Sounds from the Good Old Days.

In dealing with the archives of Altrincham United Reformed Church, we came across an old 78 record of part of a BBC broadcast of a church service held there on 15th June 1952

The Trinity Hale church (illustrated) was then known as the Hale Congregational Church.

78 rpm records were notoriously fragile, and wore rapidly, usually deteriorating after only 20 playings. To digitally copy the record, it was replayed just once with a microgroove piezo-electric pick-up at 33 rpm, the idea being that the finer stylus would sit lower in the groove and below any previous damage. The pick-up, having a flatter response than electromagnetic transducers, would preserve the lower frequencies. Somewhere, it was recalled, it had been noted that playing with a diamond at 78 rpm would be likely to result in further damage, and 33rpm was better than 45 rpm. Bringing the record back to speed was a simple matter using Goldwave© processing, as was the necessary cereal noise filtering. To hear the result, voices from the past, click here.

http://www.zen40686.zen.co.uk/transfer/Hale-service-15Jun1952.mp3

In December 2004 we experimented briefly in recording the choir at Trinity Bowdon, using a tape recorder.

To hear the choir, click here.
To hear a duet by Jill and Jennifer Dobson, click here