Thanks! The advantage of the 'needle armature' pick-up was that everything was small and light, with low inertia. So it could respond to the signal in the groove more accurately. Most of the earliest 1926/27 electric pickups had a massive armature which wore the records badly, had an enormous amount of chatter or 'needle talk' coming from the pick-up itself. So for 1930, the Burndept/Telsen is very advanced! All the best for 2022, Norman.
What a stunning pickup; sound as well as aesthetics. If the majority of my records sounded like that I would be happy! I know you put it through the computer, but nevertheless it's very impressive indeed.
A very very good video! And interesting also, full of history. This deviant pick-up sounds fine and I heard in your story that the BBC used the arm, I understand why that was, the excellent sound. Thanks again Professor Norman. :)
Hi there, & thanks for writing. Next video is probably a high impedance balanced armature loudspeaker - but it won't sound as good, HI! 73, Norman, G4LQF.
Glad you liked the video. As Telsen was wound up about 1934/5, the BBC would have gone onto some other arms. And there was of course great competition with pick-ups in the late 1920s and well into the 1930s. We have several more that we need to demonstrate... Yu have been warned! 8^) Cheers, Norman.
Very interesting pickup and arm combo, an early S style arm, as what became common on high quality turntables by the 70's. It sounds quite nice as well.
Thanks for writing. Yes, they eventually realised the offset would make the tracking more accurate. There was a really famous audio expert called Percy Wilson, and I believe he was a pioneer of better tracking. Cheers, Norman.
There is no record arm which tracks a disk perfectly. but Wilson's design is clever, because the double bend allows for perfect tracking at three points along the arc of the arm, for a 12” record. This means that tracking errors become virtually negligible throughout the whole of playback. A straight arm can be correct at no more than two points along the arc, so errors are inherently greater, being worst at the end of the track.
well I THink the sound is very good considering the test record is an early 30.s Decca and even allowing for you tube I.m getting a warm bass sound through the PC speakers
Many thanks! The top end was good, but we could have done with some more bottom end - trouble was probably my home-wound coil had wire that was too thick, so the DC resistance of it was only 10 Ohms (!), so all the impedances were wrong. Cheers, Norman.
The integrated arm thing was very UK, was it not? I have an old G.A. Briggs book that mentions this (mid 50's?), that it would be easier to build a Hi-Fi setup in the UK if the arms and carts weren't all built together. He mentions that the US had already adopted the separate component approach and he liked it better.
Hi and thanks for writing. Ah yes - Gilbert Briggs's books - there are several, I think between 1949 and 1960. I have some of them, and they are very readable & informative on the audio scene of the times. Briggs's wry sense of humour also, is never far below the surface. Had not realised that integrated heads & arms persisted longer here than in the U.S.; thanks for that. I guess it was due to inter-company rivalry, so even with interchangeable heads for 78 and microgroove, each make still had its own fitting. Possibly the advent of the SME four-pin head-shell showed the way forward? Or perhaps that design originated in the U.S? Anyhow, the standard head-shell certainly made life much easier for all of us! Cheers, Norman.
Hi Simon, thanks for writing. - yes, as the guys say below, the needle screw is a U.K. standard 10BA - the one I used was brass - I keep a stock of them. The original would have been steel with a knurled cap of course, but the brass worked OK for the demonstration. The others were 6BA, but I didn't have a half-domed one like the original, so used any old one. Glad you liked the sound - it would have been better still if the top part where the needle screw is, could have been unscrewed to replace the rubber damping. But it was totally seized up & couldn't free it off - soaked it in paraffin, used WD40, even gave it a short blast with a blowtorch - but nothing doing! Cheers, Norman.
Is that recording from that record player at the end? Sounds good is that coated ? are you going to try that silicone spray! I want to know what it sounds like!? I would have thought copper needles would sound good is there such a thing and have you tried it, what is the average length a noodle will last? Have you thought of sapphire or diamond? Still think copper would sound good! Try that silicone spray £2 from Tesco's they do it for blackening your tyres it's called tyre shine!!
Hi there. No, sorry I haven't tried the silicone spray yet. Copper would probably be too soft for a gramophone needle. Ordinary needles were only meant to be used for one side. There were many attempts at multi-play needles,but I don;t know much about those. Certainly sapphire or diamond needles were too hard & would ruin the disc with the old playing pressures, which often exceeded 100 grams, even 150 grams. The needle was intended to wear, in order to better fit the groove. Groove size for 78s was never fixed until about 1950. Cheers, Norman.
