Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 7 (1927-04)

vair The Phonograph Monthly Review 297 Kazacsay: Szvit; Csajkovszky: D minor zongora- verseny (Josef Lhevinne) ; Strauss: Alpine Sym- phony (x). * * * Philadelphia Symphony, Leopold Stokowski, Conductor February 18, 1927 Handel: Overture in D minor; Handel: Water Music (x) ; Bach: Choralvorspiel, “Ich ruf’ zi dir”; Toccata and Fuge in D minor (x) ; De- bussy: Nuages et Fetes (x) ; Ravel: Rhapsodie Espagnole. * * * Cleveland Orchestra, Nicolai Sokoloff, Conductor March 31, 1927 Nicolai: Merry Wives of Winsor Overture (x) ; Bloch: Symphony, “Israel”; Tchaikowsky: “Nut- cracker.” Suite (x) ; Berlioz Rakoczy March (x). * * * Los Angeles Philharmonic, Walter Henry Roth- well, Conductor March 10, 1927 Mendelssohn: Overture, “Ruy Bias)) (x) ; Wag- ner: Traume (x) ; Smetana: Moldau (x) ; Brahams: Symphony No. 1 (x). * H* * Minneapolis Symphony, Henri Verbrugghen, Conductor February 18, 1927 Weber: Overture to “Oberon” (x) ; Franck: Symphony in D minor (x) ; Handel: Organ Con- certo No. 4, in D minor (Charles M. Courboin, soloist). (To be Continued) British Chatter By H. T. BARNETT, M. I. E. E. ADHESION M Y advocacy for the use of fine gauge steel needles made of exceedingly hard metal, (it is essential that it should be tempered so as to be tough as well as hard), has often led to the query: “But surely these very sharp needles must wear a record more than the ordinary steel needles do?” Such is not the case, the harder the steel and the sharper the point the less the record will wear, assuming of course that the needle is resting in the groove on a fore and aft line that is a tangent to the circle, that it has a reasonable inclination — say 50 degrees — and that there is not too much weight put upon it. If this were not the case we should play our rec- ords with needles made of copper or brass or something of that kind. The whole question boils down to one of adhesion—if the needle adheres to the record the needle will wear and the record will wear too; if the needle is too hard and its internal structure not sufficiently crystalline to permit it to adhere to the record then the wear on the needle will be negligible and the record will not wear at all but will burnish. If an en- gineer has a steel shaft to rotate and wishes to avoid wear upon it he does not mount it in steel bearings, but in bronze or white metal for the reason that a steel shaft and a steel bearing hav- ing the same internal structure tend to adhere to one another, but steel and bronze, or better still, steel and white metal having different in- ternal structures—the tendency to adhesion and consequently wear is greatly lessened. A glass worker desiring to make a hole through a glass plate does not try to pierce it with a steel drill, he uses a rod of copper; the copper adheres to the glass and engages the glass particles as soon as they are detached and so a screw hole is rapidly cut through a mirror or whatever it may be. Our forefathers when they wished to shape their flints did not use chisels of flint for that purpose; had they done so both chisel and arrow head would have been damaged; they used chisels of reindeer bone, the bone adhered to the flint and under their quick blows brought away showers of flint flashes so that a man could make hundreds of arrow heads in one day from the hardest of all common materials. Burnishers for use on gold are not made of soft material but of polished agate, their friction on the metal does not wear it but produces a beautiful polish; just in the same way if we wish to spare our records we use the very hardest steel we can buy and shape and we make the needle point at least no larger than the groove so as to be sure there shall be no wedge action tending to break away the surface of the tops of the groove walls. THE SURROUNDINGS People often write to me and say: “Please in- form me what you consider would be the best gramophone for me to buy in respect of tone— I know that any machine you like will be all right mechanically.” Few people know, or if they know, adequately realize, that both the volume and the quality of the tone of a gramophone are dependant just as much on the acoustic properties of the room in which the machine is placed as upon the design of the reproducing unit itself. Two identical ma- chines in rooms of exactly the same shape and size, but differently decorated and furnished may sound in the one case poor, thin and muffled, and in the other case, full, rich and brilliant. No machine can be designed to give a similar repro- duction in all kinds of rooms—to say nothing about the effects the size and shape of a room may have upon the tone. The worst kind of room for reproduction (trom the point of view of one wishing to obtain great volume coupled with brilliance) has a felt all over the floor, then a carpet over the felt and again perhaps some rugs or a dancing drugget over the carpet. In the better kind of room the edges of the floor, at least, are polished wood;