By adding a shellac-playing turntable to my home system, I did my bit to help honour my partner Chelle’s beloved great-grandparents.
Chelle inherited her great grandpa Gus’s portable wind-up gramophone and all his surviving shellac 78 rpm records. This is a party-tested machine if there ever was one — trotted around to house and barn parties for decades. It was designed for this purpose. While the player was pretty heavy (about 16 lbs), it didn’t require electricity, closed up into its own briefcase-sized case and didn’t have a big, bulky horn. It was handed down to Gus’s only son Fred, whose wife Bernice entrusted it to their son, Bruce — my father-in-law — who gave it to his daughter. It sits in our music parlour, but more on that later.
Gus Taylor Lorenzen — who would have turned 128 on Feb. 7 this year — was born in Madison County, Iowa, the son of a German-speaking Danish immigrant. Gus met the love of his life, Betty Spillers, and the pair got hitched in 1920 on his 23rd birthday — and almost exactly a month after her 21st. They kicked around Iowa for seven years before they sought a new life farming in the Canadian prairies. They arrived in the U.S.-Canadian border town of North Portal, Sask. (population: 115) in May, 1927 and settled in Gray, south of Regina. This is where Fred was born, three years before they relocated to Peace River, and later Manning, Alta.
As best as I can tell, this is probably when the storied gramophone was acquired. It’s an HMV 101, still considered one of the best portable crank-up gramophones ever made. They’re rather valuable, too — especially the fancy ones which were dressed in something other than standard black wrap. Gus’s record player is red. But, according to Chelle, it likely wasn’t Gus who acquired the thing, but Betty. Chelle says her great-grandma — whose recipes we routinely still enjoy — was a bit of a techy gearhead. She got this top-of-the-line portable player as soon as it was available. She always had the latest and best camera, and was one of the first in the region to own a Super 8 movie camera. Chelle is pretty certain Betty picked out the player and decided what records Gus should like. I can’t say for sure who picked out the records, but from what I’ve seen and heard, their taste was spectacular.
But, needless to say, a crank-up gramophone is a bit of a pain in the ass, when incorporated as a component into a home stereo system. It’s fully analog — no line out, and it doesn’t make sense to mic it. Instead, I decided to just display it and find a way to play Gus & Betty’s shellac records on my own system. I’m set up for quadraphonic sound and already have a turntable, Blu-ray, four channel reel-to-reel, dual cassette deck and a quad 8-track player as part of my system. Because it’s quad, my turntable has a lovely Shibata stylus — which I refuse to insert into the grooves of some dusty, scratched farmland shellac. Also, my vintage Thorens turntable only has two speeds — 45 and 33 rpm. So, I couldn’t play them, even if I wanted to go through the trouble of swapping out cartridges and styli every time (I don’t). But now I understand why some folks have those fancy turntables with two tonearms. Someday…
Anyway, I started hunting for a second turntable — one with the ability to play 78 rpm records. You can go one of two ways with this. The expensive route involves a turntable like a vintage Dual for around $300, or a brand new Audio Technica AT120 for around $480 fitted with an Audio Technica AT-VM95SP cartridge, which is specifically designed for shellac 78 rpm records. These will run you just north of $100. So, you’re looking at a player that will set you back $400-$600. It was Christmas, so I couldn’t afford that. But I also didn’t really want to go with the cheapo option of just getting one of those $70 Crosley/Victrola portable players you see at Winners, Walmart and even Shoppers Drug Mart. While the players have three speeds, the styli on these players aren’t ideal either. They’re not designed to play shellac, only vinyl. So, you’ll again need to upgrade to a shellac-specific stylus. Most of these new, three-speed budget record players are designed for vinyl records only, meaning they have a stylus with a .6 mm tip. Shellac records, like all of Gus and Betty’s ones, have much deeper and wider grooves, and require a 3 mm conical stylus. Record companies didn’t start using vinyl until 1948 and didn’t stop using shellac until 1958.
I managed to find a solution which cost me under $50. I did get one of those cheap suitcase players — brand new, second-hand on Marketplace for $20. And then I ordered a replacement stylus for it. In this case, a $20 VICTRITNPLC178. The player has RCA stereo out ports, so I ran a nice long cable from the back of it, into the PHONO 2 jack on the back of my vintage Pioneer QX949 quad receiver. It sounds just dandy, and is fun as hell.
Incidentally, shellac breaks very easily. The records are old and brittle, so if you’re ordering some online, make sure the sender knows how to package them properly. As for their condition, don’t worry about it the same way you do vinyl. Shellac is far more forgiving. Even if the discs look quite scratched, they might sound just fine, thanks to those deep grooves I mentioned. But, also because of those deep grooves, make sure you give the records a good cleaning before you play them, there’s probably a generation of dusty gunk hiding in them.
And, if you’d like a sample of Gus & Betty’s records, I fashioned a playlist of some of their songs we love to spin. (You might wonder why the non-shellac track Sweet Georgia Brown by Alberta Hunter is on this playlist. Well, Betty loved it and used to play it on piano. In fact, she used to play ragtime piano during the silent movies at the old Aurora Theatre in Manning. So, it’s a loving little tip of the hat, courtesy of their great-granddaughter.)
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