Norman Field 150g doesn't need to be that heavy does it can you not get away with 15 grams or less? Then copper would be fine. Why does it need to be so heavy?? Then bronze coated Steel is a good compromise have you ever tried wood? I mean there's some extremely hard dense Woods out there so it might be not as crazy as it sounds or even bone might work well now there's an experiment I can imagine bone might be quite you!! Strange you can't get the rubber suspension off freezing it might work but you have a good chance of breaking the rubber can't you just cut it off and make a silicone or latex rubber for it. So the needle does it fit into the rubber it's like a rubber tube is it??
Hi & thanks for writing. I'm sure you're right. The 'Tel' part must, as you say, refer to 'Telephone'. Macnamara may have started e.g. by winding coils for headphones - or something like that - in the pre-broadcasting era. Then, when the U.K. Radio Boom began at the beginning of 1923, he may have thought it was a good time to expand into it & make other things. I'm not really a researcher, but it would seem that Telsen went into liquidation around October 1934. This, by looking at the 'Wireless World' magazine. Telsen always had full-page ads for years, but then they suddenly stop, and in November & December there are 'small-ads' in the back from local dealers, like 'Telsen Aerial Coil - list price 14/6d, our price 9/6d'. It looks like these were from the big sell-up. Have also found that Telsen claimed upwards of *four thousand* people working for them - so closing that down, would have been a catastrophe for Birmingham, and would have made big news in the Birmingham Mail. Looks like I'll have to get up to the Birmingham Reference Library & take a look at the Mail for October/November 1934! Cheers, Norman.
I've found quite a few snippets about the company and shall post links here, once I've shaken off this awful 'flu. They existed online until 2016, made a wide range of products throughout their existence, and also had a factory in Manchester. As a youngster, I had quite a few Telsen radio parts, including coils, lamps and variable capacitors. They also made those twin, rotating coil tuning arrangements whose name I forget. Variometer?
Sorry to hear you have had this very nasty strain of 'flu - hoping all OK again very soon. Yes, somebody called David Rosenfield bought out the business & goodwill & set up Telsen Electric (1935) Ltd. in Manchester. There's a good short summary on Graces' Guide, but you have taken it much further. I got this pick-up as part of a job lot, and it didn't have a high priority until it dawned on me that Telsen was a Birmingham company - my father's family have been in Brum for over 200 years, so I'm definitely a Brummie! 8^) Thus it became a High Priority! In fact, I just won some inter-valve transformers on ebay, 3 of which are Telsen. With any luck, one of them will be OK, and can incorporate it in a 1930-style radio. Thanks again, & will look out for any further info. you will come up with. Take care - cheers, Norman.
You pre-emptied me a little. Grace's Guide is useful, but there are a few other links which render a few more useful snippets: www.gracesguide.co.uk/Telsen_Electric_Co www.telsen-radiomag.uk/ - also check out the Telsen_History page web.archive.org/web/20070523230244fw_/freespace.virgin.net:80/ges.www/Telsen/items.html The telsen.co.uk site is now defunct, but parts of it were rescued, and can be found on the Wayback Machine, at: web.archive.org/web/20080515000000*/www.telsen.co.uk - and related pages. The last snapshot is from early 2016, but there is a little more in earlier snapshots. It's interesting that they started and finished by making such things as decorative lights and electric irons, and that their radio components heyday was for a very short part of their history. For me, the biggest surprise is that they made lava lamps.Sounds as though your visits to the local museums might yield some interesting information.
Excellent quality! Those pickups had a wonderful frequency response, the bass is just superb! Thanks for the history.
Thanks! The advantage of the 'needle armature' pick-up was that everything was small and light, with low inertia. So it could respond to the signal in the groove more accurately. Most of the earliest 1926/27 electric pickups had a massive armature which wore the records badly, had an enormous amount of chatter or 'needle talk' coming from the pick-up itself. So for 1930, the Burndept/Telsen is very advanced! All the best for 2022, Norman.
Great video Norman! It's wonderful to hear a little about the history and then see that history come to life. Well done!
