I've got around 20-30 broadcast transcription discs. I remember when I got my first ones around 20 years ago I ended up building my own player by taking off everything but the turntable from a 70's BSR changer, using some of the changer mech and a long screw to make a new tonearm pivot then extending the round tonearm's back end by slipping it into a drinking straw and sticking the straw on the pivot...I probably had a bit more tracking force than ideal for the cartridge lacking a counter weight, but it played remarkably well. Been on the hunt for a cheap 16" capable player since then and a year or 2 ago 3 such units fell into my hands in a matter of months. One of which was a 50's broadcast station TT that came with an entire western series of 16" transcriptions.
I have a couple of 16 inch transcriptions, and a friend with considerably more. There's all kinds of variation: some are inside start, some vertical cut etc. I play them on a Garrard 401 with a SME 12" arm.
Clever. You need a tone arm for 16" transcriptions! I use the SME 3012 on a Thorens TD 124, but cheaper arms that work well are around. E.g., the Shure broadcast arm made throughout the late 60's and 1970s is a great value. Yes, it has a plastic angled head shell, but it is a serious, professional arm. They sold new for about $100! There are others as well that are not over priced. Remember, not a lot of people use longer arms, so drive a hard bargain. You will need to build a base for the tone arm and attach it to your table so that the angle, pitch, etc. are stable and resonance isolated. For a cartridge, The best for the money is a Shure M44/55. A nude, hand-made stylus of any size and shape you want are also surprisingly inexpensive from Expert Stylus, Ltd. in Surrey England. I was getting them for under $100 per stylus, but that was a few years ago. They almost last forever and when you see them under the microscope you will know why they sound better than any other stylus. The are NOT drum polished.
Ingenious idea for playing it. I don't have anything that will play them, but my friend George does, so he puts the ones I find on MP3s for me. We recently visited a radio station in central Texas that's moving to a new building after decades in one spot. We had permission to check out the record storage closet to see if there was anything that needed preserving. They had two stacks of 16-inch discs, stacked up horizontally, about three feet high each. They'd put a piece of plywood over the top and were using them as the base of a makeshift table to hold up some old cart machines! There were a few programs like these that I rescued, but most were from a '50s-era music service. In the days before record companies sent radio free promo records, they would subscribe to services that had name artists record versions of top tunes of the day for subscriber stations. I found about 20 cuts by jazz accordion pioneer/singer Ernie Felice and eight by Vic Damone that I couldn't find had ever been released anywhere else. The Felices are cool because my wife's dad used to play in his quartet and we know his son. We also know Vic Damone's daughter, so I gave those records to her. She's looking onto restoring and releasing them.
7:30 16" record on that turntable looks ridiculous haha 😂 9:58 Looks like a standard tonearm lift on that LP7 - those can be removed by unscrewing the black screw on the right, then a slight pull. Make sure the spring doesn't jump out across the room. 10:48 Spinning the record in opposite direction of the stylus/cantilever is very bad for the record, unless you're using a DJ cartridge... I don't think that's a good idea for a "rare record", also because the tonearm offset is very likely to be incorrect, so the tracking angle is incorrect too. That makes it push the stylus tip against one of the two groove walls even harder.
In the early 1960's, my dad worked in an AM radio station and the only time I've seen 16 inch records was at his workplace. I recall that one record held children's stories. I've never seen them again. Of course, the turntable and tonearm were huge.
Frances Langford! The GI Nightingale! I sometimes wonder what will happen to my records when I die. They're lovingly collected, and will be thrown away I expect. Ah, life...
While it was a novel idea to use one turntable to rotate the record and another turntable's tone arm to play, the record was going in the opposite direction that the stylus tracks, and the offset angle of the arm and cartridge would seem to be forcing its way through the groove. You might have some major cue burn. Do these discs use a 78 stylus or an LP one?
