Re: [ARSCLIST] 78's - transfering to cd

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm forwarding this to the ARSC list.

Steve Smolian


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jakubs, Craig" <Craig.Jakubs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 11:24 AM
Subject: 78's - transfering to cd


Steve -

Ran across an article about recording 78's that mentioned your name as one
with "the answers" :)

Here's my situation -

I¹ve got a bunch of old 78 kid records that my sister and I used to listen
to, along with some really old (1944) phono-booth 78¹s that my dad recorded
his whistling and singing.

Wanting to put together some cd¹s of all this for my sister¹s birthday.

I¹ve got
technics sl-1200 mk2  - shure M95ED
technics sl-1100a        - stanton 681EEE
(also a B&O, sansui and hehehehe something else I can¹t think of right now
:)

I also just bought a shure M78S cartridge and stylus just for the 78¹s

I was originally planning on using Audacity, recording the records at 45,
then in software adjusting them to 78, but thought that I might get a better
recording just playing them at 78 (or thereabouts :) instead of doing the
software adjust, so started looking into mods for my turntable

I ran across a couple mods, supposedly run in pop elec back in OE86 or so (a
simple procedure adding a 120k in parallel with an 18k on the board which
bumped speed up to around 80), but they were actually for an SL-1300 ­ which
has a vastly different board/circuits than the 1200 and after playing around
a bit last night realized that I¹d have to do some more research to find the
³45 rpm² freq oscillator circuit (essentlially should be just a resistor and
cap) and see if I could at least bump the speed up to ³close² to 78, then
use the pitch control to tweak it

I¹ve seen some companies out there that offer it (sounds like they put in a
new speed board and control board or something, so you get 33, 45 and then
the 45 button will act as a ³shift² button when pressed WITH the 33 and the
turntable then runs at 78rpm) but for the limited amount of records I want
to transfer (maybe 20 or so) it¹s not worth the $189 or whatever they want

The I started thinking about the ³physics² of it all ­ and now am thinking
that recording at 45 might actually improve tracking, and only have a
minimal loss of VERY low freqs, maybe below 30hz or so

I¹ve played with AUDACITY and it seems to work well recording at 45 and in
software speeding it up to 78 (73% speed increase) then doing all the
noise/click/eq etc...

So now my questions to ya -

1 ­ do you know of any mods to the technics 1200 that convert it to 78 rpm?

2 ­ although it will take almost twice as long, do you think that 45 will
actually give a better actual recording than 78? With the amount of info
actually ON the 78¹s, would it really be worth it?

3 ­ will the software ³correctly² convert the 45 to 78 speed without messing
up the sound (audacity has standard 33-45, 33-78, 45-78 speed conversions
built-in and people on the boards seem to think it works just fine

4 ­ any other software you¹d recommend instead of audacity? Cheap?  :)
especially noise reduction software/filters etc.

5 ­ I can use the N78S stylus on either the M95ED or the M78S ³mono²
cartridge, which cartridge would be better?

6 ­ the M78S currently has its pins bridged to output mono ­ if I use stylus
over on the M95ED should I also bridge its pins? Would that give me better
sound/less noise?

Anything else you can tell me or steer me to would be appreciated

Thanks in advance for your help
Morelater
The show doctor

Please respond to -  showdoctor@aol  -  my emails been acting up lately,
thanks again