You might be old enough to remember record platters, but you probably aren’t old enough to remember when records were cylinders. The Edison Blue Amberol records came out in 1912 and were far superior to the earlier wax cylinders. If you had one today, how could you play it? Easy. Just build [Palingenesis’] record player. You can even hear it do its thing in the video below.
The cylinders are made of plaster with a celluloid wrapper tinted with the namesake blue color. They were more durable than the old wax records and could hold well over four minutes of sound.
The player is mostly made from wood cut with a mill or a laser. There are some bearings, fasteners, and — of course — electronics. The stylus requires some care. Conventional records use a lateral-cut groove, but these old records use a vertical-cut. That means the pickup moves up and down and has a rounder tip than a conventional needle.
Rather than try to control the motor to an exact speed, you get to set the speed with a potentiometer and see the resulting RPM on a small display. Overall, an involved but worthwhile project.
We recently looked at some players that would have been new about the same time as the blue record in the video. We don’t think you could modify one of these to play stereo, but if you do, let us know immediately!
Good timing! I started trying to cobble together a player yesterday, now I have a reference 😁
A former coworker had a few of the wax cylinder records, I wanted to get one and hack a old linear tracking record players to play it. Unfortunately I was never able to acquire one.
I am sure you have to be super careful with the cylinders during ‘testing’. Wouldn’t want to ruin those old recordings.
That said, lots of laser cut parts there to get right. Good job.
“Edison Blue Amberol Records” are virtually indestructible compared to the older wax cylinders so it’ll be fine.
That sounds pretty good for an Edison cylinder.
The trick with vertical cut is to use a stereo cartridge and wire it out of phase.
that stylus arm movement is quite jerky. I’d have like to use a leadscrew there. i’d imagine there’s a fixed gear ratio between that and the cylinder voice thread.
Question for you guys who do a lot of laser cutting: is there a way to stabilize the plywood after it is cut so it won’t warp with changes in humidity and temperature?
My experience with laser cut plywood is limited to maintaining an old makerbot 3D printer from back when they used to build them that way, and that thing warped like crazy.
I’ve been waiting for vinyl loving audiophiles to re-discover cylinders. A standard LP runs at a constant angular velocity resulting in the needle in the groove moving at a linear velocity that varies greatly from the outside to the inside of the record. Attempts were made to create CLV records, but any variance in speed results in degradation of the sound output.
Cylinders on the other hand are constant linear and angular velocity. If made with the same material as an LP, with the same needle and pickup then a potentially superior playback could be achieved. The choice of cylinder diameter and rotational speed could be chosen to have the optimal needle speed.