Looking for 16 rpm

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Quadro-Klaus

Member
Joined
May 12, 2008
Messages
22
Location
Germany
Hi Quad-Fellows!
My first hobby is quad, but there is a little part of me collecting old formats. From Edison Phonograph-walzes to 78 rpms and some other exotic stuff like the German "Teffifon"-Format. I'm also missing a record with 16 rpm in my collection. I know, there are some "spoken" recs in US but also some recs were pressed to listening in car-turntables with 16 rpm. Also a french record company (I think Vogue or so) did some music records at 16 rpm.

Are there any 16 rpms avaiable? Will someone sell an item? I would be pleased. Thanks
 
My dad had several 12" 16 RPM records. They were all mono "dinner music" albums. They were supposed to play throughout an entire meal without one having to turn them over. That was their purpose! Said so right on the jacket!

I still have one of them, 'Hawaiian Style Dinner Music'. Instrumental, no vocals, and not very 'HiFi'.

I also have a 'Spoken Bible' that was my grandfathers. It's on several 16 RPM disks. Once again, mono and not very 'HiFi'.

Not interested in selling either of them, though.
 
I have about 100 or more of the old Seeburg 9 inch background music library records that play at 16 2/3 RPM (all mono though).
I have 2 Christmas music sets of 25 records each and many mood and basic records as well.
You can usually find a few or whole packages on Ebay for reasonable prices, depend on who the seller is.
I got one Christmas collection for $25.00 (for 25 records... mint too)
yet I have seen one record go for $20.00 so keep looking and good luck!

-Bob
 
Hi ! Thanks for theses replies also for the links to this beautiful vintage highway player. I often looked at ebay. There is a special heading for 16 rpm, but most of the offered items were wrong in this heading. I will keep on searching.
 
So it seems all the 16RPM's mentioned so far are mono.

Has anyone seen any Stereo or Quad ones out there?
 
Yes. In addition to the quarter-mil groove Highway Hi-Fi 16-RPM discs which need a stylus four times smaller than a 1.0 mil mono LP stylus or three times smaller than a stereo LP stylus to play, there are plenty of Stereo 16 RPM discs.

Allied Artists in the 60's had a very limited run of Stereo 16 RPM titles in addition to their mono catalog on colored vinyl.

Vogue has several in France, and a few are stereo.

South Africa has a TON, but all mono. Look up `16 RPM' on YouTube.

Will Kennedy's Dance Time orchestra is probably the most famous stereo 16 RPM as well as the most readily available.
These have a clock face on the cover, different releases with the different covers, maybe a dozen in all.

Prestige Jazz has a half-dozen mono titles you can occasionally get on eBay for $20-30.

Seeburg titles, and their Rowe-AMI counterparts whether the 9-inch 2-inch hole hourlong/side discs or the 14-inch two-inch-hole two-hourlong/side discs are indeed all mono and best played with a zero-point-five mil stylus (0.5), 2/3rds the size of a stereo LP stylus.

The 7-inch 1.5-inch 45-sized hole versions by The Audio Book Company in St. Joseph Michigan has both vinyl and styrene titles, pressed by both CBS (you can see the ZSP number in the dead wax) as well as RCA (you can see the`S' number (1S, 2S etc) in the dead wax) and carried both spoken-word selections on blue labels, and musical selection excerpts on the red label.

Be careful though. They look and feel EXACTLY like a 45 from the 50's and can get very easily lost in a stack of singles at a swapmeet. You have to look for the telltale microgroove cut, the AudioBook logo, or the red or blue label. Then they also had a 3-inch center-hole superflex vinylite version of the Old Testament and New Testament in a nice leatherette binder and box. If you find one with the 3-inch turntable adaptor, even better.

You can use the same adaptor to play Aretino 78 RPM records with 3" holes.

And The World's First 16 RPM Music Disc just sold on eBay for a mint, eBay Item number: 370120454377 in poor shape no less, as did a copy of the South African Best of Gentleman Jim double album in the rest of the world, 16-RPM single disc in South Africa.

There's also the 12-inch colored-vinyl mono Lingua-Phone discs, and plenty of mono Christian Science Monitor 16-RPM LP's with the braille on one side you can find in thrift shops all over. Since these were all cut on the first system discarded by RCA New York and trucked down to Kentucky, you can play the musical number included on each one and be astonished at the fidelity from a 16-RPM. And speaking of Talking Books, there's plenty of 8-RPM flexidiscs around.

