meltrope electric pickup ~1930
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- čas přidán 12. 11. 2018
- This video gives a brief (and occasionally, alas, irreverent) survey of the Meltrope electrical pick-up of ~1930. It was designed by Percy Wilson (1893-1977) who was indeed a guru of gramophone record reproduction in the U.K. for many decades from 1925 onwards. His own writing on this pick-up and other comments may be read by copying and pasting into your browser the following link: www.early78s.uk/percy wilson/
We have made a very primitive restoration of his Meltrope electrical pick-up, and offer it, above all, as a tribute to the persistent and valuable talents of this gifted man, who, for most of his career, was occupied with his work as an increasingly important Government Official. Indeed, during World War II, he had to give up most of his work in audio. Happily, he returned to this after 1945 and even more so, after his retirement from the Civil Service. Above all, he gave generously of his free time to contribute to the musical benefit of all. - Věda a technologie
Very good. I really appreciate your, as well as Mat's (i.e. "Techmoan") videos. You both are my "Go-to-Guys" when I want to learn something interesting with a sly humour to keep it light.
You’ll be pleased to know I did indeed sing the “echo” part, lol! Thank you for a great video!
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
@@bixanorak Hello. By any chance, what was the counterweight on that 'sound box'?
That sounds really good Norman. Good for you for bringing it back to it's working condition.
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
From my experience in repairing Presto cutter heads and Grampion recording heads. Once you separate the horse shoe magnet from the pole pieces, you break that magnetic field. The magnetic intensity decreases. When resembling the head back together, you must RE-MAGNETIZE it. Or use a iron bar or shunt across the horse shoe magnet to avoid breaking the field.
Well - yes. Horse-shoe magnets always had 'keepers' to preserve the magnetic circuit. But having said that, I have never had cause to re-magnetise anything I've taken apart. This might be because although the output may have fallen to some degree, modern amplifiers were efficient enough to to bring it back up? I have re-wound low-impedance MSS cutting heads, & they worked fine with the same magnets. Let's hope I haven't messed up these devices... Cheers, Norman.
Thanks again for this great video.
The pick-up sounds excellent and of course great music!
What a superb sound quality that 'Meltrope' reproducer has. Ably assisted by the superior 'Western Electric' recording equipment & high purity, (almost) silent surface material, used by Columbia records at that time.
Hi & Thanks for writing. Yes, it was nice, and when new, would have been much better. Yet: 'The chain is only as strong as its weakest link,' and in those days it was the loudspeakers that were the weakest link. (Often stll are today, but only because really good speakers are incredibly expensive...) Audio went along by fits & starts - but as you obviously know, it's great to follow the history of it. All the best to you & yours. Cheers, Norman.
Wow! It sounds great!
Hi there & glad you think it sounds OK! Old Percy Wilson put a lot of thought in to it - it's only fitting that we pay some tribute to these pioneer guys? Yes, sir! Best wishes & keep safe until the damn Corona thing has gone away!
A most interesting presentation Norman. Apart from the technical side, it's very futuristic in appearance. So much electrical equipment back then had a 'scientific instrument' sort of look, despite art deco being in full swing. Sounds great & thanks for info on Meltrope.
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
@@bixanorakNo probz Norman, know what its like to be busy! will follow your future projects with interest.
Excellent sound !!!!
Thanks for this and congratulations on getting the toothpaste back into the tube. I really loved the sound and it seems well matched to the early electric cutting heads. Better than either the mechanical soundbox and horn or a modern MM cart IMHO based on your video here.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s there was a Stromberg-Carlson hifi in my grandparents' house that I was always forbidden to touch and I have always wondered how that pickup (admittedly a decade or so newer than your example) sounded. When my grandmother passed away a few years after my grandfather, I passed by the offer by my mom and uncle and aunts to take it home with me because I was afraid of tinkering with direct-wired tube gear in those callow days of my young adulthood. Still regret that hasty decision.
