Hi Jon,
Man, you are barking up one of my favorite trees! I've been
experimenting with acoustic phonos and reproducers for several years now. I
have been active in the record playing, sound recording, and record, tape,
and CD making businesses for most of my career (when I wasn't designing
solenoid valves for automatic transmissions). I didn't get interested in
the old-timey players, both acoustic and electronic, until about 10 years
ago. So my interests now span the entire range from the dawn of recording
thru early electronic, the dawn of hifi, stereo, and quadraphonic (now
called "surround") sound. The history of recorded sound and the various
technologies employed along the way are constantly fascinating to me. In
particular, I'm one of the few people I know who are interested in
"squeezing the turnip" to see how much more blood we can get out of it.
Which has led me to do a lot of experimentation with acoustic reproducers,
both the Edison vertical types and the lateral types, particularly as used
on the last models of acoustic players.
The Victor orthophonic models are all excellent examples of the late
acoustic art and the model VV 4-3 is a fine candidate for exploration. The
Victor orthophonic horns are probably the most accurate ever made for
consumer use. In fact, you really cannot readily obtain a large exponential
horn today as a new manufacture. About all you can find now are the smaller
horns used for tweeter and midrange drivers in sound reinforcement systems.
So if you want to play with full-range size horns you just about have to
either buy one of the old ones made in the late 1920s or make your own.
Making your own is a very tedious business, but I know people who have done
it with very good results. One of the things I was curious to find out was
what was the limiting factor in the Victor products, the reproducer or the
horn. I have convinced myself now that the biggest Victor horns were
substantially better than most people realize because the Victor orthophonic
reproducer was not as good as the horn. Although the reproducer was a
revelation in its day and one of the best designs available, some
compromises needed to be made in its design to make it more robust and user
friendly for consumer use. These came at the expense of audio performance.
I have built some prototype experimental reproducer designs which
produce about an additional octave of frequency response beyond what the
Victor was capable of. I can confirm that it is possible to get better
treble AND better bass from an acoustic reproducer than I have heard
available in any commercially made design. Another thing I've learned from
experimentation which has confirmed my understanding of the physics is that
you can't make a "perfect" acoustic reproducer. That is, you can't have
extremely wideband response AND low tracking force AND low distortion AND
sufficient volume. These goals represent mostly conflicting priorities in
the acoustic technology, so you are faced with having to make choices about
which goals you value most and in what priority you want to place them.
Compromise is necessary. It's still a turnip! There's only so much blood
available.
You asked about other reproducers and other competing technology. As I
said above, every designer has to make compromises in the design of a
reproducer. Different manufacturers made their own unique compromises in
their products, so they all sound a little different. One of the latest
efforts to get the most blood out of the turnip was done by a company called
EMG in England. I won't go into detail here, but the designer finally
settled on making a variety of reproducers, each "tuned" for particular
types of music. You would purchase the type of reproducer you wanted for
playing large orchestral, chamber music, or vocals, for example. This was
an acknowledgement of the fact that universal perfection was not possible,
but you could stack the deck in favor of the type of music that you wanted
to hear. The EMG machines are highly valued today, largely because they
were custom built, they were expensive, and not many were made.
The Victor orthophonic reproducers were all originally intended to be
rebuildable as they screw together. But many of the potmetal ones have
warped, shrunk, and otherwise deformed such that now they either cannot be
taken apart or they have already cracked or broken. It is possible to find
a good potmetal one, and if you do you can rebuild it completely. The
original brass ones are easy to rebuild, but they don't sound quite as good
as the newer ones and they command a very high price - they usually bring
around $300 for a nice one.
Anyway, good luck in your endeavors and I'm sure you'll be pleasantly
surprised by how good these late machines can sound. I'm not sure how far
to take this discussion into the realm of experimentation on this Phono-L
list. Many of the readers here aren't interested in experimentation, and
some consider any messing around with the original design to be heresy and
concomitant to the propogation of "frankenphones". Oh, blasphemy! So, you
can contact me off-list if you want to go into more details.
Greg Bogantz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Noring" <jon at noring.name>
To: <phono-l at oldcrank.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:43 AM
Subject: [Phono-L] Some questions about Orthophonic
reproducers --restorability, reproductions
> Everyone,
>
> I'm not a collector of older phonographs, and know I'll never be one,
> but I am interested in acquiring a spring-driven Victor Orthophonic
> phonograph, probably the VV 4-3 (Consolette successor) with modernized
> cabinet. It is my understanding a restorable VV 4-3 should not be hard
> to find -- a lot of them were made (seems like 5 times as many as the
> top-of-the-line Credenza/8-30 which is the "dream" machine among many
> collectors -- Credenzas are amazing phonographs, having listened to a
> couple in my life.)
>
> I'll use it to play non-collectible electrical 78s, mainly as a show
> piece in the family room. It will also be a first step in studying
> higher fidelity mechanical/acoustic playback systems which *does*
> interest me...
>
> My impression is that the most critical component of an Orthophonic
> for good audio performance is the sound box or reproducer, so I'd like
> to get a more detailed understanding of the Orthophonic reproducer,
> including its restorability.
>
> While I was visiting Jerry Blais in Oregon (again, thanks Jerry!) he
> provided me a quick overview of the Orthophonic reproducer, and
> mentioned that it came in two varieties: brass and pot metal. The pot
> metal ones are much harder to restore and only a few people have
> learned the knack to restore them, while the brass is easier to
> restore. It does appear the brass ones were made for the earlier
> models and are rarer and more sought after -- there may also be aural
> differences between the two with, supposedly, the pot metal sounding
> better.
>
> Anyway, that's my present understanding based on piecing together
> snippets of information from a variety of sources...
>
> So, among the other Orthophonic experts here, what is the full scoop
> regarding the reproducer, particularly with respect to the aural
> differences vis-a-vis brass vs. pot metal, and restoration issues?
>
> And who are regarded as the top people providing Orthophonic
> reproducer restoration service?
>
> I'm also curious to know if anyone has ever attempted to make a
> reproduction Orthophonic reproducer out of brass or other more
> durable metal, maybe using more modern materials for things like
> rubber components (if it has any -- never seen one taken apart to
> know what non-metal parts are inside!) I'm actually interested in
> reproduction reproducers as part of my interest in mechanical/
> acoustic playback systems. Heck, if an Orthophonic reproduction
> reproducer sounds as good as an original, I'd have no problem
> using a reproduction reproducer for everyday use and put away the
> original (if still working) for safekeeping...
>
> (If anyone here has studied the audio fidelity aspects of mechanical/
> acoustic playback, feel free to privately email me. I'm especially
> interested in published research in the 1920's on "high fidelity"
> acoustic reproduction.)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jon Noring
>
>
> (p.s., is the Orthophonic considered the epitomy of acoustic playback,
> or did some other company make an acoustic playback phonograph during
> the late 20's and 30's that supposedly had even better sound
> reproduction?)
>
>
>
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