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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: lonestardiver on Friday 08 June 18 04:40 BST (UK)
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Hello everyone,
I have been involved in genealogy for about 9 years now helping others with their family tree's and my own. As with everyone, I have had my own "Brick Walls" to negotiate and one of them had been my Great Grandfather on my Fathers side. I had invested much time on searching and analyzing information about him and finally had that break through moment. I was pretty ecstatic about this success and was ready to move on to the next challenge when I made a little discovery.
About 10 years ago, my Grandmother passed away and in her will I was given a record collection she had.. We used to enjoy listening to her records and she had told me "One of these days you will have these and will get to play them with your kids"... Well, that day came and I received the albums which I keep in the office. They are old 78's mostly from the Big Band and earlier eras and I have Victrola that I can us to play them. Yesterday, I had picked up one of the albums to play, one that I wasn't a big fan of but since I haven't played it since I received it I said maybe my taste has changed so lets give it a go.
I pulled the album out of the sleeve so I could I put on a player and a smaller album in a sleeve fell out with it... It hit the ground but fortunately it wasn't damaged. This was a head scratcher, what could this be?.. I don't ever remember my grandmother having album the size of a 45 before.. But I guess she apparently did. I picked it up, and read that it was an NBC Studio New York Novelty Album made in 1931. I goggled what this Novelty record was about because I wasn't very familiar and found out there was machine that you could speak into and would put your voice on record. After taking a closer look it had my Great Grandfathers name on it!! That blew me away. I had invested huge amount of time researching him and felt like I knew him personally and now I would be able to hear his voice!!!
I'm a little afraid to put it on the Victrola to play because I think the the needle would damage the album and don't have standard turntable. What I would like to do is find a company that could assist me in taking the record and ultimately creating a audio file that could be played on a computer.
Is there anyone that has experience doing this or could advise me on the pitfalls if any in doing this?
I'm located in Texas.
Thank you in advance.
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Lovely that you got your grandfather's name!! What a bonus 👍. I hope someone can find a safe way of duplicating the record for you! Good luck!!
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http://www.texasmusicmuseum.org seems like the sort of place that might be able to help
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All you need to play it is a record player with a light head (i.e. the arm is counter balanced).
Cheers
Guy
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There used to be a recording booth for the public to use in the railway station when I was a child (in the 1960s) and my dad used to use it, so we had thin floppy records of him singing some of our favourite childhood songs or speaking poetry.
I don’t have them anymore but remember playing them on a standard gramophone.
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All you need to play it is a record player with a light head (i.e. the arm is counter balanced).
Cheers
Guy
That is the simplest and quickest solution. Using a lightweight pickup head may result in some loss of sound quality but there is no risk of damaging the record (as with a steel needle).
1) Run a cable from the record player audio socket into a computer (usb cable or jack)
2) Use a free downloadable software like NCH or Audacity to record the sound.
3) Sit back and listen.
Philip