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German Record Museum 1st birthday

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Deutsches Schallplattenmuseum, Nortorf

A record collection totalling 180,000 LPs and 78s, plus the history of audio under one roof comprises a most unusual German record museum. The German depository of records and recording began life as part of Nortorf town’s museum in Schleswig-Holstein. When that building had to be demolished those behind the incredible collection of historic artefacts decided that the exhibits needed a better home.

So it was that a year ago the Deutsches Schallplattenmuseum was opened and this month celebrates its first anniversary. Over the first twelve months, thousands have been welcomed through the doors to view not only one of the foremost record collections on the globe but also a glimpse of recording developments from the very early days to the present digital era.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

What better home for the new 800 square-metre venue than the birthplace of Teldec’s , the record company that put the small north German town on the map;. It was 1948 when the production of records began, on a converted leather press, in Nortorf after Telefunken was forced to move from its bombed site in Berlin which had ended up in the Eastern sector at the end of hostilities.

While things began on a relatively small scale, with just 24,000 records produced in the first year, by 1949 seven mechanical toggle presses were installed and annual production increased to 400,000 records. A landmark was reached in June 1950 as the millionth record rolled off the presses and Teldec (Tel from Telefunken and Dec from Decca Records, of London fame) was founded in Hamburg. Things increased a pace and from 1951 the shellac for pressing was produced in the Nortorf factory, which also produced the first granules for vinyl LPs in 1952.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Expansion was rapid and the premises were enlarged in 1952 although technology was already moving and the last shellac pressing took place in 1959. By 1987, a total of 850,000,000 shellac and vinyl records had left the Teldec record factory where a thousand people were employed to run the operation virtually round the clock.

All that came to an end and the last pressing made there was of Simply Red’s Men and Women in 1997 as Teldec was sold to Time Warner. Instead of records, the US company relied on a new medium – the Laserdisc. Despite good intentions to make Nortorf the centre of production, the new format didn’t take off as had been expected, which saw the beginning of the end for the site that had contributed so much to record production. The plant closed in 1997 despite a management buy-out attempt.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Converting Teldec’s former boiler house (above) and plantrooms took considerable time and money. Some 5,000 hours of work went into creating the new museum, much of it by volunteers. For an entire year, two dozen active members hammered, screwed, set-up and sorted records and historic equipment. Eventually everything was ready and the grand opening took place on October 1st 2022.

The association running the museum, led by Chairman Lutz Bertram, has amassed a fascinating array of recording equipment to take the visitor through the history of sound recording from the very early days. This is when Thomas Alva Edison’s phonograph appeared, the first device to record and play-back sounds using vertical modulations in a spiral groove to capture recordings. I was entertained with a recording of Au Clair de la Lune from a machine dating to around 1879.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Visitors are then taken from the pre-1900 phonograph era to the development of the gramophone between 1910 and 1940. Here, the Hanover native Emil Berliner’s work is paramount as he developed the technology and the record itself which relied on a side-to-side movement to capture audio. There are very early, yet working examples of the early record player, which competed with Edison’s work in a parallel not dissimilar to that seen much later with the competing VHS and Betamax video formats.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

An exhibit to catch my eye, as I am guided by one of the museum’s trustees, Dr Thomas Perkuhn, is clearly labelled Dicatphone although it’s a far cry from the secretarial dictating machines I used to use. This Model 12 is an example of an early cylinder recorder/player when Edison realised how to save a two-minute recording to metal foil.

The museum possesses an impressive range of early players in its 120-year coverage of recorded music; more impressive still is that they work and some produce a fairly decent sound; to think this is not amplified either. No electronics at all, in fact. Incredible.

One of my personal highlights was listening to a 1906 recording of the opera singer Caruso from a single-sided disc, in the days before both sides were used. The sound was unmistakably from the maestro who was the first artist to perform once and sell the recording, while others continued with repeated live performances.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Something I hadn’t realised was how often needles had to be replaced: after playing just one side, in fact, because the Berliner system required a downforce of between 100g and 200g. I also discovered that there were different needles to provide different playback levels; while some gramophones had wooden doors to vary the output level, there was no volume adjustment. All this while Edison was experimenting with a diamond stylus on a lacquer-coated wooden record as he patented his vertical groove modulation replay technique.

