Has Anybody Here Actually Ever Seen A 16 RPM Record?

old turntables always seemed to have 16 RPM option

Well, not all old turntables, obviously. But the ones inside wooden cabinets for your living room that came out, I guess, in the late '50s or '60s, and that still show up in thrift and antique stores.

Only related ILM thread, as far as I can tell, ha:

improvised-from-memory versions of Magma songs played at 16 RPM.

I always thought it was to transcribe music by playing LPs at half-speed.

this is a thread i thought about starting many times.
i've never seen one either despite owning two turntables with a 16rpm option.

I've always heard about children's records being 16rpm, I don't think I've ever seen one, though.

Earth made a 16rpm 7" in the 90s. Not that you could tell.

I have a few from the 50's / 60's, language instruction things, self help & diet talks, christian science lectures, a teach-yourself-morse-code tutorial, hours of fun

& to confirm the comment about 'use for the blind', you can spot these in thrift stores if they have braille on the labels

I've got a player at work that does 16rpm; I asked the guy who used to run my dept. and he said spoken-word stuff often used to be at 16rpm.

I just wrote a story about a guy who collects old records and phonographs. He had a few 16rpms that he showed me. Said they sound horrible.

I think some of those "Environments" ambient records are meant to be played at 16.

Lots of transcribed radio programs (acetates made of radio shows for later airplay) in the old days were not only 16 RPM, but also 16 inches in diameter. That way they could get an hour-plus of program on each side.

I have seen these mythical 16rpm records.

16rpm 7" records are pretty common. children's stories with picturebook type stuff.

I've only touched and played one, but it was a great one.. it's the Jimmy Swaggart record where he gets all orgasmic about dancing stoned kids.

I once lied when I was a kid and called the National Center for the Blind. I told them I was blind and wanted one of their free records. They sent me a 16 rpm record of somebody's speech to the 1974 convention.

i have one 16 rpm record of a children's piano recital. it sounds really sad and awful. my friend got it at an estate sale in new york.

You can buy that Jimmy Swaggart What The Bible Says About Drugs 16rpm record right now off ebay for You can buy that Jimmy Swaggart What The Bible Says About Drugs 16rpm record right now off ebay for $25 plus shipping if you want5 plus shipping if you want

the only ones I've seen are the big 16" transcription discs, seems like they were usually on red vinyl for some reason.

I think some of those "Environments" ambient records are meant to be played at 16.

-- sexyDancer, Thursday, May 8, 2008 3:21 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

ON UR QUADROPHONIC SYSTEM

My parents had a 16rpm disc, they bought a collection of Jazz records at an auction, and there were one or two curios in with it. The 16rpm piece was a square sheet of a kind of shellac-cardboard material, reddish=brown in colour, with grooves on one side only. i can't remember what was on it, I'm afraid.

I wonder if anyone on the list owns or has owned vitaphone discs? A 15" disc with boxes for the number of plays marked on the label. They were the sound part of early talkie films, the record player was mechanically synchronised to the projector. That would be a way cool thing to own.

from the Library of Congress:

Western Electric's sound film system was called Vitaphone, and, unlike the Phonofilm, it recorded sound onto sixteen-inch discs. Each disc corresponded to one reel of film, or about ten minutes. In contrast to conventional records, the grooves in a Vitaphone disc were less rigid in order to enhance sonic quality. However, each disc could be used only for twenty plays before replacement, thus the check boxes on the label.

http://www.georgegroves.org.uk/donjuan_files/vitaphonedisc.jpg

i predict a new trend in techno vinyl labels.

Was that in your book, Mark?

16rpm = the low-bitrate mp3s of the day right, hence audiobooks etc right?

i.e. low bit-rate but high storage

w/r/2 vitaphone discs, there's a bunch of movies from the late twenties where all known copies of the film stock have rotted away, but the soundtrack disc sets remain.

Extract from disc soundtrack to "Scarlet Seas", a (lost) nautical adventure movie from 1928. You have to imagine the visuals:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/3edgqqk2en.mp3

Extract from Gold Diggers of Broadway, a big-budget technicolor musical from 1929:

http://www.nicklucas.com/audio/filmography/PaintingtheClouds-Reel1Excerpt-GDOBWB-1929.mp3

...you can hear the chorus girls tap-dancing, the big crackling noise you hear is actually a stagehand throwing a big knife-switch to change scenery, there's a few film fragments of this one left, but not this bit. all pretty weird & fascinating & poignant, eh?

cool!

It would be really trippy to see a 16" disc going around.

thanks for that link Pash; really cool.

I have seen 16rpm records, in second-hand clothes shops and media libraries.

you guys ain't nothin' without some tune disks in yer hepcat kit bag!

http://www.smsnoveltiques.com/images/toy-tune.jpg

More on Vitaphone shorts here:

If you dig American vaudeville, get thee to the 3-DVD Deluxe Edition of THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)!

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/images/VoyagerCover.jpg_2.gif

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music.

I remember reading about that thing before. It seems so quaint now, in retrospect. I have a feeling if any other life forms did find it, they wouldn't have the faintest idea what it was or what to do with it.

Shared by a friend on FB today

Finally, believe it or not, Chrysler Corporation created Highway Hi-Fi, an audio format that enabled the 16 RPM records to be played in their cars from 1956 to 1958. The system employed a sapphire stylus with a ceramic pick up on a turntable that was installed below the instrument panel. A record player installed in a car? Yes, it really happened. Here is the Wikipedia article about it should you be interested in learning more.

I thought this was the only use ever developed for 16 rpm & I was surprised when this thread wasn't about cars!

Never seen a 16rpm record, no, afaik. Unless I did and overlooked it while searching flea markets/garage sales for recs with MUSIC rather than spoken-word stuff. But my parents' old '60s (early 70s?) stereo was capable of playing at that speed. Plus 33/45/78 of course.

Am listening to the Seeburg 1000 live stream from the link... they're doing "Living for the City" 101 Strings style!

http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Accessories/HiWay/columbia-open.jpg

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/images/VoyagerCover.jpg_2.gif
This image should be captioned
Send more Chuck Berry

As a child we had a radiogram in a cabinet that played records at 16 and 78. Early experiments in varispeed facilitated.