Gramophone Notes
SINCE several correspondents have written to me about my advocacy of fibre needles and their misfortunes in trying them. I want to give the essential rules which must be observed for
their successful use.
A steel needle inevitably wears out any record because whenever the strain between needle and disc is great, as with h a bass note or a sudden loud note, since steel is stronger than the material of the disc, it is the latter that chips off. More- over the friction is at all times considerable and after souse weeks of playing the whole disc plays like a ghost of its former self. Seeing that records are so expensive, here is a reason sufficient in itself ; but a fibre needle reduces the sur- face noise and when properly used gives a purer and less metallic tone.
It is however, useless to take your old gramophone with a soundbox suitable for steel and also a favourite record played fifty times with a steel needle and hope to get good results with fibre. The "Beau Fibreur" must take trouble and follow the few rules which we will now state : (1) His machine must be absolutely level. Very few floors and fewer tables are level and cardboard must be inserted under the legs until a soundbox plamd on an ungroovcd piece of the disk swings neither inward nor outward when the disk revolves.
(2) The tone-arm must move freely across the record. If it Ls stiff in the joints tho fibre point will break with the ini•reased friction.
(3) The fibre must have a perfect point and this can only be got if a perfectly sharp cutter is used.
(4) The fibre must be very gently inserted into the first groove of the moving disc.
(5) The above rules must be followed in order to give the fibre as little unnecessary friction as possible ; it needs all its strength to do its real work and must nut be handicapped. line rest rule is not to attempt to play- disks already worn by steel needles. EVerr these can be used with fibre, but only after being treated with lead pencil or other lubricating media.
(6) Moro important still, a soundbox suitable for steel isnever suitable for fibre without expert readjustment. Soundboxes need
" tuning" as much as pianos, but for different refIS011e. sound- box must be specially tuned by an expert for use with fibre. Nora than this, soundboxes may be tuned to excel with orchestral records or piano records or chamber music ; for a largo or small room ; for a high or low ono, and so forth. Never touch a sound- box yourself, but treat it as a delicate instrument.
(7) Last of all and most often neglected—the humidity of an English room is rarely less than 60 per cent. ; the humidity of a perfect fibre needle ought not to be more than 211 per cent. ; it is therefore essential to keep the fibres in an airtight compartment with a few pence worth of calcium carbide. This keeps them bone dry, freshens up tho tone and prevents a breakdown.
With these seven precautions the gramophil has good music perpetually.
I wish to mention briefly a few very pleasing minor records that have appeared in the last few months and may have been overlooked by some readers amid the imposing symphonies and quartets. Each of the following is superlatively good : Sir George Henschel singing I)vorak's By the Waters of Babylon and the traditional Wait Thou. Still (Col.) ; Ballet Music front Gluck's Orpheus played by a Paris orchestra with exquisite flute work by M. Moyse (Col.); Sibelius's Finlandia conducted by Malcolm Sargent and superb on a big instrument (II.M.V.) ; Stuart Robertson and male chorus in Vilikins and his Dinah and three other rollicking songs (H.M.V.) ; Extracts from La Boutique Fantasque, conducted by Julian Clifford (two records, Decea) ; Bach's Toceato in F played on organ by Anton van der Horst (Col.) ; Steuart Wilson singing This Joyful Easter-tide and A Benedieile (Deem) ; Hale Smith singing Schubert's Wanderer's Night Song and Hark ! Hark ! the Lark (Deem) ; Baeh's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, played by Cunningham on the St. Margaret's, Westminster, organ (II.M.V.) ; Lotte Lehmann singing Schumann's Du hist rude eine Blume and Widmung (Parlophone) ; La Argentina, the greatest Spanish dancer, in a Bolero,and Malat's Screnat a —
all you get of her is the sound of castanets, but the effect is marvellous (Parlophune). I do not advise anyone to buy blind, but these twelve records are all of them above the average in every way and almost bound to please. One major work must be mentioned, Bruno Walter's conducting of Mozart's G minor Symphony (K.550). Columbia give us in these three records one of the best, the gentlest, and the truest reproductions we have yet heard. Recently there has been a passion for noisy, or at any rate, super-loud records ; here is a set in which the word piano has been rediscovered—and Columbia have given it to us cheap, 13s. 6d. for the whole
Previous page
