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On an Overgrown Pathé

Home, Sweet Home

A Review of the Wilson Home Phonograph

Part II - Nuts and Bolts

Product name: Wilson Home Phonograph
Manufacturer: Wilson Materials - USA
Cost: $1,700 plus shipping (Currency conversion)
Reviewer: David Hoehl - TNT-Audio USA
Reviewed: June, 2024

Part I of this review introduced the Wilson Home Phonograph, a modern electric cylinder player sold at a price affordable to private collectors, and explained some of the characteristics and issues of the cylinder phonograph records it is intended to play. This second part of the review gets down to brass tacks: how the Wilson Home is designed to handle the format's various demands and quirks and what ancillary equipment is necessary or desirable to get a Wilson Home up and running. The third and final part will examine how the Wilson Home performs in practice. As a reminder, recall that I refer to two different iterations of the machine by serial number: “no. 5” is the original design that I received in 2022; “no. 16” is its successor, which embodies the much-refined design as it stands today. From the outset, as reflected in no. 5, the Wilson Home has addressed most of the format's inherent demands in addition to concerns more central to modern audio electronics, such as suppressing motor noise and ground hum. Its current descendant, however, is a very different machine, much simplified and improved at a price $200 lower than what I paid for the original model. Take information about no. 5 in the remainder of this review as historical references and background, included because today's machine does still embody concepts introduced in that earlier model.

Design elements of the Wilson Home

The foundation for all the Wilson machines, old and new alike, is a heavily modified dual-motor machinist's bench lathe. That's right: the Wilson Home's heart was designed for metalworking, not audio. The headstock, driven by one motor, is repositioned from the left to replace the lathe's tailstock at the the machine's right end, where it mounts and spins a 3D-printed mandrel open to the left. More about that arrangement in Part III. Like the later Edison players, it has no end gate. The other motor turns a long feedcrew that drives a sled across the lathe bed from right to left. For isolation from mechanical noise, flexible elastic couplings connect the mandrel and feedscrew to their motors. Mounted on the sled is a platform supporting a tonearm gimbal with 3D-printed counterweight and an SME-style coupler for a conventional headshell. Height of the platform is adjustable to accommodate cylinders of different diameters, and a separate crank wheel adjusts the stylus contact point fore-and-aft. Attached to the platform's rear are two standard RCA jacks and a lengthy ground wire terminated in an alligator clip, a nice convenience for connecting it to a post or screw on associated gear. The RCA jacks are the machine's sole provision for audio output; the Wilson Home has neither a headphone jack nor Bluetooth connectivity.

The Wilson Home phonographs, like the open-horn cylinder players of a century ago, have an industrial, “machine-y” look, but no. 5 gave a distinct impression of what you might call “cottage industry” production, the case being wooden and open-backed with hand-applied lettering inside. Its design aimed for maximum flexibility. It incorporated a dial gauge to aid in maintaining consistent height settings when adjusting the tonearm platform, separate speed adjustment pots for the mandrel and feedscrew, and digital displays showing the speed of each in RPM. Actuating those displays were Hall effect sensors triggered by little magnets on the mandrel shaft's large flywheel and on the feedscrew mechanism. Separate switches for the mandrel and feedscrew provided selection of forward, off, or reverse for each. Also on the front panel was a master power button. The case was very large, surmounted by a fairly massive motor housing and flywheel arrangement. By contrast, the current design, as embodied in no. 16, still has an industrial vibe, but in a far more polished way, looking very much like factory production (it isn't, but it looks like it). Here the emphasis is on maximum simplicity and convenience. Some functional ways in which no. 16 differs from its predecessor are as follows:

• It is significantly more compact, with a shortened bed. Its motor and control housings are also smaller, in large part thanks to its omission of a flywheel and substitution of digital speed controllers for the analogue devices in first-generation machines. (See the above photo of nos. 5 and 16 together.)

  

• Its control arrangement is a greatly simplified. Gone are the digital displays, height gauge, and separate speed controls, replaced by three two-position switches: one for power, one to select whether the feedscrew turns at the rate for 2- or 4-minute cylinders, and one to start and stop play. A single knob adjusts speed of the mandrel. This approach is not as flexible as the old, but in practice it is more practical for regular playing; the old arrangement required a great deal of fussing to get settings right, particularly as they tended to be somewhat unstable, whereas the new approach requires only throwing one or two switches to play a cylinder.

