I have a few hundred or so 78s and intermittently go through periods of digitizing them, with the eventual goal being to have the whole collection done.
Some of them are old enough to run at non-standard speeds, so a long time ago I bought a turntable that can do 71.29, 76.59, 78.26, 80, etc. It works OK, but it doesn't have quartz-lock and, frankly, just isn't that stable speed-wise. It doesn't wander enough to be audible, but it's one of those things that annoys me because it just shouldn't happen at all.
So a few weeks back I got the bright idea to see if anyone ever made a 78 stylus for a P-Mount cartridge, thinking I'd use my Technics SL-Q6 to digitize at 45, then use SoX to adjust the speed to any arbitrary value and additional software to deal with the equalization. Turns out there's a $47 P-Mount cartridge out there with a 78 stylus, so I went ahead and ordered one.
Well...two issues: I think the 1.25 gram default P-Mount tracking force just isn't enough for some 78s. The first one I tried was a Harry James and it sounded flat-out awful. Obviously, there's a lot of trumpet, but it just kept "tearing" (I hope I'm using the correct term). That is, some of the sound was just missing. On top of that, it turns out that linear trackers generally auto-return based solely on where the arm is located without taking into account velocity. Or, in English, if you're trying to play a 10" 78 with a small label, you won't be able to play the last few seconds of the record because the arm will lift off too soon. Those old records track farther inward than modern ones do and the linear tracker just won't work.
On the other hand, I got a pretty solid capture of a 1906 12" Victor with a big label. Played it at 45, digitally sped it up to 71.29 and it worked pretty well.
Some of them are old enough to run at non-standard speeds, so a long time ago I bought a turntable that can do 71.29, 76.59, 78.26, 80, etc. It works OK, but it doesn't have quartz-lock and, frankly, just isn't that stable speed-wise. It doesn't wander enough to be audible, but it's one of those things that annoys me because it just shouldn't happen at all.
So a few weeks back I got the bright idea to see if anyone ever made a 78 stylus for a P-Mount cartridge, thinking I'd use my Technics SL-Q6 to digitize at 45, then use SoX to adjust the speed to any arbitrary value and additional software to deal with the equalization. Turns out there's a $47 P-Mount cartridge out there with a 78 stylus, so I went ahead and ordered one.
Well...two issues: I think the 1.25 gram default P-Mount tracking force just isn't enough for some 78s. The first one I tried was a Harry James and it sounded flat-out awful. Obviously, there's a lot of trumpet, but it just kept "tearing" (I hope I'm using the correct term). That is, some of the sound was just missing. On top of that, it turns out that linear trackers generally auto-return based solely on where the arm is located without taking into account velocity. Or, in English, if you're trying to play a 10" 78 with a small label, you won't be able to play the last few seconds of the record because the arm will lift off too soon. Those old records track farther inward than modern ones do and the linear tracker just won't work.
On the other hand, I got a pretty solid capture of a 1906 12" Victor with a big label. Played it at 45, digitally sped it up to 71.29 and it worked pretty well.