In my last post I spoke of my dilemma concerning a set of four factory-sealed albums from the 1940s: they're mine now, but do I open them? Two are from 1945; one from 1949; the last from 1950. They have sailed down six-plus decades with their brown paper wrappers still snug around their 12 x 14.5" album jackets. Do I have any right to change the course of their destiny, just because I am now their owner? Their original owner did not open them, and I bought them from a collector who left them as they were.
The solution was right in front of me, although it took a few helpful words from an expert record preservationist to help me see the light. He pointed out that there are two contradictory mindsets here: the collector, and the preservationist. To the collector, there is no dilemma: you leave it alone. The value of the album plummets as soon as you open it, after all.
The preservationist sees things differently. My friend told me: you don't know what's been going on inside that factory-sealed wrapping. Oh, sheesh, I thought: oh sheesh oh sheesh oh sheesh.
Because 78s are heir to a host of potential ills. Their biggest enemies are moisture, heat, acid, and parasites. Fungus can start growing happily in the grooves of a sealed 78; all it took was for the guy packing the records to sneeze and voilà a near-perfect medium for fungal growth has been deposited in the nice cozy confines of a record groove. Many fungi will start munching on the shellac as well (it's an organic compound, remember) and leave little pits where they have been dining.
Acid and shellac don't mix well. Or rather they mix altogether too damn well; the acid reacts with the shellac to form a host of nifty volatiles that then waft away, leaving a hole where was there was audio information. Unfortunately, the paper used in the sleeves of a standard 78 RPM album is just chock-full of acid. That's why it turns that lovely apple-pie brown color over time. But all that acid could be playing havoc with the records inside, especially if the paper has started to crumble and release its chemical constituents.
Moisture not only enhances fungal growth but it can also hasten the decomposition of that high-acid sleeve paper. And heat—well, heat does all sorts of icky things from warping the record to further encouraging mold and fungus to ushering the decomp process along.
Am I a collector or a preservationist? No question there: preservation is my goal. I want the music to be saved for the future. The monetary value of the albums is a consideration but takes a distant back seat to their musical value. If those 78 shellac discs inside those brown-paper-wrapped cases are disintegrating, I want to get the music off them right now. And there's only one way to find out.
I was gentle. I took care to preserve those factory wrappings (thin brown paper with the RCA Victor logo on the front and a label on the side) and to put them in plastic slip cases for safekeeping. But I got the albums out of their wrapping and into the light. And here's what I found:
Bach-Respighi Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor: it could have come new from the store yesterday, save some slight browning of the inner lining.
D'Indy Istar Symphonic Variations: ditto, all the more joyous given the album's eye-poppingly spectacular artwork.
Milhaud Protée: ditto, another wonderfully pure and pristine record with no marks of age.
Beethoven Symphony No. 8: hold everything! Mold was creeping in along the edges of the jacket. The inner sleeves are a bit musty, the inner liner distinctly browned. The inside of this album looks older. And the records had the beginnings of fungal growth—not very much, and nothing all that serious, but enough to make me very glad I had decided to open this album.
That's because I can remove the fungus. It hadn't gone so far that the shellac underneath was destroyed. But two of the three discs had some clear signs of age distress: one is lightly pebbly on its surface, a sign that there might have been some problems with moisture in the past. And another had a bunch of tiny streaks across the grooves, clear evidence of a light mold/fungus infestation that had cleared up on its own (probably after the drying up of whatever moisture had gotten the ball rolling in the first place.)
A light fungal treatment of the right-hand corner of the front cover took care of the little brown splotches. A cautious cleaning in my Spin-Clean took care of the fungal deposits on disc one. RCA Red Seal DM-1450 rendered up a splendid digital dub that I will probably leave as is without any click removal whatsoever, doing nothing more than joining up the sides into complete movements.
Even if a preservationist intervention wasn't needed for the other three, I'm glad I made the decision. From a collector's point of view it's too late to change my mind; they're open and nothing will ever change that.
From a musician's and preservationist's point of view, this was the right decision. I'll make gorgeous dubs from them, and then keep them safe. No acid and no fungus will threaten them in the future—at least not while I'm around. And the music? It will go on and on and on.
Beethoven Symphony 8 after the mold removal: look closely at the right-hand lower corner and you can see a few remaining traces.
Beethoven Eighth: you can see a few fungal growths near the label. There were some larger ones in the grooves. In time they would destroy the disc.