I have a Federal Civil Defense "Stars For Defense" 16 inch record with Jeri Southern on one side and Les Paul & Mary Ford on the other. I have been compiling the ultimate Jeri Southern audio collection and found this record on eBay.
Transcriptions were standard procedure back in the day. Most of the AFRS discs were Live Performances taken from radio broadcasts, and others were commercial recordings that feature a narrator along with the recording artist, and that included interviews
LIKE number 7. Great video, Recordology. I've really missed your daily videos (but I understand they take up a lot of time and you had to cut back). That's the problem; you spoiled us with daily videos. Haha! All the best. :)
Nicely big shellac - you should make your own intro video with these, smashing them against side of the grammophone! 😃 Aww not shellac?! Keep looking 😜
Does anyone know what song sounds at the intro? EDIT: that's an interesting improvised tonearm pod! And a great one at it's cost considering actual tonearm pods are priced around 1200 dollars.
I want to get a record player to play 16-inch vinyl records. or how can you do some arrangement on a regular turntable to play them? I have more than 50 of those great records, I think they are all in English. I live in Fresno California.
Good improvising! An idea for storage/display: place each record between two pieces of glass, then make a 'custom' wooden frame to properly frame. You could hang them after framing and it will protect both sides of the record surfaces; it could also straighten out the warp(s). What is the end track on each? - perhaps a government warning? New rarities to look out for in the wild: Have a look on Discogs for the Little Wonder label. A lot of the early ones have both label and reverse sides etched! They are 5 1/2 (five and a half) inch 78's, of which over 40 million were sold, according to Wikipedia! Most are unique (edited?) versions of songs at only 1-2 minutes in length. Quite a lot are anonymous to save on revenue! Very interesting, 1914 onwards; I wonder how many still exist and if they can ever be found today?
I don't know when or if the shipping costs will get cheaper, and maby it was a bit too rash, to say to you that I have some V Discs, but I didn't know at that time that the shipping situation is so complicated
16" Transcription records are standard groove not microgroove. Therefore the size for 15 minutes per size. BTW I have shelf after shelf of these "treasures" Up for grabs.
@@Recordology Fast response! I have just bought a vinyl collection recently and found a lot of these 16 inch records. I haven’t looked at them all but I have seen that they are all from the Armed Forced Radio Service. I’ll have to take a look to see if there are any Glen Miller or AEF. Is there any titles I should look for? I have tried finding the 16 inch records on discogs but it is hard since these vinyls don’t have the songs and artists listed. For example, I have one that says “One Night Stand” but there are multiple versions on discogs that have this title. What should I look out for?
@@Recordology Just looked through a whole bunch right now and yes I do have Glenn Miller, he appears on transcription records titled “G.I. Jive” and I found a few of them in my collection.
There is a company that modifies the Technics SL1200 with a rear-mounted tonearm to accommodate the larger disc. I’ll be damned if I can remember their name!
I have seen 10,000 of these in a storage bin. The guy worked at a big radio station back in the day. I was going to buy them but NOBODY has info on them or any worth. Been to many collectors who have no idea what Im talking about
hi know the usa base had big scully 14 inch decks 100% and i just don't know what they were used for i have one not working scully and not great decks i am a tec love the way you did the work a round
Radio transcriptions on the World Program Service label do. Same for early Standard Program Library radio transcriptions (From 1934 when the label was formed by Jerry King, to 1940. In 1940, they switched to outside start.)
I have a collection of transcription discs; the reality is you need a custom-built turntable to play them. If you're interested, hit me up and I'll be glad to pass on any information.
