The Edison Disc Record

I have one of these! I have a pretty sizable vinyl collection from decades of crate digging and I’ve gotten a few weird and ancient records over the years. This is one. I also have several wax cylinders which are actually surprisingly easy to find, a bootleg Soviet record that was cut into X-ray film to smuggle in western music (called ribs or Roentgenizdat), 16” records which were mainly for radio stations in the 40s to play “public service” recordings.

I can’t play the Edison disc or the wax cylinder. I can play the rib, I only did it once because it’s extremely delicate at this point and it sounds absolutely horrible anyway. It likely never sounded very good. I have a table with a 12” arm that can play a portion of the 16” record, which does play at 33rpm. I also have a 16rpm record but nothing that spins that slow

I have some newer weird records too. Several flexidiscs. These are interesting because they are flat and originally were used like subscription cards in a magazine. They’ve had a resurgence in popularity recently so they’re very easy to get. Picture discs and die cuts of course. But the weirder stuff has happened with the resurgence: I have a record by the punk band tart that is filled with the dust from pixy stix. Like you can pick it up and shake it around. That’s made by a company called romanus and they make all kinds of weird filled records; they’ve made tons filled with liquid, with LEDs, etc. they made one that is a functioning guitar distortion pedal and recently made one for a band filled with maggots. They’ve done others filled with razor blades, money, scorpions, all kinds of weird shit. Musicians and their art right?

These are like two records sandwiched around a chamber filled with whatever. I’ve also gotten some where they press something into the wax, glitter or whatever. Third man records did a very notable pressing a while back where they pressed pot leaves into a record although I did not get that; I kind of got away from buying new vinyl by that point (it’s an expensive hobby these days, not like back in 2005!). I would strongly recommend avoiding this unless you just want to look at it. The romanus ones are goofy but ultimately can still be listened to. They’re lathe cut records so they sound inferior to a proper pressed record but unless you’re listening on some very fancy setup you probably can’t tell the difference tbh. with a record that has stuff actually pressed into though the needle path is fucked up. Glitter means you get a bunch of extra clicks and pops. And yet they still press these bc I think 80-90% of people buying physical media nowadays don’t actually ever listen to it, they just put it on their shelf and listen on Spotify. But I digress

Thanks for reading my dissertation on weird vinyl. I hope you enjoyed it

I have one of these too! Although you'll probably never hear it played back on the correct equipment, you can fudge it at home with a regular turntable and a bit of wizardry on the computer. You need to digitize your turntable's output in stereo, invert one track, mix it down to mono, and speed it up to 80 rpm. The results aren't ideal but unless you have a time machine or a music historian on hand it may be the best you can do.

A case study in how accessibility and compatibility are important for long term commercial success.

> Although they arguably had better audio fidelity, they were more expensive than, and incompatible with, other makers' products and ultimately failed in the marketplace.

A lot of contemporary companies would do well to learn from the mistakes of the past.