last year to play on an acoustic machine

Any record will wear, maybe we should look to the laser turntables, they can play 33, 45 and 78's with a laser beam, and do not wear the records....wow.

Anyways, unless your record is very valuable, I would not worry about wearing out a record. If you properly store, clean and handle your records, change the steel needle, have your reproducer properly rebuilt, then you should have no problem wearing out your records. Get alot of them, maybe 100 average 78's from the acoustic era. You fiqure it you could play 10 records maybe in a hour (thats enough to play in a day), and you probably play the same record, 50 times a year, in 10 years you played it 500 times, I would say, you are doing good.

I go ahead and enjoy my talking machines, I play them records. If you are worried about losing a record, you should transfer it to CD.

Oh, let me mention, if you are playing a record on a floating universal type arm like the ones used on Starr, Magnola etc. you can minimize wear, they have a lighter arm and reproducer, plus a floating spring to take the weight off the record.

The Victor Victrola machines are good too.

I have noticed more weight on the record when using Columbia Grafonola, Pathe', Modernola.

Best bet to reduce wear and improve sound, stick with Victrola. Victrola is in my opinion the best made, sounding and engineered machines. I really like the sound of my VV 1-70 with the Victrola No. 4 soundbox.

Record-changer wrote:A shellac record on an acoustic reproducer is usually not good for more than 50 plays. With a modern electronic system, wear is not detectable on a shellac record, although it is on a vinyl record.

I have measured a tracking force of over...two KILOgrams equivalent force for the acoustic, and 257 grams equivalent force for the early electronic. By 1946, they had cartridges able to track at half an ounce (14 grams equivalent force), and the first LP and 45 pickups tracked at around 10 grams equivalent force.

Now, I'm in this for the music, not for the cool mechanisms or furniture or the price I can get for the record. From this perspective, I would never play ANYTHING on an acoustic player. If I thought the record was not listening to, I might place it on the turntable. But why would I have such a record?

By the early seventies we were telling people to increase the tracking force to about 2.5 grams because even though some cartridges could track at 1.5 grams, loud passages would force the needle off the groove; then it slammed back into the groove, causing wear. Too low of a tracking force, in that case, caused record wear.

I play any record on an acoustic machine. I also listen to my records for the music on them, and couldn't care less about what they may or may not be worth. Some records in my collection, I've been playing for close to 30 yrs, and have been played many more times than 50 times, and still show no signs of wear. Some records from the 40's & 50's do show some signs of wear, but are still far from worn out or unplayable. Records from this era are pretty common anyway, so many of my favorites from this era, I've got dups of, so if I wear out the first copy in a few years time, I've got another copy on stand-by, to last me another 30 years.
The only records I won't play on an acoustic machine very often, are my Berliners. They've all been transfered to CD, but I'll play them if I'm showing someone my collection. I can't see the point of having records that your too scared to play. I guess if I found a Beatles 78, I wouldn't play it very often on an acoustic machine, but I would play it once in a while. HMV made acoustic portables right up until 1960, so I don't think they were that worried about record wear, and many people must have been playing their records on these portables, without too much ill effect.

Record-changer wrote:A shellac record on an acoustic reproducer is usually not good for more than 50 plays. With a modern electronic system, wear is not detectable on a shellac record, although it is on a vinyl record.

That's not true-plain and simple. Were that true there'd be very few records left compared to what we have to choose from today.

Regards,
J.

That depends on the point at which you define the wear as being excessive. I use the quality for recording the music to tape or CD.