Thanks for writing. But don't worry. On the one hand, yes - it is very prudent to avoid old-time high voltage circuits. But on the other, it is quite OK to feed an electromagnetic pick-up into a modern 'Line Input' on a standalone amplifier. Such pickups usually gave out 100, 300 or maybe even more millivolts - an enormous figure. With such a pick-up, bass boost will be neccessary, but the top end must be left 'flat'.
I'm late to the party but I such such a lovely time!
It sounds wonderful sir! Love your vids! Always informative... Thank you !
Crikey. I only uploaded it about half an hour ago! Thank you very much for your appreciation. Rest assured, we shall try to live up to it. Take care, and again many thanks. Norman.
your posts are amazing , Iv'e just put 2 more pickups up on this site, a bth & a German one
Sounds great! Love the details, including digressions :-)
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
Those old spring wound motors seem to have less wow & flutter than you hear on some modern turntables
Another great video...thanks..
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
Norman Field No I find your videos educational and entertaining, I wish you lived next door, I could learn a lot from you. I didn’t really expect a reply, but I also am thankful that your reading the comments. You sent me those needles with no hesitation and didn’t ask for anything. Your a great example of a good man. Love what you do. I love old radios and anything to do with old record players ( phonographs) I could spend hours with you if you lived by me! Your my kind of friend.
YeeeeHaaaaaa indeed, Norman! You certainly know how to lighten up a dreary November evening. What a video: songs, jokes (which made me laugh and not groan), a fascinating insight into the Meltrope electrical pick-up and a super record to round it off. What more could one want? Well, more if possible, please! Thank you as always. (I could end with a row of kisses, but that would be going too far.)
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
A very neat pickup, I did not mind the diversions at all. The pickup sounds excellent after restoration, also sounds like a well recorded record as well.
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
Nicely restored, and a sprightly performance on the recording. Thanks Norman. Be a bit wary about Chinese rubber, however; it isn''t renowned for its longevity.
An afterthough: Maybe that's why the population of China is so big?
"Have you ever taken something apart and wish you hadn't done so...😆
😃😃 Yes - but not so often these days, as formerly! Thanks for writing. All the best, Norman.
This video got me laughing a bit louder than I should be this late at night, for fear of disrupting the sleeping house.
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
Sounds pretty good, but hasn't frequencies above 5 kHz. Ok, so you get the music in the same sound as AM radio in Europe in this time.
thanks sir, where is buy the old picups sir
Hi Norman. Always love your interesting & quirky videos. I have a phonvox electric pick up as featured in your web site. Can you perhaps make a short video on how to connect it to a PC as I haven't got a wireless with a phono input?
Hi Chris. Yes; anyone else who has a Phonovox pick-up, needs, IMHO, all the help they can get! Accordingly, I spent this afternoon making a 'quick & dirty' video, which explains a little more about the Igranic Phonovox, & will hopefully show you how to get it into your PC. Can't guarantee anything, but good luck! Check out czcams.com/video/51fP8z19_ME/video.html . Cheers, Norman.