16 inch transcription records were often also 16 rpm, which really wasn't suitable for music, only talking. The fidelity was super low. I have a couple hundred WWII 12 inch 78rpm V-discs made from Vinylite, which I have played on my Alabama Public Radio show, Getting Sentimental Over You: the program of big band memories, which can be heard on Sunday afternoons at 5 p.m. Central time, at www.apr.org
Do I have any? No. I could get some off of Ebay, as there are always some for sale, but frankly I'm scared off by how difficult they'd be to store and play. Also, owning them would be a complete novelty, because it's rare to find one that hasn't been taped or digitized for circulation among old time radio collectors, of which I've been one for 50 odd years. You can probably find these particular shows already on RUclips. One Night Stand is a particularly common show. The Purple Heart show might be a little more rare. One thing of note, even though they play at 33, they still need a 78 stylus. And if you really want to play them without the expence of buying a transcription turntable, find a junk turntable with a flip needle. Take the tone arm off of it and mount it on a block of wood of appropriate height. You should be able to position it so that it will track the entire surface of the record. That way, if you can't stop the sides of the record from dragging, you can put as many records under it as you need to get it clear of all obstacles. And then you just raise the tone arm to that height. As a side note this method is also used to play cylinders. Though you still have to make something to spin the cylinder at 180 rpm. And you need to enable the tone arm to track linear. But figuring out how to do these things is all part of the fun. BTW, if you really want to get a turntable made to play them, some school record players were made to accommodate records of that size. You'd have to research which ones and watch for them on Ebay. They'll be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as broadcast turntables.
P.S., it's Jeff again!! Why not 👎 get a good 👍 quality record cutter ✂, and ditch digital? I know 👌 this involves blank discs, but you'd be preserving history that way. You would only need to use these transcription discs once, to record onto your blank ones. Ya can still put these discs away. Ya would have to also invest in a transcription record player. Maybe one could be sitting in a dumpster, behind a radio 📻 station 🚉. I miss those crackles and pops with digital. It's not 👎 history. Also, as with conventional size records, store these on end, do not 👎 stack them, such as in a room in the house 🏠, that ya don't use. Make it your "Transcription Hall Of Fame". I think I just heard ya say that this transcription record player has a magnetic cartridge. Your friend, Jeff.
I own a 16-in vinyl record recorded "for recruitment purposes" by the naval aviation cadet choir pensacola, FL in mint condition. With the record is a 2-page "fact sheet." Description: "This 16-inch radio transcription, containing 14 tracks of music performed by the Naval Aviation Cadet Choir, is provided to our for your music library and for public service broadcast in the interest of Naval Aviation Cadet recruiting. The Navy hopes that you will find it a valuable addition to your library and will have occasion to use it often. The record comes in a special thick cardboard sleeve and original envelope. Part of the envelop is wore but still functions well. The original owner of this piece of history was in radio in the early 50s and it was a part of their record collection." Where can I get this appraised? Thank you
I've got around 20-30 broadcast transcription discs. I remember when I got my first ones around 20 years ago I ended up building my own player by taking off everything but the turntable from a 70's BSR changer, using some of the changer mech and a long screw to make a new tonearm pivot then extending the round tonearm's back end by slipping it into a drinking straw and sticking the straw on the pivot...I probably had a bit more tracking force than ideal for the cartridge lacking a counter weight, but it played remarkably well. Been on the hunt for a cheap 16" capable player since then and a year or 2 ago 3 such units fell into my hands in a matter of months. One of which was a 50's broadcast station TT that came with an entire western series of 16" transcriptions.
I have a couple of 16 inch transcriptions, and a friend with considerably more. There's all kinds of variation: some are inside start, some vertical cut etc. I play them on a Garrard 401 with a SME 12" arm.
Which cartridge and pick up do you use?
Never seen a 16 inch record before. Guess you are never too old to learn something new in the school of audio. Stay safe y'all. Greetings from the UK.
Some old Pathe records were 20 inches in diameter. And those were shellac records, so they're quite heavy.
Clever.
You need a tone arm for 16" transcriptions! I use the SME 3012 on a Thorens TD 124, but cheaper arms that work well are around. E.g., the Shure broadcast arm made throughout the late 60's and 1970s is a great value. Yes, it has a plastic angled head shell, but it is a serious, professional arm. They sold new for about $100! There are others as well that are not over priced. Remember, not a lot of people use longer arms, so drive a hard bargain.
