I have a C-2. The pickup is essentially the same horseshoe magnet pickup design as used in most of the contemporary models sold by Victor, Brunswick, Atwater-Kent, etc. But Edison included a "scratch filter" (Edison may have had another name for this, but I can't remember what they called it) module located under the turntable motor board which was a resistive-capacitive low-pass filter. This was ostensibly to filter out the "needle scratch" noise which was supposedly indigenous to needle-cut records, according to Edison company blather. Truth be told, it filtered the noise from Edison DDs more effectively. DDs have inherently lower signal to noise ratio (are noisier) due to their low modulation level compared to the typical electrical Victor record of the day. This made the DDs sound particularly noisy when compared with laterals played on the C-2, so Edison included the filter which was not switchable. Consequently, all records played on the C-2 are somewhat lacking in treble response compared with, say, the superior sound obtained from the Victor micro-synchronous RE-45 or RE-75 of 1929 which also used a similar horseshoe pickup without the scratch filter. The C-2 generally has a tubby, boomy sound which is fairly common with the early large console radios. Again, the Victor micro-synchronous radios were a major exception to the rule. Their advanced speaker design is largely responsible for their superior sound - good, well-balanced sound over the audio spectrum without excessive bass boominess while still providing extended bass response to quite low frequencies. Curiously, this speaker (which is generally attributed to a Kellogg design) was used by Victor and/or RCA in only that one model year of 1929. The earlier and later speakers for many years were audibly inferior to the 1929 model. I don't know why RCA didn't continue using the better design from 1929 in their later models. Probably had something to do with patent royalties on the Kellogg design that RCA didn't want to pay. Greg Bogantz ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Fraser" <pjfraser at alamedanet.net> To: "Antique Phonograph List" <phono-l at oldcrank.org> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 7:07 PM Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Edison C2 performance > I've been meaning to ask this for some time now...how do the Edison > electrical reproducers sound, when playing diamond discs? > > Sent from my iPhone > > -- Peter > pjfraser at mac.com > > On Mar 21, 2008, at 1:41 PM, "Bruce Mercer" <maxbud12 at wowway.com> wrote: > >> Yes to all of the above. A C-2 I purchased some time ago had both the >> 12"Roth and Martinelli records (among others) in the albums along with a >> bunch of pop black with gold lettering on the labels. Ha anyone ever >> seen a 10" classical with a gold label with black lettering? Needle >> cuts, as far as I remember were sold from mid July to mid October 1929. >> They were superior sounding records. >> Bruce >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Phono-L mailing list >> http://phono-l.oldcrank.org > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > http://phono-l.oldcrank.org