Hi there! The above video has been on Youtube for some time. I linked out of the video to a page on this site, which later ‘slipped off the edge’ during routine maintenance.

Actually, that is rank LIE! The TRUTH is, we had made a terrible mess of running this site, & the ISP told me to move several hundred files to somewhere else, but instead I deleted them because I didn’t think they mattered. But they did…

The above video shows a gramophone record of ~1930 being played with a ~1930 pickup, feeding into a ~1930 two valve amplifier driving a ~1930 balanced armature loudpeaker.

This is the performer, an American called Frank Braidwood who was working in the U.K. at the time. He was quite popular in Western films. He’d been making records for Parlophone, but evidently Piccadilly offered him a session, albeit under one of their generic pseudonyms, Buddy Prince. The band accompanying him on Piccadilly is much more sprightly than the Parlophone one. Indeed, the band chorus in the middle is extremely jazzy – and I hardly know another ~1930 record with such a great ‘two-beat’ jazz sound as this.

Also, you can’t adequately demonstrate a vintage loudspeaker ‘third hand’ – you actually have to hear it live. I thought my recording of the loudspeaker sounded awful, so I made a normal electric transfer using a Shure SC35 cartridge, and put it here so that people who had seen the video could hear the record ‘better’, played with modern gear.

Just checked the link & it works OK now…