Shellac
All music samples on this site are recorded with a microphone from the shellac record for sale with a His Masters Voice 101 portable phonograph.
Shellac Records: Echoes of Music’s Golden Era. Shellac records, with their distinctive warm tones and delicate charm, were the heartbeat of an era that shaped modern music as we know it.
What are Shellac Records?
Shellac records, born from the resin of exotic lac bugs, emerged in the early 20th century as the first widely adopted medium for recorded music. These fragile discs, spinning at 78 revolutions per minute, held the symphonies, ballads, and rhythms of their time.
In an age before digital precision, shellac records were the vessels that brought music to life in living rooms, dance halls, and speakeasies worldwide. They gave voice to legendary artists, from the soulful blues of Robert Johnson to the orchestral brilliance of Beethoven.
Vinyl
All music samples on this site are recorded from the record for sale and always the first track.
Vinyl has always offered a more intimate experience. The large format feels more substantial and turns the design of the cover and the inserts into satisfying artworks in their own right in a way that a CD never could.
Vinyl can be fragile, yes, among other imperfections. But those end up being part of its charm. Older records warp, needles wobble on their surface and skip over scratches. This is also turns records into nostalgia factories.
CD
“As long as you can measure the difference, the CD will be better than the vinyl, absolutely,” says Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, a former Philips engineer in the Netherlands, who was a member of the Sony/Philips task force that created the compact disc standards. “But if you say the whole experience — just like smoking cigars with friends — is better, well, do it. Enjoy smoking cigars with friends, and drink beer and brandy and enjoy listening to an old-fashioned record player. But don’t say the sound is better.”
“You may say it sounds better to you. That’s OK. That’s a subjective matter.”
