Turtlerock Forum

Thank you Howard I am rather inspired.

is it wrong that we have an edison machine here at gibbens street ?

Rick wrote:is it wrong that we have an edison machine here at gibbens street ?

Its not wrong so much as sad. I get impression that any music recording technology that pre-dates MIDI can be found somewhere at Gibbens St ;-)

Nice post Howard - its great to hear how all this began, and how far its come in not so very long a time.

is it wrong that we have an edison machine here at gibbens street ?

Probably suits some of the acts you get through the place... :-)

I was watching Oprah the other day.... and you've all done it so don't heckle me..... and they had a story on these dudes that hoard stuff... I think you could have benefited from it Rick. :P

I'm working on a show at the moment where the main prop is an antique wax cylinder phonograph, Funney how things turn up like that. Interesting Site.

So this very minute i am working on the Johnny O'Keefe entire back catalog ( err thats at night after my day shift in the 21st century ) and i have gone to the trouble of acquiring and fully restoring the actual tube ampex 351 tube mono tape machine he recorded on in the early years ( yes its the actual one )
it plays the tapes back just like the vinyl and much better then the " 80-90s remastered " CDs

funny thing is some of the early tapes sound way better on a new old stock ampex mono headblock that i found in a drawer and attached to my solid state ampex atr 102 mastering machine for a laugh

now who do you know that would go to all the trouble to get the 351 mono tube original machine , rebuild it ( costing $$$$) and then out of curiousity builds a mono machine out of an ATR stereo machine...? only to find some songs sounds better then they ever have on the new machine ...?

only a guy who does not have time to go on Oprah thats for sure .

hoarder i am not a hoarder , i am a .... err ... curator of fine audio junk :)

The definition of junk is "stuff that you throw out two weeks before you need it"

hehe. Curator definitely sounds like a choice... as opposed to an obsessive compulsion!

rick wrote:is it wrong that we have an edison machine here at gibbens street ?

Nothing wrong with that, is there? Ummmmm I think.

I have a newly acquired Edison as well, in mint condition. Though a lot of the wax cylinders are moldy, maybe a little past thier use by date,

Would a mild peroxide solution help get rid of the mold from the cylinders?

Yo Heath

I'd give the National Film and Sound Archive a call - they know what there is to know about such things.

I need to get some recent mould off a 750BC piece of painted limestone while leaving water-soluble paint and 2000 year old mould intact. Now THAT's a preservation conundrum.

750BC......hell, that's near new. Wait until you have to extract a +200mil year old tree trunk from a rock face and then reassemble all the pieces. Bloody thing was approx., 600mm diameter and over 1.5 mtrs long...........I'm just grateful I have pics somewhere to prove it :-)

The limestone was painted in 750BC. The limestone itself is much older :-)

That's a BIG piece of fossilized wood, though. Had any of it opalised?

No Chris, nothing like that. This goes back a bit over 20 years ago when I was in Geology at an open cut, the "tree" was high up in the face, exposed by the dragline and although the root base was still there it was too badly fractured to worry about, the trunk was in slabs ranging mainly between 4" to 8" thick but even they were in pieces. It took your's truly hanging out of a cherry-picker and a Coles crane to salvage the thing....then came the jigsaw part. It all worked out and last time I saw it, it was still standing beside the mine office entry.

Chris