Many thanks - yes, I agree that some background history is a big help. Glad you enjoyed this one. Cheers, Norman.
What a stunning pickup; sound as well as aesthetics. If the majority of my records sounded like that I would be happy! I know you put it through the computer, but nevertheless it's very impressive indeed.
Another great video Norman and very interesting, thanks.
Thanks Norman, another interesting video. Amazing amount of bass being picked up which I suspect would have been missing on an acoustic playback
A very very good video!
And interesting also, full of history. This deviant pick-up sounds fine and I heard in your story that the BBC used the arm, I understand why that was, the excellent sound.
Thanks again Professor Norman. :)
Hi there, & thanks for writing. Next video is probably a high impedance balanced armature loudspeaker - but it won't sound as good, HI! 73, Norman, G4LQF.
Wow good sound!
Great video. I have never seen this reproducer or tonearm. Thanks for sharing!!!!!
Glad you liked the video. As Telsen was wound up about 1934/5, the BBC would have gone onto some other arms. And there was of course great competition with pick-ups in the late 1920s and well into the 1930s. We have several more that we need to demonstrate... Yu have been warned! 8^) Cheers, Norman.
Very interesting pickup and arm combo, an early S style arm, as what became common on high quality turntables by the 70's. It sounds quite nice as well.
Thanks for writing. Yes, they eventually realised the offset would make the tracking more accurate. There was a really famous audio expert called Percy Wilson, and I believe he was a pioneer of better tracking. Cheers, Norman.
There is no record arm which tracks a disk perfectly. but Wilson's design is clever, because the double bend allows for perfect tracking at three points along the arc of the arm, for a 12” record. This means that tracking errors become virtually negligible throughout the whole of playback. A straight arm can be correct at no more than two points along the arc, so errors are inherently greater, being worst at the end of the track.
well I THink the sound is very good considering the test record is an early 30.s Decca and even allowing for you tube I.m getting a warm bass sound through the PC speakers
Many thanks! The top end was good, but we could have done with some more bottom end - trouble was probably my home-wound coil had wire that was too thick, so the DC resistance of it was only 10 Ohms (!), so all the impedances were wrong. Cheers, Norman.
Lovely, as usual!
Nice of you to watch & write in, old friend! Hope all going OK for you & yours. Ciao, Norman.
I always watch your great videos. Here is all OKeh, hope to meet you soon, it's been too long since last time in Davenport.
Cheers,
Enrico
Turns an acoustic phonograph into a HiFi player.
The integrated arm thing was very UK, was it not? I have an old G.A. Briggs book that mentions this (mid 50's?), that it would be easier to build a Hi-Fi setup in the UK if the arms and carts weren't all built together. He mentions that the US had already adopted the separate component approach and he liked it better.
Hi and thanks for writing. Ah yes - Gilbert Briggs's books - there are several, I think between 1949 and 1960. I have some of them, and they are very readable & informative on the audio scene of the times. Briggs's wry sense of humour also, is never far below the surface. Had not realised that integrated heads & arms persisted longer here than in the U.S.; thanks for that. I guess it was due to inter-company rivalry, so even with interchangeable heads for 78 and microgroove, each make still had its own fitting. Possibly the advent of the SME four-pin head-shell showed the way forward? Or perhaps that design originated in the U.S? Anyhow, the standard head-shell certainly made life much easier for all of us! Cheers, Norman.
Norman what thread is that screw that you need? I will have a look at work but don't hold your breath.Sound quality is amazing!
Simon Spiers it would be a brass screw what thread don't know but I have a bunch of screws like that knocking around
Being UK I would guess one of the smaller BA threads, as those were incredibly common then for small parts.
Hi Simon, thanks for writing. - yes, as the guys say below, the needle screw is a U.K. standard 10BA - the one I used was brass - I keep a stock of them. The original would have been steel with a knurled cap of course, but the brass worked OK for the demonstration. The others were 6BA, but I didn't have a half-domed one like the original, so used any old one. Glad you liked the sound - it would have been better still if the top part where the needle screw is, could have been unscrewed to replace the rubber damping. But it was totally seized up & couldn't free it off - soaked it in paraffin, used WD40, even gave it a short blast with a blowtorch - but nothing doing! Cheers, Norman.
