when you do it right!

Drop these AAC files into iTunes and they'll play through gaplessly. This is the last quarter of the first act.

12 Der manne sippe sass hier im saal
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/12.m4a

13 Dich selige frau halt nun der freund
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/13.m4a

14 Du bist der lenz
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/14.m4a

15 Wie dir die stim so offen steht
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/15.m4a

16 Siegmund heiss' ich
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/16.m4a


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## Guest

bigshot said:


> I transfer them and join the sides and burn to CD, so the short running time isn't an issue.


That seems to defeat the purpose of the hobby?? So why not use the turn table and be a purist??


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## joen_cph

Hi,

interesting reading, thanks. Personally I own and collect a lot of LPs, but have abstained from 78s, mainly because I don´t have space or a player for them (one of the old models with a cone-shaped metal loudspeaker would be cool to have, though .

... One can make great finds for practically nothing here in Copenhagen (multiple albums of orchestral and opera recordings, for instance), but the market is so subdued that 78s are also thrown out in large quantities, sadly. The collectors seem to be more interested in popular and jazz music, whereas I practically never see a Danish classical collector of 78s in shops / flea markets.

There are a couple of collector´s websites etc. here also; they are mainly in Danish:

http://the-discographer.dk/ 
http://shellack.dk/

I´ve noticed though that the sound of 78s can be surprisingly good, if played on the right equipment, like you say.

How do you organize you shelves as regards the shellacs, since their covers are often without texts ?


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## bigshot

Andante said:


> That seems to defeat the purpose of the hobby?? So why not use the turn table and be a purist??


Because the point of collecting 78s is to 1) get music not otherwise available and 2) restore the sound better than record labels do. It's not about playing disks. 78s, LPs, CDs... Everything gets digitized and added to the music server.

The exception to that is the acoustics which I mostly play on a Victrola because electrical transfers don't sound as good.


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## bigshot

Acoustic gramophones are a whole other issue. I bought an inexpensive cabinet Victrola and some Caruso records and I was totally blown away by the sound. Acoustic phonographs aren't thin and scratchy sounding... They're LOUD and they pack a punch. There are several interesting acoustic principles that gramophones take advantage of that modern stereos have never even considered. (I won't bore you with those theories...) I did a test with a record that was recorded acoustically. I tried to do an electrical transfer that sounded the way the same record sounded on my Victrola. It was extremely difficult to accomplish. Most record labels transfer acoustic records pretty much the same as they do electricals, but this doesn't do them justice at all. It would take a lot of experimentation to come up with a practical work flow for transferring acoustics. Maybe I'll work on that someday.

I have thousands and thousands of records, and when I moved a couple of years back everything got totally scrambled. I've given up on organizing the shelves. I just keep the files on my music server organized. That has well over a year's worth of music on it.


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## Taneyev

@Bigshot. I agree about major part of collector lookings for stamps labels and rarities. Know one that buys it on Buenos Aires just to sell on Ebay. But anyway, to do that is necesary to know a lot about singers, players and labels. You need to get rare catalogs and bibliography. It's much more complicate than to collect CDs.


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## bigshot

Well, it depends on whether you're a collector who goes out looking for a specific item, or a collector who trolls for batches and then culls through them for the treasures they contain. It's very difficult to be a record collector who is looking for specific titles. You can find most everything at ebay eventually, but you are going to pay dearly for it. I didn't do that though... For the most part, I just let people know that I collected classical LPs and 78s. My collection came to me courtesy of friends and friends of friends who wanted to clear out their basement or garage. I have thousands and thousands of records buy I only paid for a few dozen of them.


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## AmateurComposer

I am not sure whether or not I understand you correctly, bigshot. You say something about lost frequencies. Do you claim that the 78 records have better fidelity than later technologies? If so, is it because of inherent flaws in the later technologies or due to poor quality control or deliberate negligence during record production?


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## bigshot

The 78 is not a high fidelity format, but they can have great sound nonetheless. A lot of CD companies that reissue 78s on CD overuse broadband noise reduction filtering that smears over crackles and clicks. This ends up chopping off the top end of the frequency response too. There are better ways to remove noise... Impulse noise reduction and throwing noise out of phase... These techniques take a little more work and aren't as smooth sounding though. CD companies think people will complain unless all surface noise is obliterated.


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## Guest

Well I must admit that hiss crackle and pop do rather spoil an evening of music for me.


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## bigshot

Did you listen to the samples I posted?


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## Guest

No I did not, there is not much point trying to evaluate audio on a PC, I never, never listen to music on a computer.


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## bigshot

Easier for you to hear what I'm talking about than to explain it in words... But in a nutshell, you can remove 90% of the noise without impacting the music at all. But cleaning up that last 10% always results in blunting the music. It particularly impacts vocal music because the enunciation of the consonants sits right in the same frequencies as the noise. Remove that and Melchior is singing into a pillow.

There's a psycho-acoustic principle that the exact same music with rolled off highs sounds totally different if there is a light bed of hiss underneath it. Without the hiss it sounds muffled. With the hiss the ear is tricked into thinking the music contains higher frequencies that it actually doesn't. My goal is always to reduce the noise to a small, even bed of hiss, not stone silence.