You will need to build a base for the tone arm and attach it to your table so that the angle, pitch, etc. are stable and resonance isolated.
For a cartridge, The best for the money is a Shure M44/55. A nude, hand-made stylus of any size and shape you want are also surprisingly inexpensive from Expert Stylus, Ltd. in Surrey England. I was getting them for under $100 per stylus, but that was a few years ago. They almost last forever and when you see them under the microscope you will know why they sound better than any other stylus. The are NOT drum polished.
Ingenious idea for playing it. I don't have anything that will play them, but my friend George does, so he puts the ones I find on MP3s for me. We recently visited a radio station in central Texas that's moving to a new building after decades in one spot. We had permission to check out the record storage closet to see if there was anything that needed preserving. They had two stacks of 16-inch discs, stacked up horizontally, about three feet high each. They'd put a piece of plywood over the top and were using them as the base of a makeshift table to hold up some old cart machines!
There were a few programs like these that I rescued, but most were from a '50s-era music service. In the days before record companies sent radio free promo records, they would subscribe to services that had name artists record versions of top tunes of the day for subscriber stations. I found about 20 cuts by jazz accordion pioneer/singer Ernie Felice and eight by Vic Damone that I couldn't find had ever been released anywhere else. The Felices are cool because my wife's dad used to play in his quartet and we know his son. We also know Vic Damone's daughter, so I gave those records to her. She's looking onto restoring and releasing them.
7:30 16" record on that turntable looks ridiculous haha 😂
9:58 Looks like a standard tonearm lift on that LP7 - those can be removed by unscrewing the black screw on the right, then a slight pull. Make sure the spring doesn't jump out across the room.
10:48 Spinning the record in opposite direction of the stylus/cantilever is very bad for the record, unless you're using a DJ cartridge... I don't think that's a good idea for a "rare record", also because the tonearm offset is very likely to be incorrect, so the tracking angle is incorrect too. That makes it push the stylus tip against one of the two groove walls even harder.
In the early 1960's, my dad worked in an AM radio station and the only time I've seen 16 inch records was at his workplace. I recall that one record held children's stories. I've never seen them again. Of course, the turntable and tonearm were huge.
cleverly done and well done sir.
Frances Langford! The GI Nightingale! I sometimes wonder what will happen to my records when I die. They're lovingly collected, and will be thrown away I expect. Ah, life...
While it was a novel idea to use one turntable to rotate the record and another turntable's tone arm to play, the record was going in the opposite direction that the stylus tracks, and the offset angle of the arm and cartridge would seem to be forcing its way through the groove. You might have some major cue burn. Do these discs use a 78 stylus or an LP one?
Look up the Rek-O-Kut Rondine 3.
Looks awesome 😎
I have a Federal Civil Defense "Stars For Defense" 16 inch record with Jeri Southern on one side and Les Paul & Mary Ford on the other. I have been compiling the ultimate Jeri Southern audio collection and found this record on eBay.
Transcriptions were standard procedure back in the day. Most of the AFRS discs were Live Performances taken from radio broadcasts, and others were commercial recordings that feature a narrator along with the recording artist, and that included interviews
LIKE number 7. Great video, Recordology. I've really missed your daily videos (but I understand they take up a lot of time and you had to cut back). That's the problem; you spoiled us with daily videos. Haha! All the best. :)
Oh, and I love the set up you used!!!!!
One other thing. I do have several radio transcription discs but they are 12 inch and mostly from the 1980s. Still kind of cool though!
I think it would be cool to record that LP to Reel to Reel tapes.
Nicely big shellac - you should make your own intro video with these, smashing them against side of the grammophone! 😃
Aww not shellac?!
Keep looking 😜
Does anyone know what song sounds at the intro?
EDIT: that's an interesting improvised tonearm pod!
And a great one at it's cost considering actual tonearm pods are priced around 1200 dollars.
