#cylinderplayer — Public Fediverse posts

Next #CylinderPlayer installment of #MusicWomenWednesday. Anna Chandler sings "That Mellow Melody".

Here's the Wikipedia article about her, which has some notes on her live stage career:

Chandler was a headline artist for the Orpheum Circuit. She sang songs in Hebrew and Italian almost exclusively during her career as a headliner on the Orpheum Circuit. On Broadway, Chandler portrayed Mrs. Anastasia Kidd in Jumping Jupiter (1911) and Bessie Bloom in Mendel, Inc. (1929).

She went on to have a career in (sound) movies and worked up until 1949.

Latest retro installment of #MusicWomenWednesday, Elizabeth Spencer sings "Love's Dream After the Ball".
#CylinderPlayer #Restoration

According to Wikipedia, "Her recordings for Edison Standard Records extended from around 1910 until 1916 and amounted to over 660 sessions, more than any other vocalist for the company"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Spencer_(soprano)

For our latest installment of retro #MusicWomenWednesday , here's Helen Clark and Orchestra performing "Good-Bye Sunshine, Hello Moon!".

#CylinderPlayer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Clark_(singer)

Our next retro #MusicWomenWednesday installment: Ada Jones in "Put on your Slippers, you're In for the Night".

According to Wikipedia: "During 1893–1894, she recorded for Edison Records on wax cylinders, making her among the earliest female singers to be recorded."

This recording is later than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Jones

#CylinderPlayer

I'm in the Pacific time zone and I down to the last half hour to sneak in an entry to #MusicWomenWednesday.
Here's "All Night Long" sung by Anna Chandler, on an Edison #CylinderPlayer
I'm not starting quite at the beginning since that end of the cylinder is slightly decayed.
Information about Anna Chandler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chandler
And more recordings of her at the UCSB Cylinder Archive: https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?query_type=keyword&query=anna+chandler&nq=1

@ai6yr Dyslexic Genius Hurt is great; I've learned a ton from watching him.
He has a lot of good #CylinderPlayer #restoration information.
(I assume his nom-de-youtube is a reference to Thomas Edison, the OG dyslexic genius, though perhaps he is too).

Meanwhile, back on the #CylinderPlayer project. I found an Edison speed governor that turned out not to be from the same model of player (different threading for the connection with the mandrel gear) but the weights were compatible so I put them on this machine's original governor. And now things are running pretty nicely.
#RecordPlayer #Restoration

Taking a detour from my #cylinderplayer project to look at a friend's Columbia #Grafonoloa #recordplayer. The symptoms are that if you turn the crank, you get a little resistance, then a little "klunk" sound, and then it freewheels. Sounds like a spring issue. Either detatched from the shaft or broken.
I should have taken a picture of the whole player, but here's the extracted mechanism, which I brought home to look at. And an add that shows more or less the model I'm working on,
Seems to be a deluxe triple-spring one, which gives you extra-long runs on a single wind, but means there's more places to check for a break.
That ad shows a girl listening to a Grafonola on a camping trip, like a steampunk iPod. I guess you could, but these things are a bit heavier than an mp3 player!

@14mission @ai6yr How cool, I love my cylinders! Most of my records are 78s though, pretty boring. People look at me like I"m a maniac when I mention growing my own cactus needles.

Following #CylinderPlayer now. I use #restoration a lot as well.

I've been doing listening tests on the Edison Amberola 30 #CylinderPlayer I'm restoring. With just a reproducer, you can hear the recording, but not really well enough to judge playback quality. But putting the horn on and off every time you assemble and disassemble the mechanism slows things down. So, I'm using a plastic funnel as quick easy-to-stick on temporary one.

The #CylinderPlayer I've been working on runs, but the sound has an annoying warble. I thought it might be the governor, but it looks like the mandrel (the slightly conical thing the cylinders slip onto) is a little bit bent. That could make cylinders sit off-center and account for the warble.

