Re: [Fwd: WQEW make your move])

["Stephen R. Low" <gordian1@concentric.net>]

>How would you run 78's off of a changer.  Most of the 78's that I've seen
>were fairly heavy shellac deals that were prone to chipping and cracking.
>As they stacked they'd likely crack and slip on each other.  They were also
>about twice the thickness of an LP.  Hopefully this guy has dubbed them
>onto CD's or at the very least carts.


You must be under 50!

Record changers were invented FOR 78s and they are not so fragile that a
changer poses risk of "chipping and cracking." (Don't drop them, though!)
Using a changer was the only way you could play a symphony with minimal
interruptions. When 78s of these long recordings were distributed (in
albums--hence the continued use of the word for LPs), the sides were
arranged so that you would load the first half of the records, wait for all
to play, and then you would manually have to flip the entire stack (which
had dropped to the turntable) and turn them over. Thus for an 8-side
recording, the pairings on each record would be (1/8, 2,7, 3,6, 4/5).

You're absolutely right about the slippage problem. In fact, in later years
(the LP era, I believe) changers were set up so that the rotation of the
turntable stopped when a record was dropped.

The hi-fi and stereo era recognized another problem, too. As the stack of
records got higher and higher, the angle of the tone arm on the record being
played would change. I'm foggy, but I seem to recall that there was an
attempt by some changer makers to compensate for this. In the end, hi-fi
aficionados forsook the changer for the turntable for the reasons you (and,
now, I, have mentioned). With LPs, it would still be necessary to flip the
record in the middle of the work, though--no different from the days of 78s.

Steve Low

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