An endearing clockwork gramophone from 1926 would have entertained children of the time. Built in a tin box and made in Bavaria, it cost all of three-Reichsmark and even features a pitch control to play 78s up to an incredible 150rpm to create some interesting sounds. Alongside is a wind-up ‘high-end’ player from 1928 which was used in an East German record shop.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Copying was rife in the days of 78s as a wire recorder (above) demonstrated. Playing the disc and recording it, in real-time, to wire. Apparently it had a short production run; due to magnetic technological setbacks more than the fact that most discs said ‘recording prohibited’.

After a break for refreshments in the café upstairs, and a chance to view the shop with all manner of record-related merchandise, it was time to hear about developments from the 1950s and a raft of wireless receivers and record players including a singles auto-changer alongside a German-made Loewe radio.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

A nostalgic moment came when we entered the 1960s zone and I was taken back to my childhood when a vast piece of furniture in the sitting room at home produced music. We had only wireless and records, but the museum’s example was up-market and incorporated a quarter-inch tape recorder as well. The sound was remarkable: warm, full-bodied and thoroughly entertaining as we wallowed in the sounds of Kurt Edelhagen and his orchestra. This, along with so many other exhibits, has been lovingly restored by the record museum’s volunteers.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

My guide has a personal fascination for historical tape recorders and among the museum exhibits are some of his private collection, including a Revox A77. I marvel over an early Telefunken M15 studio machine (having used the successor in my early days at the BBC) as well as a mini Nagra tape recorder and an example of the first Phillips’ cassette recorder. Of particular interest was probably the most up-market-looking eight-track cartridge player I have ever seen. It brought back memories of one a friend had in his early Mini which jumped tracks when he hit a pothole.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Around the next corner and a milestone: stereo records. Thanks to Alan Blumlein’s creation, the 14th of December 1933 saw a wax disc cut in a test recording of stereo sound for the first time by EMI in Hayes. It made use of both Edison’s up-and-down patent and Berliner’s side-to-side system to allow two-channel signals to be recorded. That was such a major breakthrough and is marked with a variety of early stereo players including the Polydor above.

With records becoming ever-more popular, novelty versions appeared such as those built into postcards; one example in the museum being sent from a cruise ship to those back home. The circular grooves on a square postcard are not the easiest to play, but the technology does work.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

With all the excitement of records, other technologies struggled to gain market share. One failure was Tefi, developed in the 1930s but not sold until the 1950s. It relied on an endless cassette, but with grooves rather than magnetic tape as we were to see dominate the market. Offering up to four hours’ playback on larger cassettes, it failed for several reasons not least that artists were tied to contracts forbidding them to cooperate.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

It’s hardly surprising that with the boom in interest and sales offered by stereo records that technology was advancing apace. A huge success for Telarc was DMM or direct-metal-mastering (cut on machines like the one above), which removed an entire stage from the LP pressing process.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

One of the museum’s prize possessions is a restored record pressing machine which is fired-up on special occasions to add to the venue’s atmosphere. Visitors can see how the vinyl granules are heated, the centre labels put in place and the mighty plates come together to squeeze out a record which is then taken off, trimmed and sent off for packing. In this way, the building really has been brought back to life and it’s not hard to imagine it in full swing, back in its heyday.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Painstaking restoration sees a mighty Wurlitzer jukebox in full working order, with the coin-slot mechanism bypassed to allow ‘free’ plays of the singles onboard, and this fills the museum’s main hall with an authentic sound of the era. The trustees are already searching for a jukebox for shellac records. Now, that would be something. Otherwise they rely on generous loans or donations to bolster their exhibits (such as the gift of unwanted record collections from two radio stations), as well as the ‘chance find’ while on their own travels.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

Before we leave, Dr Perkhun demonstrates another restored relic of record shop history, a counter with hand-held earphones at which customers would listen to a record of their choice before deciding whether to purchase it. Such were common at stores across Germany, and beyond, while I remember London department stores I was taken to as a child having separate booths in which to audition recordings.

German Record Museum https://the-ear.net/

I’ve enjoyed my day at what is a unique museum. But don’t take my word for it. Thomas explains that two South Korean music producers who visited also remarked on the venue’s uniqueness, having found nothing else like it on their journeys around the globe.

Anyone finding themselves in northern Germany, or even southern Denmark, should consider the detour to visit this most informative, educational and entertaining museum. Entry is a most reasonable €4 for adults (with a similar charge for a pre-booked tour) and entry is from Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5 p.m.

Trevor Butler

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