Blue Amberol Records

See also: Edison Records

Package lid

Cylinder rim

Blue Amberol Records was the trademarked name for cylinder recordings manufactured by the Edison company in the USA from 1912 to 1929. They were issued as replacements to the original 2-minute wax cylinder series Edison had been producing. Blue Amberols run approximately four minutes and were made out of the indestructible" plastic, celluloid, which was issued in the trademark blue color.

History

The early issues of Blue Amberols are of higher audio fidelity than later issues. From January, 1915 onward, the Edison Company, which had concentrated most of its research on improving the sound of their Diamond Disc recordings disc records, began to release cylinders which were dubs from their Diamond Disc matrices. The dubbing technique used, acoustical-mechanical until December, 1927 (when the first electrically recorded disc dubs began to appear), resulted in a somewhat hollow "dead" sound on theses cylinders compared to the original discs they were dubbed from. On many such cylinders, one can hear the sound of the disc machine being started just at the beginning of the record and of it being stopped just before the end.

Beyond sacred and popular music, Edison issued variants on the basic Blue Amberol including the Concert Blue Amberols (classical and cultured music), operatic Blue Amberols, Royal Purple Amberols (the series which supplanted the Concert series), Special A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H Blue Amberols (a few of which were given with the purchase of a 4-minute phonograph conversion kit), instructional records to accompany the Edison School Phonograph, ICS language courses, telegraph-related BA's, a 2-minute series of Blue Amberols for the Mexican market, and 6" long dictation instruction cylinders for the Ediphone that were essentially long Blue Amberols.

Amberola 75" model phonograph

Technical

Edison Blue Amberols are made of celluloid over a molded plaster core. The celluloid surface are able to withstand hundreds of playings, with only a moderate increase in surface noise if played on well-maintained machines with a stylus in good condition.

Blue Amberols have a maximum playing time of just over 4 minutes at 160 rpm (a maximum of 4'45" is possible). They can not be played on older machines set up to play the earlier standard of 2 minute cylinders, as the Amberols require a smaller stylus to track the groove and the worm-gear which moves the stylus over the surface of the cylinder must turn at a different rate. However, the Edison company sold kits with gears and reproducers which could be attached to older varieties of cylinder phonographs by those who wished to be able to play the new Blue Amberol records. The Edison company also marketed phonographs capable of playing both the older style 2-minute and the new 4-minute Blue Amberol records; with these machines the user needed to adjust a knob or lever (which changed gearing) and change the reproducer (which held different sizes of stylii) when going from one type of record to another.

Internal horn Edison Phonographs designed to play 4-minute cylinders were called Amberolas. The earliest Amberola model, the 1909 Amberola IA, was equipped with selectable 2- and 4-minute gearing, and after initially being sent out fitted with an unmarked Model "L" reproducer with a flattened fishtail weight that was recalled almost immediately as being "unsatisfactory", was refitted with the Model "M" reproducer with flip-over 2- or 4-minute sapphire stylii intended to play wax cylinders. There is at least one known example of an early Model M reproducer also fitted with a flattened fishtail weight.

Upon the introduction of Blue Amberols in 1913, the M reproducer was supplanted by the Diamond A reproducer which was capable of playing only celluloid cylinders. Outside horn Edison Phonographs were available with the Diamond B reproducer. Several other Amberola models less expensive than the IA (and later the 4-min only IB and III) were available, such as the V, VII, and X.

After the Edison factory fire of October 1913, the Amberola line was simplified in mechanical and cabinet design resulting in the Amberola 30, 50, and 75 (each serial number indicating the initial retail price of each player). These were equipped with the Diamond C reproducer. The 4-minute only external horn Opera (later renamed Concert) of 1911-1912, which shared the same mechanism as the IB, was initially fitted with the Model L reproducer (with sapphire stylus for wax Amberols), but with the introduction of Blue Amberols, shipped with the Diamond A reproducer.

Archival storage of cylinders

The "Amberol" plastic of the cylinders is molded around a core of plaster. This plaster core has proved the greatest problem with long-term survival of Blue Amberol Records, as the plaster often tends to expand over the decades, especially if exposed to moisture or kept in humid conditions. The expanding plaster in less severe cases can make the inside of the record not fit properly on the phonograph mandrel (which can be fairly easily remedied by reaming the inner surface of the cylinder out), or can warp the cylinder out of round making it not play properly. In worse cases, the expanding plaster will crack or split the plastic playing surface, rendering the record unusable.

The Blue Amberol plastic is highly flammable since it is nitrocellulose. Being an organic plastic, celluloid is also capable of decomposition, although this phenomenon in Amberols is rare to nil.

See also

• List of record labels
• List of Blue Amberol Records

External links

• Edison Blue Amberol cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.