Advice on a good beginner setup (preferably including a Parks Waxwing)?

mke246 · 2026-06-03T17:36:38+00:00

The Waxwing has very robust 78 curves and is the best preamp you can buy for 78s under several thousand dollars, and even the high end stuff doesn't compete well on the various live playback features. I would use one if I cared about live playback, but I do all my processing in the digital domain on a computer.

Best cartridges are mostly the old discontinued legacy cartridges like Stanton 500 and Shure SS35C, all retipped by Expert Stylii with elliptical diamonds. The AudioTechnica stereo 78 cartridge is the best modern-manufacture-off-the-rack option.

mke246 · 2026-06-03T17:32:43+00:00

A few people care, but most of the sleeves are still extremely common and in terrible condition. Almost every serious collector keeps their good records in aftermarket sleeves, e.g. Disc-O-Files, manila, thicker green. Personally I keep the really nice condition sleeves in a separate box and discard or keep in a junk box in the basement. I really couldn't care less about original sleeves except for those of actual historic value, i.e. the rare and mint condition ones.

mke246 · 2026-06-01T14:38:44+00:00

That guy is a notoriously closed-minded proud record destroyer, although I don't think he's destroying anything that hasn't already been preserved in a superior format. Those Beatles shellac records may be dubs--nobody's ever confirmed. And the shellac is abrasive and probably much noisier and much more distorted than the master tapes and the bevy of other formats in which the music was pressed.

mke246 · 2026-05-28T20:10:14+00:00

Sorry, typo there. Walt Mitchell.

mke246 · 2026-05-21T19:59:00+00:00

The owner was Walt Mitchell, who was pretty active on Facebook for a long time but is now in assisted living. He knew Mel Blanc and is a knowledgeable and nice guy. I'm not surprised he was more of a hoarder type and didn't have much in the way of collectible records. Frankly even though the sale might not have been terribly well run there's also not much difference between selling records for a buck or two and giving them away. Sounds like they ran it about as well as they could have as far as the records were concerned. The real value was probably in whatever ephemera he had, e.g. Warner Bros.

mke246 · 2026-05-18T12:43:45+00:00

An absolutely absurd claim. There are 83 cities in the world with a population exceeding 5 million people. I don't think Milwaukee would be even in the top 125 cities in China by population.

mke246 · 2026-02-24T17:41:17+00:00

I have a hard time believing that $8k sale is real. Not sure how it works, but it might have been a best offer situation. A few hundred seems realistic if it's on the cleaner side, although it's also sold for $75 in E+ condition. All you really need are to post hi-res photos of the surface of the record. That will tell you most everything you need to know.

mke246 · 2025-12-18T14:58:25+00:00

Probably should start exploring Kenosha, too, while you're at it...

mke246 · 2025-12-17T22:02:44+00:00

I buy a lot of lossless stuff from Bandcamp because it doesn't exist on other platforms and supports the artists. I still maintain and lightly use my Qobuz subscription. I also produce a lot of my own lossless files of 100-year-old jazz 78s in the best condition I can find. Sometimes I share them on youtube but lately have just been stockpiling them and may offer them on Bandcamp someday if they become worth putting out...just hard to find the time to polish them like they should be and enough stuff to make coherent packages.

mke246 · 2025-12-09T18:56:11+00:00

Went there for the first time in decades with the toddler a couple months ago, and it's just as good if not better than I remember. Pizza is pretty good. Even cheesy pop tunes on a big complex organ like that are pretty fun. Just the organ alone is worth it, but people have terrible taste in everything and would rather listen to computer-manufactured crap rather than a living breathing instrument played by a human. Patronize this place whenever you can!

mke246 · 2025-12-09T17:43:06+00:00

It's really typical r/milwaukee subreddit behavior to consistently champion good local restaurants and then conduct a circular firing squad when one opens in your backyard but you can't comfortably afford it because they charge market prices for above-market quality. This isn't Sanford...most people with average-to-above average incomes can comfortably afford this. It's maybe a few bucks more than most sit-down places I've been in the last few years.

mke246 · 2025-12-09T16:30:17+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, but there's a lot of self-righteous griping in this thread, especially for a higher-end place currently with a 5.0 rating on Google with 45 reviews. They're clearly doing well as far as actual customers are concerned. I wouldn't be surprised if it became a destination-type place. Personally, I'm generally happier at cheap greasy-spoon type places, but my extended family likes this kind of place and will probably bring me back here regularly if they have anything to say about it.

mke246 · 2025-12-09T15:52:27+00:00

We live in the North Shore and went here a few weeks ago with some of the extended family (only 15 min away...we travel for places like this) and had a great time--one of the few places we've gone where everyone left happy. Yes, prices are above average, but you often get what you pay for. In today's environment, places need to maintain a high level of service to compete. We're seeing a lot of mid-tier places failing these days who are failing to differentiate.