I use a technics SP-15 turntable to play them
I want to get a record player to play 16-inch vinyl records. or how can you do some arrangement on a regular turntable to play them? I have more than 50 of those great records, I think they are all in English. I live in Fresno California.
I am working on a modification - transcription turntables are too expensive. I have done a video on an ATTEMPT to play this.
Very cool, I have a 16" Capitol Promotional record that has a lip warp also. I was always afraid to play it but I might have to give it a try now.
You should get a transcription table
12:45 - This is how a Rokblok plays your records. Come to think of it, there's a use for the Rokblok! If you dare.....
I used to have one or two 16 inch records. I don't know what happened to them.
Microgroove? I would think that a 3 mil stylus may be more appropriate
If I had to go through what you did just to play this record, I’d switch to CDs!!! 🤣🤣🤣
Good improvising! An idea for storage/display: place each record between two pieces of glass, then make a 'custom' wooden frame to properly frame. You could hang them after framing and it will protect both sides of the record surfaces; it could also straighten out the warp(s). What is the end track on each? - perhaps a government warning? New rarities to look out for in the wild: Have a look on Discogs for the Little Wonder label. A lot of the early ones have both label and reverse sides etched! They are 5 1/2 (five and a half) inch 78's, of which over 40 million were sold, according to Wikipedia! Most are unique (edited?) versions of songs at only 1-2 minutes in length. Quite a lot are anonymous to save on revenue! Very interesting, 1914 onwards; I wonder how many still exist and if they can ever be found today?
I don't know when or if the shipping costs will get cheaper, and maby it was a bit too rash, to say to you that I have some V Discs, but I didn't know at that time that the shipping situation is so complicated
No worries my friend!
16" Transcription records are standard groove not microgroove. Therefore the size for 15 minutes per size. BTW I have shelf after shelf of these "treasures" Up for grabs.
I've got a few of these, I have one that plays from the inside out
Nice! I have over 60 of these!
My friend. Do you have any with Glenn Miller and the band of the AEF?
@@Recordology Fast response! I have just bought a vinyl collection recently and found a lot of these 16 inch records. I haven’t looked at them all but I have seen that they are all from the Armed Forced Radio Service. I’ll have to take a look to see if there are any Glen Miller or AEF. Is there any titles I should look for? I have tried finding the 16 inch records on discogs but it is hard since these vinyls don’t have the songs and artists listed. For example, I have one that says “One Night Stand” but there are multiple versions on discogs that have this title. What should I look out for?
@@Recordology Just looked through a whole bunch right now and yes I do have Glenn Miller, he appears on transcription records titled “G.I. Jive” and I found a few of them in my collection.
Can you please email me pics of the labels of the Glenn Miller ones? recordology1938@gmail.com. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
looking for a 16" record for ages.. but they are SO hard to get over here in germany..
There is a company that modifies the Technics SL1200 with a rear-mounted tonearm to accommodate the larger disc. I’ll be damned if I can remember their name!
Your 16 rpm schol record player might play these
If anyone is able to record these I would love to try and master them and make a high quality version
I have a bunch of these, some are for various things. I know a few are of the Lone Ranger and another radio show
I have seen 10,000 of these in a storage bin. The guy worked at a big radio station back in the day. I was going to buy them but NOBODY has info on them or any worth. Been to many collectors who have no idea what Im talking about
hi know the usa base had big scully 14 inch decks 100% and i just don't know what they were used for i have one not working scully and not great decks
i am a tec love the way you did the work a round
Cool. Would it be nice if they could get all the the shows from them and put them on a cd set like they did with the v-disc.
Agreed!
These look like they are using the old 78 rpm groove and not microgrove.
I thought those discs played from the inside out?
Radio transcriptions on the World Program Service label do. Same for early Standard Program Library radio transcriptions (From 1934 when the label was formed by Jerry King, to 1940. In 1940, they switched to outside start.)
Don’t pin it to the wall! Bags Unlimited has storage supplies for 16 inch records.