Is that recording from that record player at the end? Sounds good is that coated ? are you going to try that silicone spray! I want to know what it sounds like!? I would have thought copper needles would sound good is there such a thing and have you tried it, what is the average length a noodle will last? Have you thought of sapphire or diamond? Still think copper would sound good! Try that silicone spray £2 from Tesco's they do it for blackening your tyres it's called tyre shine!!
Hi there. No, sorry I haven't tried the silicone spray yet. Copper would probably be too soft for a gramophone needle. Ordinary needles were only meant to be used for one side. There were many attempts at multi-play needles,but I don;t know much about those. Certainly sapphire or diamond needles were too hard & would ruin the disc with the old playing pressures, which often exceeded 100 grams, even 150 grams. The needle was intended to wear, in order to better fit the groove. Groove size for 78s was never fixed until about 1950. Cheers, Norman.
Norman Field 150g doesn't need to be that heavy does it can you not get away with 15 grams or less? Then copper would be fine. Why does it need to be so heavy?? Then bronze coated Steel is a good compromise have you ever tried wood? I mean there's some extremely hard dense Woods out there so it might be not as crazy as it sounds or even bone might work well now there's an experiment I can imagine bone might be quite you!!
Strange you can't get the rubber suspension off freezing it might work but you have a good chance of breaking the rubber can't you just cut it off and make a silicone or latex rubber for it. So the needle does it fit into the rubber it's like a rubber tube is it??
Hazarding a guess, 'Telephony Sending'? I'll do some research.
Hi & thanks for writing. I'm sure you're right. The 'Tel' part must, as you say, refer to 'Telephone'. Macnamara may have started e.g. by winding coils for headphones - or something like that - in the pre-broadcasting era. Then, when the U.K. Radio Boom began at the beginning of 1923, he may have thought it was a good time to expand into it & make other things. I'm not really a researcher, but it would seem that Telsen went into liquidation around October 1934. This, by looking at the 'Wireless World' magazine. Telsen always had full-page ads for years, but then they suddenly stop, and in November & December there are 'small-ads' in the back from local dealers, like 'Telsen Aerial Coil - list price 14/6d, our price 9/6d'. It looks like these were from the big sell-up. Have also found that Telsen claimed upwards of *four thousand* people working for them - so closing that down, would have been a catastrophe for Birmingham, and would have made big news in the Birmingham Mail. Looks like I'll have to get up to the Birmingham Reference Library & take a look at the Mail for October/November 1934! Cheers, Norman.
I've found quite a few snippets about the company and shall post links here, once I've shaken off this awful 'flu. They existed online until 2016, made a wide range of products throughout their existence, and also had a factory in Manchester. As a youngster, I had quite a few Telsen radio parts, including coils, lamps and variable capacitors. They also made those twin, rotating coil tuning arrangements whose name I forget. Variometer?
Sorry to hear you have had this very nasty strain of 'flu - hoping all OK again very soon. Yes, somebody called David Rosenfield bought out the business & goodwill & set up Telsen Electric (1935) Ltd. in Manchester. There's a good short summary on Graces' Guide, but you have taken it much further. I got this pick-up as part of a job lot, and it didn't have a high priority until it dawned on me that Telsen was a Birmingham company - my father's family have been in Brum for over 200 years, so I'm definitely a Brummie! 8^) Thus it became a High Priority! In fact, I just won some inter-valve transformers on ebay, 3 of which are Telsen. With any luck, one of them will be OK, and can incorporate it in a 1930-style radio. Thanks again, & will look out for any further info. you will come up with. Take care - cheers, Norman.
You pre-emptied me a little. Grace's Guide is useful, but there are a few other links which render a few more useful snippets:
www.gracesguide.co.uk/Telsen_Electric_Co
www.telsen-radiomag.uk/ - also check out the Telsen_History page
web.archive.org/web/20070523230244fw_/freespace.virgin.net:80/ges.www/Telsen/items.html
The telsen.co.uk site is now defunct, but parts of it were rescued, and can be found on the Wayback Machine, at:
web.archive.org/web/20080515000000*/www.telsen.co.uk - and related pages. The last snapshot is from early 2016, but there is a little more in earlier snapshots.
It's interesting that they started and finished by making such things as decorative lights and electric irons, and that their radio components heyday was for a very short part of their history.
For me, the biggest surprise is that they made lava lamps.Sounds as though your visits to the local museums might yield some interesting information.