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Igranic electric gramophone pick up, 1927
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- čas přidán 25. 02. 2018
- This electric pick-up is one of the first to appear on the British market. It was reviewed by ‘The Gramophone’ magazine in September 1927, along with the Woodroffe (which was adopted by the B.B.C.), and one by S. G. Brown. We’ve already made a video of the Woodroffe in action, and have to hand the S.G. Brown model, which will feature here soon. This video describes how we persuaded the Igranic back to life - a mercifully simple job, though we did impale out thumb on the needle, and nearly lost one of the two 5BA nuts which help to hold it together. We keep in stock 4, 6, 8 & 10BA nuts & bolts; but the odd-numbered 3, 5,7 & 9BA &c. sizes seem little used today. After all these adventures, we were quite glad when the video was finished! Jack Payne’s gorgeous ‘Sweet Sue’ was recorded on October 2nd., 1928. It begins very quiet & gets louder - several of his early Columbias are like that. The superb Bixian trumpet is either Frank Wilson or Harry Mills - sorry the photo. of the band is so fuzzy, but it actually is the 1928 band, possibly taken in a B.B.C. studio? One of the trumpet players is apparently holding a cornet (as favoured by Bix), so it might be him playing on this record. Interestingly, the bass saxophone is played by the trombone player, Jesse Fuller. The arrangement was by Ray Noble, and the vocal trio is by Jack Payne, Bob Busby (the pianist) and Bob Manning (the drummer). Many of Payne’s earliest B.B.C. Dance Orchestra sides are of ‘hot dance music’, and somebody once commented that we were lucky to have, in the U.K., the only state-subsidised hot dance band in Europe!
Fantastic, really enjoyed that thank you.
Fantastic! More!!!!!
Hi Ralph. Thanks for writing. More? No problem - I have probably at least 20 more early pickups & arms to demonstrate. The only problem is making time to do it! Cheers, Norman.
Wow Norman this sounds great
Thanks for writing. Glad you liked it. Though, I should have recorded the track at a higher level. Cheers, Norman.
Another triumph, Norman. As I have said before, I know nothing about the technical side of things, but you make everything so interesting that one can't help but be drawn in. The surfaces of those 20s Columbias have remained remarkably silent for their age and if only the mighty HMV had followed suit instead of experimenting with an additive to their shellac which may have sounded wonderful when new, but decades later have deteriorated into monstrous crackle. (So I have been led to believe). Anyway, another great video; thank you very much.
Ho & thanks for writing again. The 'English Crackle' - the curse of HMV & also 1930s EMI pressings! There has been arising gradually, over the last 15-20 years, the theory that they were all pretty good when they were new; but as you say, the cyclic annual temperature in the U.K., combined with our damp climate, has 'loosened' the microstructure of the discs over the last 70-80 years. There are stories of large collections of EMI 78s kept in Canada & Australia at radio stations, were still very good when sold off in the 1960s, because they had been kept in dry environments at even temperature. Still, not much w can do about it now! Cheers, Norman.
The lost item phenomenon.... so so so true. And... the odd numbered BA sizes are familiar to me, being a GPO aficionado :)
Urban legend tells me the GPO and maybe Igranic? used the odd numbers to make 'appropriation' of stocks
harder
Hi there - thanks for writing. I heard that story too. Use of 7BA screws in terminal blocks &c. It might just be an 'urban legend', though? H'mm. Some of the screw top cap terminals of old screen-grid valves were said to be 5BA, but the one I acquired recently was good old 6BA. Worse still, some high official might have been in cahoots with GKN? Who knows? 8^) All the best, Norman.
Hi Norman... i've encountered both in GPO stuff, (both odds and evens). I suspect a lot of it was not to prevent pilfering (that would be the urban legend) but simply a good compromise. For example, the terminal screws in GPO bakelite terminal block (Block, terminal, 20/4 for example) have to cope with everything from bare wires, through thick 1930s style cords with wire bound loops, to 1970s style spade/fork connectors... the odd BA sizes may have just been because of that, the next size up in even terms was too small, so they went 'hang on, we're a giant government department, aren't there odd numbers in this system?'
I am particularly familiar with them because I have a HUGE stock (several thousand) of 5BA and 7BA nuts and bolts in brass... auction find... Amazing how often they come in handy. Often for re-affixing nameplates to equipment, for authentic looks :)
Fine record and it sounds oké. Thanks again for the video!
Many thanks, DR OM. More coming up! 73, Norman.
Nicely rescued, Norman. Thank-you. Over the years, that 'rubber' should harden a little, and therefore the sound should improve. Always have liked Jack Payne. His band and singers' precision were second to none, in most of their recordings. Thanks for finding a track which I'd somehow missed! 73, OM.
Yes - my first Payne Columbia was 'Down by the Old Front Gate' - I was about 13 years old at the time, and though it was a terrible copy, it sounded great. We have a better copy now! Cheers, Norman.
5:23 Norman looking for the circlip he lost 6 years earlier (in a video titled "gramophone")
Well, I think for a radio broadcast with maximal 4 kHz, this is perfect. But the development goes fast and some years after, this units could play till 6 or 8 kHz and possibly more....
That sounds quite good for a pickup of that age.
Glad you liked it, Graham. I think the 'top end' response was a bit lacking, probably due to my ham-fisted restoration - but still, having been silent for many years, it was fun to make it work again! More coming up in due course.... Cheers, Norman.
