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From: Buddy McPeters
Date: June 26, 2005
When I was a kid in the late 50's and 60's I got a big kick out of my dad cutting records off the air on the AM radio that was in the Meisner Phono-Cord portable discutter that he had bought in 1947. He still had blank 78's discs that he could still use to cut them. Here's a picture of the exact same model he had: http://www.west-techservices.com/images/meissner.jpg
As time went on though, the material these blanks were made of somehow changed in their chemical composition; for some reason they became very brittle and no longer soft enough to be used. I recall the last time he tried to cut a record the new blank was so brittle that the cutting arm just jumped all over and would not cut a groove. I wish I had some of the recordings he made! I remember one he made where he had played a solo piece on his guitar and then played it on another phonograph while he cut another disc of him playing his guitar along with it, which produced a 'twin guitar' record. I think it was Bob's old fiddle tune version of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' arranged for guitar, played pretty fast in two part twin guitar harmony. It sounded like Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West! I'll never forget he was cleaning out the garage one Saturday and took that Meisner unit with all these records inside the top which had a disc compartment and tossed it all out at the county dump!
