PATHE 14 Record etched label inside-out, played on the HMV 31b Gramophone.

This is the First Complete recording of Chabriers seminal 1883 España Rhapsody for Orchestra, the piece that started the fad for Spanish-inspired sound landscapes in classical music.

Pathe Freres the oldest record company in France, had a great tradition of recording opera and classical pieces. While other companies still used reductions and short pastiches of various kinds, Pathe very early started to record unabridged works at full length often on multiple discs.
For this reason many of these etched label records recorded around 1910 give a vivid picture of orchestra playing and musical tastes of fin-de-siecle Paris. With Cesar Bourgeois and his Orchestre de la Garde Republicaine, the forst woman conductor Miss Lilian Bryant, and the mysterious Hofkapellmeister Gille, Pathe had an impressive array of obscure but capable conductors for these projects.

Among notable recordings is the first recording of Schuberts Unfinished Symphony, a fabulous Finlandia, and Charpentier’s Impressions d’Italie.

The present recording of Espana is one of the greatest recording: Recorded in full at 6 minutes, the piece is played with a verve and accuracy, that let’s one forget that the strings are actually a superb chorus of clarinets

The Gramophone

The HMV 31b was a follow on model to the 1928 HMV 28, the last open horn phonograph. With an 5b soundbox and an exponential horn, this machine is my favorite phonograph for listening to classical music: While not as prominent in the bass like the bigger cabinet machines, the 31b has a full, even sound that gives great reproduction to intricate treble details. In my experience, this machine has the ability to disappear behind the recording: You hear the record in its full splendor, but are no longer aware of the gramophone playing. Pretty neat.

This machine has been made by HMV India in Dum-Dum, perhaps as late as the 1940s. It had an interesting history: Obviously used somewhere in the Indian desert (the was pink sand on the inside of the soundbox), the machine had been continually mended and repaired – no two screws seem to be identical. Ending up without the horn in a Southern California antiques store, it was completed again with a new elbow and a Victor horn of the correct shape. Now it again is able to delight us in its full glory.

Just because the original spring motor broke, and I don’t like cranking the grammo anyhow, I replaced the wind-up motor with the great Victor 1926 induction disc motor, which guarantees great torque, steady speed, and only has a very slight hum. That brought the problem of the on-off switch. The original machine apparently never had the sophisticated HMV start/stop switch, but Victor made something very similar for electric machines around 1930. Moving the tone arm out starts the motor, and the elliptical groove at the end of the record stops it. A friend in the UK had the original “finger” that sits on the tone arm, and graciously gave it to me.
Very critical listeners will notice on all gear-driven phonographs a slight amount of flutter, which comes from the “cogging” of the drive and govenor gears. Usually unnoticeable, it can be heard in piano and clarinet music. The solution is mass: A ring of lead sheet almost doubled the weight of the turntable and thus guarantees absence of wow and flutter.
The little home-made soundbox for vertical records was made from a generic soundbox of the 20s. Fitting it out with an orthophonic diaphragm increases treble and flattens the frequency range, while eliminating idiosyncratic resonances of Mica diaphragms. Generic sapphire styli (for Pathe) and Diamond styli (for Edison) can be found. Then the only thing that remains to be done is to slightly tilt the gramophone forward, so that the tonearm weight counteracts the record skating force. This, and setting the stylus at the magical “zero skating piont” about 5/8 behind the spindle produces minimal groove wear and avoids skipping on those difficult inside-out pathes.

One last word: Any phonograph with a detachable horn has two leaky spots, which, when untreated, will reduce volume and bass:
The base of the tone arm and the horn-elbow joint. On this machine (perhaps a part was missing) the tonearm base required some additional parts and plenty of felt and great to make a good seal, the critical horn-elbow joint was sealed with a natural, reversible adhesive – beeswax : )

Check out more great tunes and amazing vintage phonographs at My YouTube Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/user/sanfranphono

More about this and other machines
on my Changer Website

http://myvintagetv.com/updatepages1/changer%20videos/changer_videos.htm

Duration : 0:6:43

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