Not bad quality. Benefit of the doubt applies to the crackling given the set up and age of the record.
I have a collection of transcription discs; the reality is you need a custom-built turntable to play them. If you're interested, hit me up and I'll be glad to pass on any information.
16 inch transcription records were often also 16 rpm, which really wasn't suitable for music, only talking. The fidelity was super low. I have a couple hundred WWII 12 inch 78rpm V-discs made from Vinylite, which I have played on my Alabama Public Radio show, Getting Sentimental Over You: the program of big band memories, which can be heard on Sunday afternoons at 5 p.m. Central time, at www.apr.org
16" radio transcriptions were 33rpm, not 16rpm.
Do I have any? No. I could get some off of Ebay, as there are always some for sale, but frankly I'm scared off by how difficult they'd be to store and play. Also, owning them would be a complete novelty, because it's rare to find one that hasn't been taped or digitized for circulation among old time radio collectors, of which I've been one for 50 odd years.
You can probably find these particular shows already on RUclips. One Night Stand is a particularly common show. The Purple Heart show might be a little more rare.
One thing of note, even though they play at 33, they still need a 78 stylus. And if you really want to play them without the expence of buying a transcription turntable, find a junk turntable with a flip needle. Take the tone arm off of it and mount it on a block of wood of appropriate height. You should be able to position it so that it will track the entire surface of the record. That way, if you can't stop the sides of the record from dragging, you can put as many records under it as you need to get it clear of all obstacles. And then you just raise the tone arm to that height.
As a side note this method is also used to play cylinders. Though you still have to make something to spin the cylinder at 180 rpm. And you need to enable the tone arm to track linear. But figuring out how to do these things is all part of the fun.
BTW, if you really want to get a turntable made to play them, some school record players were made to accommodate records of that size. You'd have to research which ones and watch for them on Ebay. They'll be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as broadcast turntables.
There is a 12 inch version of this disc
As seen in this video
ruclips.net/video/FjN3-hgi4AE/видео.html
P.S., it's Jeff again!! Why not 👎 get a good 👍 quality record cutter ✂, and ditch digital? I know 👌 this involves blank discs, but you'd be preserving history that way. You would only need to use these transcription discs once, to record onto your blank ones. Ya can still put these discs away. Ya would have to also invest in a transcription record player. Maybe one could be sitting in a dumpster, behind a radio 📻 station 🚉. I miss those crackles and pops with digital. It's not 👎 history. Also, as with conventional size records, store these on end, do not 👎 stack them, such as in a room in the house 🏠, that ya don't use. Make it your "Transcription Hall Of Fame". I think I just heard ya say that this transcription record player has a magnetic cartridge. Your friend, Jeff.
Very clever way to hear the record. Rare audio. Do not own a large 16 inch record nor anything that could play one. Those players are very expensive.
I own a 16-in vinyl record recorded "for recruitment purposes" by the naval aviation cadet choir pensacola, FL in mint condition. With the record is a 2-page "fact sheet." Description: "This 16-inch radio transcription, containing 14 tracks of music performed by the Naval Aviation Cadet Choir, is provided to our for your music library and for public service broadcast in the interest of Naval Aviation Cadet recruiting. The Navy hopes that you will find it a valuable addition to your library and will have occasion to use it often. The record comes in a special thick cardboard sleeve and original envelope. Part of the envelop is wore but still functions well. The original owner of this piece of history was in radio in the early 50s and it was a part of their record collection."
Where can I get this appraised? Thank you
I would contact Kurt Nauck 78rpm.com/
Great idea….very slick…
I was going to say play a Vinyl bus or van on it.….but you can record it this way.
Get Garrard 401 turntable for your wife on Her birthday.
Try playing these discs with the Rokblok.
NEVER!!!! Funny joke though 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
Placing the 16" in a tumble dryer on high for ten minutes will shrink it down to 12" in diameter, and remove the lip warp! You are welcome!