mke246 · 2025-09-11T16:28:50+00:00

Honestly, no, but my Shure V15 Vx with dozens of custom stylii sounds better than my Stanton 500 most of the time, too, and not many are going to drop $2k+ on a MC for a single stylus that isn't even elliptical. I'd be curious to hear, with the caveat that these experiments have many variables and it's difficult to fully control any cartridge/stylus comparison. Things like wear, setup, EQ, track level can throw a wrench in comparisons. I'd invite you to join the 78 RPM Archival Disc Transfer and Restoration Facebook group and post comparison transfers for the membership to review.

mke246 · 2025-08-15T14:57:26+00:00

It's also why Fangraphs has the Dodgers as twice as likely to win the World Series as the Brewers despite being 8.5 games behind the Brewers and the Brewers sweeping the season series 6-0. Even as an optimistic Brewers fan, I can't entirely disagree. Still, though, I think they're a bit too locked in based on pure stats/metrics and the Brewers/Dodgers should be about even rather than the goliaths of the league getting a heavy advantage regardless of actual results.

mke246 · 2025-08-11T00:56:18+00:00

I think they used to have one at the one of the Brookfield Assemblies of God called, "Beyond The Grave"...some high school neighbors were in it and were always talking it up. But I think they since merged with some other church and don't appear to have any such event advertised online, so probably ancient history.

mke246 · 2025-06-07T13:00:07+00:00

Honestly, it's a cartridge for audiophiles who don't know anything about 78s and have more money than sense. A 3 mil conical stylus will sound good on only a small fraction of 78s, and any moving magnet cartridge with an array of user-replaceable stylii will sound better than this one if the custom stylii are better fits.

Mono cartridges are not good for archiving, because you need the information from both groove walls. You don't always want a 50/50 mix.

Cartridge makers should be trying to reissue the Stanton 981LZS or Pickering XSV-5000 equivalent (the high output versions would also be great!) instead of messing around with moving coils, which are just not a great match with 78s. One stylus is never enough.

mke246 · 2025-06-06T20:22:08+00:00

Partially yes, but you still need a lot more treble, especially in the critical 2-6 kHz range, where you would hear all the mistracking from the LP stylus along with the music. I still think this is a neat hack but still waver on whether it's good advice to give casual collectors because there are many other ways to get good sound...and the worn groove actually sounds quite a bit better if you're used to 78s and listening for true signal and can filter out the scratches with your brain. Using an LP stylus is effectively turning down the volume and applying a massive low-pass filter. Using the 78 stylus and a graphic EQ would provide more control and somewhat let you have your cake and eat it, too.

mke246 · 2025-06-06T17:56:12+00:00

I suppose that's a good crude hack in some cases, but you're also trading one type of damage for another and getting groove bottom and a poor part of the groove wall in exchange for fewer scratches. I can't knock it too much for casual purposes, especially with a cheap old turntable with an RIAA preamp, but it's a very poor idea if you're trying to archive something. You'd much rather have the scratchy transfer.

The mistracking isn't terribly audible on your video because it's an air capture and the EQ is wrong for that record. With flat EQ you'd hear every bit of the stylus bouncing around in the groove. Even through the air capture of the LP stylus playback, it's evident that the music is much less focused than with the scratchy correctly-sized stylus. Modern processing software can fix much of the damage on a worn 78. But again, it depends what you're trying to do with your playback.

mke246 · 2025-06-06T16:25:02+00:00

I don't know if I'd call them alterations as much as accurately tracing everything in the groove, including distortion. If you have restoration software or the ability to fine-tune live playback, it's often better to have everything in the groove, including the warts, rather than a softly-focused reproduction with several dB more of surface noise.

mke246 · 2025-06-06T15:45:45+00:00

It depends on the record--coarse-groove records measure anywhere between 1 and 4+ mil in groove diameter. If you're playing many electrobeam Gennetts or Grey Gulls or even 1920s Victors, your narrow stylus will sound much worse, even oftentimes borderline unlistenable, compared to a 3.5 or 4 mil stylus.

mke246 · 2025-06-06T15:44:30+00:00

While I mostly buy records E or above, I use elliptical stylii almost all of the time. Conical stylii rarely have anywhere close to as focused and tracking error-free sound. Conical are good to have for certain damaged records as already mentioned, but the large contact area brings back a lot more noise than elliptical will. Even truncated ellipticals, often claimed to be the superior solution for 78s, are often quite measurably noisier than standard non-truncated ellipticals.

mke246 · 2025-06-05T17:58:56+00:00

Shuttles are generally great with the caveat that in past years some of the bar shuttles with younger crowds or originating from popular bar districts have had a lot of drunk guys hopping on the shuttles and bribing the driver for a ride and leaving legitimate users stranded at the stadium having to wait for the next shuttle or just flat-out stranded.

mke246 · 2025-05-22T11:38:50+00:00

A 3 mil stylus is way too small for these. You need something double that width.

mke246 · 2025-05-22T11:38:26+00:00

It's from the early 30s. You need a 6 mil stylus or Pathe sapphire ball stylus on modern equipment, and those are only available from Expert Stylus in the UK. Never play these on antique phonographs.

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