Transcribing 78 rpm records and renovating the original audio quality is often very tricky, unless you are a trained professional. In short, don’t try this at home!
Dancing the Devil Away started out as doubly tricky, because of the way Edison “diamond discs” were designed as opposed to regular 78 rpm records. While Edison may have been correct in that, in some ways, the reproduced sound of his products may have been better than the competition, Edison’s method of recording eventually went the way of many great discoveries.
Parenthetically, most early 78 rpm records are recorded and played back by having a needle move from side to side in the groove (i.e., “lateral recording”). The problem with this method is that unless a brand-new steel needle was used each time a record was played (and most people did not have the money to buy premium Victor 78 rpm records, so I imagine this did not happen often in most homes), then irreparable damage would happen to the grooves, affecting the quality of the sound.
With Edison’s method of recording, the needle went up and down (i.e., “hill and dale” recording), the diaphragm to reproduce the sound faced towards the disc, and the needle was a conical piece of diamond which didn’t need replacing very often. And when the world economy went south around 1929, Edison got out of the record business.
The fight between these two ty