Whats the tracking force of these early electrical pickups? I know my HMV acoustics are 'heavy' but those magnets ect look destructive! 😳
Hi dear Norman. I also work with professional audio and I wanted to know why the lack of noise that the versions taken with these electric pick ups have. If it is by the nature of the pick up. or by a subsequent mastering and cleaning of the noises with the software. thanks, Victor from Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hi Victor. What a good question! Happily, there is a simple answer, or rather, 2 answers. (a) I don't think I have ever processed any recordings of these old pick-ups. 'What you hear is what I got'... these pick-ups almost always have a large output, so I feed them into a *LINE INPUT* on my amplifier, which is an old NAD 3020A. The line input is of course, flat; no EQ, certainly no RIAA EQ! "RIAA is Death to 78s" - the top cut of RIAA takes away what little top end was on electrically recorded 78s, from 1925 until after WWII. (b) The absence of surface noise & scratch on these videos is, as you surmise, due to the limited frequency response of the early moving-iron pickup. Remember: when Wilson, who was a pretty clever guy, designed this pickup ~1930, the Western Electric system was the main system in use, by Victor (Hi there!) and Columbia in the U.S., and HMV (=Victor) and Columbia in the U.K. The Western Electric system had been *designed* only to go up to about 4500 Hz. So a correctly designed pick-up of 1930 should have been designed to fall off over ~4500 Hz, because there was essentially, no information there. 8^) Of course, sometimes there was, but what the heck. I believe that WE (who developed their system secretly) limited the top end to 4500 Hz, because radio was expanding rapidly at the same time (1922-24), and there was a move to limit the audio bandwidth of AM radio (especially in the U.S.) so that as many as possible stations could be fitted into the Medium Wave band. The audio range ended up being accepted as 4500 Hz in 1927 (which it pretty well still is for AM radio AFAIK); and because the modulation of a radio 'carrier wave' results in two equal 'side-bands', the bandwidth of any station on the dial was - & still is - 9,000 Hz - 9KHz. So you could have a station every 9 KHz across the Medium Wave band. I'm not sure about that last part, but it could be true. Hope this is of help to you. To sum up: it is indeed by the nature of these pickups, that they produce such a plausible, even agreeable sound. The 1930s was the first time that domestic audio could produce much 'bottom end', and people loved it! The called it 'mellow'. They weren't bothered (yet) by the lack of 'top end'... That only came after WW2...
@@bixanorak I thought you were going to tell me that pick-ups by allowing only tangential movements are deaf to surface noise. great job. Congratulations
@@torugonza Thank you! Only when *poor condition* 78 rpm record of 1928 is played with modern stereo cartridge with response 30 Hz - 18000 Hz, then, there will be a lot of crackle, hiss &c., &c., because much of the output of the cartridge has *no information* - only *noise*. The Information will only be between maybe 50 Hz & 4500 Hz. Everyting else can be rolled off. A little bottom end may be kept to imply, to suggest, some low frequency. Also, to make 'top cut' too severe, creates illusion of 'dead' sound in upper frequencies. We who listen to old discs, may sometimes *need* a very small amount of noise (hiss) in the background. Otherwise, we might interpret the sound as being 'dead', & therefore deficient in upper frequencies, when actually, they are present. Cheers, N.
You might like to try cactus needles? And possibly soaking the Needles in fibreglass resin epoxy what do you think.
What is that material the needle you've got in there at the moment looks metal.
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.
HELLO SIR I WANT TO KNOW THAT HOW CAN I SUPPLY SOUND WHEN I HAVE BEEN CUTTING GROOVE ON RECORD AND COULD I CUT GROOVE ON BEKALITE SHEET NEW RECORD
Wonder what the counterweight on that 'soundbox' was???
Hi Jeffrey & thanks for writing. Well - in fact, there is NO counterweight on the head! It pivots... where it pivots; that is, at the back of the head itself. I can't remember whether I quoted the playing weight in the video, but just checked it again & it's about 150 grams. Of course, the steel needle point was quite big, as was the groove of a 78 rpm disc, so the specific weight per uit area was possibly lower than playing a LP. Though I don't know anything about vinyl, so ignore that comment. 8^) Cheers, Norman.
Your denture looks funny in the frame :)
Мне стыдно; ты абсолютно прав. Я забыл свои зубы. 8 ^) С наилучшими пожеланиями, Норман.
And I thought it was such a subtle humor, some self-irony! The working environment on the table and - bam - a test of attentiveness! :) I forgot to write that a very interesting video, thank you! Since childhood, I love phonograph records and everything connected with them has some esotericity in them. I wish you new interesting and unusual gizmos. Valeriy.
Yikes! Sounds as though you are breaking the spine on that book!
Thank you for writing! Your comments are much appreciated, and I hope you will not mind receiving my thanks in a ‘one size fits all’ reply? We are pressing on with other projects that we hope you will also find interesting. Best wishes to you & yours from Norman Field.