This is odd. Edison #CylinderPlayer s have these little screws so that you can adjust the level of the reproducer (and stylus) relative to the cylinder. My original player has one, but it's missing in the one I'm fixing up now. I have no idea what size it's supposed to be. I went to a local #ACEHardware and searched all over for one that would fit.
I found one that seemed to. But it's metric! That can't be correct, can it? It fits with a little wiggle, but so does the original, actually. They were only $0.47 each, so I took some home. Cheap enough to get as an interim and toss if I find a more accurate fit later. (Would have been a low-cost shopping trip, but they have a big display of jars of honey and BBQ sauce to catch you on the way out).
I will be consulting with the masters of the cylinder player internet over this.
#RecordPlayer

@Chancerubbage A friend of mine had an Edison salesman in his family (maybe actually my friend's father, but I don't remember for sure--anyway, that's not the important detail).
So the story I heard is that the Edison company used to do traveling demo shows. They would bring a singing celebrity, and hide him or her behind a curtain, and hide an absolutely top-notch non-production "lab model" #CylinderPlayer behind another--and challenge the audience to guess which was which. And people couldn't tell.

Well there's my problem. Took a little twisting etc with a copy of pairs of pliers and it's working again. Whew!
That graphite/grease combo is so nice and silvery. #CylinderPlayer

Nooooo..... that sound means the spring is slipping off of the shaft and I have to take the whole #CylinderPlayer apart again to fix that :(

Since the reproducer of this #CylinderPlayer is going to be a whole project unto itself, I borrowed the one from my main player--and machine actually made some noise!

This is the carriage that the reproducer of the #CylinderPlayer rides on. It was formerly covered in a thick layer of decayed 100-year-old black paint. I find sanding therapeutic.

The mechanical bits of the #CylinderPlayer are reassembled and running.
#RecordPlayer

This is the #CylinderPlayer mandrel, which holds and rotates cylinders. It was a bit grungy. I got it shiny again through a combination of Dremeling with various attachments, steel woll, and elbow grease.

Finally a nice sunny day so I can spraypaint the baseplate of the #CylinderPlayer.
I was probably a little heavy-handed, and that might show with a really close look at the paint job.
On the other hand, this machine was late in the production run of these things and the steel was kind of mottled, I think from a sub-par casting, and I wanted to hide that.

The #CylinderPlayer baseplate is ready for painting.
I taped over areas I didn't want paint on, like the mandrel bar, and the whole bottom.
The raised rail that the carriage slides on should be left unpainted, but I have a feeling whatever I do, some paint will sneak in. So I'm just going to paint it and sand the paint off afterwards.
There are lots of little holes where screws or moving parts need to go, and I really don't want paint in there, so I improvised with straws and bamboo skewers and more bits of tape.
If you're into building or fixing *anything*, I recommend keeping a pack of small bamboo skewers around. They're great for cleaning up gunk from tiny parts, or applying tiny precise bits of glue pr paint.
Now I just need a sunny day.
#RecordPlayer

Back together.
Won't know for sure if the spring is really hooked correctly til I get the whole machine together and can wind it up to its maximum tension.
The small gear engages with a gear on the crank shaft for winding the spring up.
#CylinderPlayer/#RecordPlayer

A few shots of how these parts go together. #CylinderPlayer/#RecordPlayer

It fit together but the spring didn't catch on the hook on the shaft, so I had to open it up and use a couple of big pairs of pliers to tighten up the innermost curve of the spring.
It's good to test that before actually putting the lid etc on :)
#CylinderPlayer/#RecordPlayer

I did at least take a good picture to show how these pieces fit together. The right end of the shaft you can see here goes into the middle of the spring (it has a hool for the hole in spring but you can't see it). So there's a metal disk that's like a big washer, I guess, and a felt ring, and then the lid of the spring can, and finally a big ol' gear that the spring turns to make the #CylinderPlayer/#RecordPlayer work.

The #CylinderPlayer spring is back in its can.
There's nothing to stop you from doing this backwards.
It's good to take lots of pictures during disassembly.... I did, but none really completely 100% answered this question.
Fortunately there are videos out there. I've learned a ton about fixing these machines from YouTuber "Dyslexic Genius" and he has a whole video for the process of spring packing.
#RecordPlayer

Since the the #CylinderPlayer main spring repair looks good to go, I'm preparing a batch of grease to pack it with.
The historical formula used by the Edison company was 50/50 petroleum jelly and graphite powder.
I'm basically following this but substituted a modern synthetic lubricant called "lightning grease", which is supposed to work a little better (but admittedly, looks pretty gross).
Graphite powder is funky stuff. You just can't imagine anything being that slippery!
The resulting mixture is a metallic goo, and kind of neat.
#RecordPlayer

With a bit of bending etc, the #CylinderPlayer now fits on the shaft and catches on the pin like it's supposed to (did a bit more bending after this picture).

Time to trim off the broken-off bits from the end of the #CylinderPlayer spring. This is fun!