And finally there's the mis-masterings of several Mobile Fidelity, Nautilus, CBS Half Speeds, and various people's CD-4's that exist in test pressings only. Some fool forgot to take the tape player down to half speed when they were cutting the lacquers and several of these were plated and sent to test pressing before the error was discovered. Then supposedly the test pressings were set on a counter to be discarded when they disappeared out the door during the lunch hour one day, and now they float around the vinyl world occasionally.

As far as eBay 16-RPM category being mostly wrong, I used to eBay-Note everybody who had their record mis-classified in 16-RPM and all except for a couple re-classified their listings. But you'd have to have a dedicated cadre of guys to ebay-Note all the guys every other day just to keep the section unpolluted with 33's. The few guys who refused to re-classify their records wrote a nasty note back talking about the better coverage being in the wrong category.
 
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Hi folks!

Thank you very much for the lot of replies. I learned much about 16rpms, I didn't know before. I now will repair my old turntable with 16 rpm.

But don't care, my first topic will be Quad.
 
On a related subject....anyone know where I can find a turntable strobe that has a 16rpm row to align the speed of my DD turntable for the few 16rpm discs my dad has to transfer?...Thanks in advance for any info
Mike
 
On a related subject....anyone know where I can find a turntable strobe that has a 16rpm row to align the speed of my DD turntable for the few 16rpm discs my dad has to transfer?

This is probably too vague to be useful to you, but 10 or more years ago there was a DOS program floating around out there that would let you print your own strobe discs. You'd input the desired speed and it would create one for you.

If you find something like that, just remember that it's officially 16-2/3, or exactly half of 33-1/3.
 
16rpm turntable strobe? Mike
Almost all the companies had 4-speed strobes back in the day.
Plenty of audiophile websites have `em, a Xerox of one out of any number of record books or magazines works just as good as the real thing, and then there's always Craigslist and eBay.

What turntable is your Dad transferring them off of?
What cartridge and stylus?
Remember what we said up above about stylus-size for 16's.

Only the stereo 16's that SAY stereo on them (or stereo-compatible, which means they were cut with a 0.7 mil stereo cutter and can be played back like an LP) can be played normally like an LP.

Everything else needs the one-mil mono, half-mil mono or quarter-mil mono stylus to track properly, all of which I have here in the Transfer Center.
So tell your Dad to A) never transfer 16's at 33 even if they are low-fi, and B) be careful when he transfers the 16's into the computer to make sure the stylus is the right size and the tone arm is the right weight and the anti-skate is set right since the grooves are so shallow, it's tough to do.

Or like I said, he can ship the lot of them to San Francisco and we can do a professional transfer and restoration job right here.

If I know the titles, I might already have done transfers and restorations for another guy, since 16's are one of my specialties.
 
I saw your blog and I have some 16 rpm sealed in their original package. My late grandfather was in the record business. Actually he made a few himself. His name was Will Kennedy. The records were recorded under his company Dancetime Records. I have multiple copies. Contact me if your interested.
 
I saw your blog and I have some 16 rpm sealed in their original package.
My late grandfather Will Kennedy was in the record business and made a few 16 RPM himself under his company Dancetime Records.
I have multiple copies. Contact me if you're interested.

Too funny. That's the first place I heard of Stereo 16 RPM LP's with the clock on the front.
I have three of the LP's 1602, 1604 and 1606 and a few of the 16-RPM mono Dancetime 45's and always wondered how many titles were made.
 
Hi folks,
I'm still interested in the topic of the 16rpm format and I'm still interested in getting information and records.
Best regards
Klaus
 
Hi Quad-Fellows!
My first hobby is quad, but there is a little part of me collecting old formats. From Edison Phonograph-walzes to 78 rpms and some other exotic stuff like the German "Teffifon"-Format. I'm also missing a record with 16 rpm in my collection. I know, there are some "spoken" recs in US but also some recs were pressed to listening in car-turntables with 16 rpm. Also a french record company (I think Vogue or so) did some music records at 16 rpm.

Are there any 16 rpms avaiable? Will someone sell an item? I would be pleased. Thanks

Hello I have a 16 RPMrecord I have never seen one,I was curious as to what is the difference from other LP's

[email protected]
 
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