If you hear it and compare it to CDs where all the noise has been removed, you'll hear what I'm talking about.


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## moody

Andante said:


> Well I must admit that hiss crackle and pop do rather spoil an evening of music for me.


 Listen to the music not the crackles...people like me grew up on 78's, by the way they were not all at 78 which is another problem, you must have a variable turntable. This was a problem with many transfers to LP.
I was at a music museum in Suffolk and the chap there played a record on a gramophone with a horn as big as me, it was extraordinary the singer could have been standing next to me.
The biggest 78 dealer in existance is Roger Hewland at Gramex behind Waterloo Station in London.


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## Guest

*@bigshot* I have no doubt that what you are doing works very well, the thing is (if I have it right) you are doing this because you want recordings that are unavailable any other way so you kind of rip from the old 78s and convert to digital in the best way that you can.
I have absolutely no interest in this whatsoever. To my way of thinking a "Shellac collector" listens to the original recordings.
I want my listening to be as Hi Fi as I can afford, I have been to Vinyl only evenings with our local music group and the results are absolutely staggering but the equipment involved is so expensive, so my own system with CDs just has to fill the bill for me.


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## Guest

moody said:


> Listen to the music not the crackles...people like me grew up on 78's, by the way they were not all at 78 which is another problem, you must have a variable turntable. This was a problem with many transfers to LP.
> I was at a music museum in Suffolk and the chap there played a record on a gramophone with a horn as big as me, it was extraordinary the singer could have been standing next to me.
> The biggest 78 dealer in existance is Roger Hewland at Gramex behind Waterloo Station in London.


As I said earlier an evening of hiss, crackle and pop has in the past driven me up the wall. no thank you.


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## bigshot

Andante said:


> *@bigshot* I have no doubt that what you are doing works very well, the thing is (if I have it right) you are doing this because you want recordings that are unavailable any other way so you kind of rip from the old 78s and convert to digital in the best way that you can..


Actually, I'm doing it because the muffled, over filtered transfers that I often find on CD drive me up the wall. I want 78s to sound the best they can. Thankfully, they sound great, and as moody says, hearing an acoustic recording on an acoustic grammophone can be an amazing experience. There are many acoustic principles at play in acoustic reproduction that even the most modern digital sound systems don't address.

Also, your vinyl friends gave you an incorrect impression... Putting together a good sounding system for playing LPs (or 78s for that matter) isn't expensive at all. Records are the domain of music lovers. The equipment is relatively simple. Some audiophools make more of it than they need to.


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## Guest

You actually said:


bigshot said:


> Because the point of collecting 78s is to 1) get music not otherwise available and 2) restore the sound better than record labels do. It's not about playing disks. 78s, LPs, CDs... Everything gets digitized and added to the music server.
> 
> The exception to that is the acoustics which I mostly play on a Victrola because electrical transfers don't sound as good.


Now this is basically what I said???



bigshot said:


> Also, your vinyl friends gave you an incorrect impression... Putting together a good sounding system for playing LPs (or 78s for that matter) isn't expensive at all. Records are the domain of music lovers. The equipment is relatively simple. Some audiophools make more of it than they need to.


I do not understand why you say records are the domain of music lovers? and they are not my Vinyl friends we are a group of music lovers that have very good Hi Fi systems with some geared up for Vinyl as well as CD would you not agree that any self respecting music lover (as opposed to a collector) would want to hear their music as near to the original as possible? In my experience that is just not possible on a cheap/inexpensive stereo system. But if you are happy and enjoy inexpensive units to reproduce you music then that is entirely up to you.


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## bigshot

It's been my experience that those who make a fetish of high end audio equipment do it because of OCD and ego. The bragging rights of having a stereo that costs as much as a house is more important than the music they play on it. These are the kind of people who ascribe sound quality to formats and price tags and ignore the obvious ways to achieve great sound in any format, from record to CD to MP3.

When it comes to playing records, it's a buyer's market. Excellent turntables were made for many years and ebay and thrift stores are full of great sounding ones selling for very little. A good Technics, Dual or Thorens from the 70s and a $100 cartridge is all you need to get great sounding playback of LPs. Add a couple more cartridges and headshells and an equalizer and you're ready to play 78s. Take a trip to a local swap meet and you'll find stacks of great sounding records for a buck or two a disk.

Good sound with records is less a matter of money than it is common sense.

If you want to know the real reason that certain records sound better than the same recording on CD, it's because of the mastering. It isn't hard to get great sound out of records, but many CD labels don't take the time to do it right. They turn the dial up to "10" and think that fixes it.


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## Guest

You obviously have different experiences than I do! it seem you have a chip on your shoulders concerning music lovers with decent set ups and audiophiles in general, I still have my first Technics stereo set which sounds OK until compared to my present system the difference is remarkable, in terms of cost my Hi Fi set up cost about 10 times more than the Techniks but is really only entry level compared to what is on the market.
But you are happy with what you have and I am happy with mine.


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## bigshot

Your Technics is probably out of alignment.


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