Good questions, they obviously look like they sound, the surface is dulled out and discolored from the tightly wrapped white cotton over the years, you can actually hear the introduction and the music but the loud continuous SCRATCH sound makes them undesirable for listening. Is this a B or an A ? maybe I have the two confused, I am going back to the reference book to check this one. There is an original 14" Edison Horn with this one, and just looking at the gearing I would say it is a conversion to play 2 & 4 minute cylinders. Also when I got home I did some further checking in the interior of the Cabinet and found the early H 4 minute reproducer with the gold colored tinge on the outside inside. A bonus ! since I thought the machine only had the original C reproducer with it. Why were these 28 cylinders never removed from the storage boxes ? As you said, a story we may never know.
Bruce ----- Original Message ----- From: "Glenn Longwell" <[email protected]> To: "Antique Phonograph List" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2010 10:28:22 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Fwd: New Old Stock Edison 2 minute Black Wax Cylinders. Great find Bruce. It's unfortunate not to be able to play them though. So what do they look like? Are they shiny and would expect them to play well and they don't? Or do they look like they sound? I'm picturing in my head a heat damaged 78 that is real dull. Did you end up with the Standard B as well? Interesting timing and wonder why they would have these. The earliest B was from late 1905. I wonder if they were given a bunch of "old" cylinders with it and they just never got played. A mystery we'll never solve... --- On Thu, 4/8/10, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [Phono-L] Fwd: New Old Stock Edison 2 minute Black Wax Cylinders. To: "Phono-L" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, April 8, 2010, 12:04 PM I recently picked up what certainly appears to be a box full of 28 New Old Stock Edison two minute Black Wax cylinders from around 1902-1903. The boxes were right on the cusp of the change over from the Box which included Echo All over the World (without the term Gold Moulded), to the First Boxes to use that term in late 1903. What convinced me that these boxes and cylinders were new old stock, is that all 28 Cylinders were each carefully wrapped in cotton, and some still had the remnants of the old paraffin paper that was wrapped around the cotton. Now the hard part. Since I am equally into to Records as I am into old Phonographs, and enjoy playing my new finds, I certainly wanted to see if these records were playable. This certainly was questionable as the lady that sold them to me, said that they had been stored for many years in the Attic of an Old House, and had somehow managed to be salvaged, along with a nice converted (2 & 4 minute) Standard B Edison Phonograph, from a horrendous fire that destroyed the house many years ago. The seller said she was always afraid to remove the tightly packed cylinders from the boxes, because they were so fragile and she feared breaking them. I decided when I got this box of cylinders home to open maybe half of them to test out the condition of the cylinders. I was able to remove them by grasping the inner projected edges of the spiral inside the cylinders and gently nudging them out. Unfortunately, the pressure of the tight packing against the grooves all these years,along with the extremes of heat and cold had from the attic storage had taken its toll on the playability of these early Two Minute Black Wax cylinders, and you could play and understand the selection but the continuous loud scratching sound, made them undesirable for listening enjoyment. Still it was the very first time I have happened across any new/old stock cylinders, and the boxes themselves are not that common, they are shown as Types D E & F on Page 153 Allen's ECR "Edison Cylinder Records" 1889-1912, and I do still have about half the boxes untouched and undisturbed remaining in their original New Old Stock form complete with the cotton and remaining parafin wrapping just as they left the Factory back in 1902-1903. Bruce _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.oldcrank.org _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.oldcrank.org _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
