[jambutty]

I’m disappointed Wynnonie Harris! I thought you played your 78’s on a windup gramophone with a horn and everything and maybe even little Nipper listening with you. Think of the exercise that you could get winding the handle. To those who haven’t a clue what I’m on about, Nipper was the name of the dog as he listened to His Master’s Voice on the gramophone. Used as the HMV logo. See picture.

The sound quality may not be a patch on the sterile sounds from modern record players but it had that special olde worlde character about it that makes 78’s music so special. Well it does for old gits like me. And that is why I sampled all of my 78’s and turned them into digital sound, to preserve that sound. Apart from that the fragility of 78’s means that they are always liable to be broken accidentally and once broken that is that. Except that is not necessarily so. I have a Beniamino Gigli 78 that is cracked from the hole in the centre right across the record so there are about 200 loud licks as the stylus crosses the crack. But I have been able to eliminate each one so that you cannot hear it. Well I haven’t actually finished yet but those clicks that I have sorted, you can’t hear. They are still there, it’s just that you can’t hear them. I should finish it any year now.

The needles that were mentioned weren’t referring to styli for turntables WillowTheWhisp. You can still get those at any decent record shop. These were actual steel needles – a bit like a very fat pin without the head that got clamped in the diaphragm of the pick-up arm. Believe it or not after a number of plays of the old 78’s the steel needle had the point worn off and you had to replace it with a new one. All gramophones had a small well in the unit that held spare needles.