Igranic advertised their Phonovox pickup to the cinema trade as 'The Orchestra that Draws No Salary'. Just prior to synchronised talkies, several companies produced twin-turntable electric gramophones which could displace the live musicians accompanying silent films. I have just contributed an article about it for the Bulletin of the Cinema Theatre Association. The Igranic Electric Co Ltd was based in Bedford; and the design of their Phonovox electric pickup originated from the Pacent Radio Corporation of New York. The UK version went on sale in September 1927 priced 37/6 (49/6 with 'adapter' and 'volume control'). Igranic incorporated patented improvements. In December 1927 The Gramophone magazine judged it superior to the US version. Igranic also made an electrically-powered turntable, again using a design originating from Pacent in the USA.
I don't know which is worse: seeing a small vital item fall but finding it nowhere around; or just knowing it flew but to who-knows-where. I wonder what future archaeologists will make of all those small circlips, nuts and things they'll unearth!
Hello again - thanks for writing. Did not realise the Igranic was bought in, or licenced, from the U.S. - makes complete sense, & good to know. I have the 'Gramophone' review as a .jpg, but couldn't find it for the video; however, I did trawl up the Igranic twin-turntable outfit, a precursor of the Disco, what with it having fading from one turntable to the other, and also the facility for a microphone for the 'D.J.' Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Up to 25 Watts output as well! If your article for the Cinema Theatre Association is on-line, I would love to read it. The latest project here is to play late 1920s/early 1930s 78s using contemporary domestic equipment throughout: pick-up, amplifier *and* loudspeaker. Early stages yet, but it seems worthwhile to have a bash at it. It was really prompted by the lack of suitable programme material to test 1920s/early 30s radio circuits. Modern A.M. radio is simply not suitable for evaluating the performance of vintage wireless sets. A simple modulator has been knocked up, and its 2 or 3 milliwatts are fed directly into the aerial socket of the radio via screened cable, so it can't be radiated & thus contravene U.K. regulations. Preliminary results are quite promising, rather than the babbling on the Medium Wave, much of which is people phoning in & providing audio which has *less* bandwidth than was the case in the late 1920s. But of course, you know that already! Best regards, Norman.
What kind of preamp do you use with this type of pickup? I have a similar pickup by RCA-Victor.
Hi John. You didn't need a pre-amp as such with this sort of moving iron pickup. They often used to put out 1 or even 2 volts - at the expense of wear on the disc of course! 8^) In this video: czcams.com/video/LJ8IqBjNa2Y/video.html we used a BTH pickup, very similar to the the Igranic & feed the output to two late 1920s valves (tubes) which drive a balanced armature lousdpeaker. Probaby one 'power triode' would have been enough! Cheers & all the best in lockdown, Norman.
In slightly later pick ups I've met theres a rubber damping pad clamped over the fishtail. Maybe they discovered this was needed as pick ups improved & records got louder. I used a piece of silicone from an old keyboard wrist rest in one. Incidentally, I've heard mineral based lubricants like vaseline can perish rubber, hope I'm wrong!
Vaseline does indeed cause damage to rubber, but the replacement material is more likely to be neoprene than rubber. The modern material is more resistive to damage. It's used in the air pipes for our organs, and vaseline was used on those. The older instrument, which was built in 1994, is perfectly fine, after 24 years. That's good enough for most people!
Hi there. Correct: there is often a damping at the top of the armature. The combination of a rubber *suspension* at the pivot of the armature, and a rubber *damping* at the top of the armature was very common - and it was these arrangements that probably enabled the designers to patent their suspensions & dampings. They could not have patented the electro-magnetic aspect itself, for that was ancient history, dating back to the 1820s. Cheers, Norman.
Did you filter the ground noise or do we hear the actual sound coming from the pickup ?
Hi there! No; there was no filtering. I just fed the output into the line input of an ordinary audio amplifier - a 'flat' response, no equalisation. In fact, the sound was very lacking in top end - probably the bicycle valve rubber I used was too pliant, and could not transmit the upper frequencies - they probably got absorbed by the rubber. Having said that, the Ingranic was early in the field of electric pickups; but I'd still have expected a better top end from it. Of course, the discs of the time only went up to about 4.5 kHz, but the sound is still very dull, to be honest. All the best to you & yours. Cheers, Norman.
Yes I was asking myself the question because there is very little ground noise which even on a Columbia sounded astonishing to me coming from a pickup ^^
I've told my little poem to people before, about taking a record changer apart for maintenance:
I touched a little spring
It went "ping" and then "fling"
It does a very important thing
And now I can't find it.
Is this an acoustically recorded record? The room ambience is so present. How does a later electric sound on this pickup?
Anyway, check out a video I made of a home-recording that I found in a pile of commercially recorded discs. I always get excited when I see a handwritten label on a record!
czcams.com/video/D8ZYjTbrWTU/video.html
Hi there. Yes - some tiny components disappear permanently when you drop them, don't they? 8^) The record was made in London in 1928 by the Western Electric process, but the pick-up isn't really doing it justice - it sounds very flat & stifled. Also, it should have been put on the video at a higher volume level. It starts very quietly, then gets louder. I started it too soft. Looked at your video, which is great, & subscribed. Hoping that you will find many more interesting 78s. Cheers, Norman.