[Dixielandjazz] Needles and gramophones

[Snogpitch]

I started laughing when I read this paragraph, as I remembered back in my
college days, 1981 or so, I took my console Victrola (1923 model 215
http://pages.prodigy.net/snogpitch/vic.html ) along for the school year.  It
was a chore lugging approximately a couple hundred 78's up 4 flights of
stairs, but I was a couple decades younger then.  Once I got my Victrola in
place in the dorm room, my roommate looked at me and asked what I planned to
do with that?

I proceeded to look for some Al Jolson 78's in one of the boxes, put in a
fresh needle on the reproducer, then sat the record on the turntable.  I
asked my roommate "How loud do you think this will play?"  He just shrugged
his shoulders.  I turned back around, gave a few cranks on the windup,
opened up the doors to the horn, and placed the needle on the edge of the
record.  Let me tell you, he was blasted out of the couch, as the 40's style
recording played louder than we normally would play our electronic sound
machines.

The next door dorm mate came over to investigate the noise, and poked his
head in our open dorm room door.  "Hey guys", he yelled, "could you turn it
down a bit?"

I smiled and yelled back, "come on in and see if you can find the volume
control, I can't seem to find it!"

Needless to say, he came into the dorm room, looked all over the console
opening shut doors, but never shutting any.  After the song finally ended, I
went over to pull the tone arm over to it's resting place.  At this point,
he looked at me and asked, "OK, where is it?"

I told him that it was a non-electric machine, showed him that I needed to
crank up the machine for the next record, it had no volumne knobs, and he
just shook his head and walked out of the room.  At that point my roommate
had a devilish grin on his face.

No one complained after that!  :)  I guess the word spread quickly around
the dorm.

BTW, I could hear my roommate playing that same recording the next day as I
was walking down the hall on my way to the college green.  I just started to
laugh and continued on.  It seemed he loved those 40s Al Jolson records.
Normally, I gravitated to the quieter 20s danceband recordings (Isham Jones
Orchestra, Benson Orchestra, etc) of my collection.

And to keep it on-topic of needles, I would rotate the needle a 1/3 turn in
the reproducer after each side.  Each needle would only go for 3 record
sides, then get thrown away, or get used to tack up a new poster onto the
dorm room wall.  I had learned early on that you could not play both sides
of a record on this Victrola using the same needle and not rotate it in this
fashion.  Call me a thrifty college student, but it seemed to work just
fine.

On 11/10/05 7:22 PM, "Anton Crouch" <anton.crouch at optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> 
> Hello all
> 
> Tom's scenario of his record player being left in the street reminds me
> that that was how I acquired my wind-up gramophone. It's a late 1920s HMV
> "Mahogany Grand", in lovely condition and it came full of 78s and boxes of
> steel needles. My uncle found it, literally, in the street and gave it to
> me. It's one of my party tricks to carefully wind it up, play a record and
> demonstrate the use of the doors as a "volume control".
> 
> 
> All the best
> Anton
> 


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