• It offers a new tonearm arrangement. No. 5 had a Numark gimbal with the SME coupling mounted directly to its pivot block. No. 16 has a Technics gimbal with a short arm segment ending in the SME coupling. (See the adjacent photo.) Balancing a cartridge is easier with the new design; in the old one, I needed auxiliary headshell weights to offset even the lightest counterweight setting, although, thanks to slight differences between them, with the new one I still need a 1 gram weight on one headshell to get it tracking at the same weight as the other.

• Its tonearm rest, although still imperfect, embodies a better design. I'll go into more detail in Part III.

Incidentals

Assuming you plan to buy a Wilson Home, you'll need some associated equipment and accessories. Like a traditional mainstream component turntable, the Wilson Home includes neither a cartridge nor a phono preamp, although no. 5 had a space inside designated for placing a popular phono preamp marketed to 78 collectors. Given their differing groove pitches, handling both two- and four-minute cylinders calls for a minimum of two styli, neither matching a typical generic/stock “78” stylus. For my machine, I had Expert Stylus in England retip the stylus assemblies for a pair of LP Gear The Vessel A78SP cartridges, the budget “78 RPM” cartridge that I reviewed here on TNT in June 2020. Aside from economy, these have the advantage of being good performers able to track at up to 6 grams (but see below). I mounted each in its own headshell to avoid handling the stylus assemblies directly when switching between them, a process that I have discovered from sad experience to be risky for those of us with fumbly fingers. As cylinders are all vertical cut, I've swapped the right channel signal and ground headshell leads for each cartridge to yield a vertical cut monaural signal when the preamp is switched to its “mono” setting. Note, however, that the Wilson Home is “future proof”: it provides for stereo output, so should someone ever see fit to issue a stereo cylinder....

After settling cartridges and styli, the next step is obtaining a phono preamp appropriate for cylinder records. All two-minute, all four-minute wax, and all non-Edison four-minute celluloid cylinders were acoustically recorded from original masters. Edison's Blue Amberol four-minute celluloid cylinders present a more complicated story. From their introduction in 1912 until the end of 1914, they were acoustically recorded originals. After 1914, as an economy measure in recognition of the declining market for cylinders vs. disks, Edison began dubbing all cylinder masters from Diamond Disc masters. The Diamond Discs were acoustic recordings, until 1927 the dubs were performed horn-to-horn, and hence the cylinders remained acoustic recordings in every respect, but they now were second-generation copies, not original cylinder recordings. The company went to electrical dubbing, some from electrical Diamond Discs, from late 1927 to its dissolution at the end of October 1929. These relatively rare late, electrically dubbed issues were as close to electrically recorded cylinders as anyone issued during the historical recording era. I'm not sure which EQ curves, if any, might apply to them. The overwhelming majority of cylinders, however, are acoustic, meaning they had no electronic EQ curve applied during the recording process.

Accordingly, unless your collection is predominantly the very late, scarce and expensive electrically-dubbed-from-electrical-recordings Blue Amberols, the phono preamp for use with a Wilson Home should be optimized for playing acoustic recordings. The best choice, in my opinion, is the Graham Slee Accession. Besides a mono setting that yields vertical cut monaural when the cartridges are rewired as outlined above (not every mono selector does, although most do), it offers a unique “flat” setting. It's not a simple pass-through, as with a microphone mixer or other component that merely switches out equalization entirely; rather, it accounts for and neutralizes inherent rising response characteristics of magnetic cartridges. I won't belabor details here but will refer you to a review I wrote in 2018 regarding this preamp's performance with acoustic disks, which of course present the same equalization demands as acoustic cylinders.^[1] Immediately after I finished that article and returned the review unit, I bought an Accession, which has been my phono preamp for acoustic disk records ever since. (See? Here at TNT-Audio, we really mean it when we say we don't take freebie samples in return for reviews! Not that Graham Slee's company tried that common ploy; it's a very up-and-up operation.) For my venture into electric cylinder playback, I bought a second Accession for no. 5, which I've carried forward with no. 16, and I've been quite happy with the results.

I should note, however, that not everyone is as convinced about the Accession as I am, and it is not exactly inexpensive, even when purchased used like my two. The more traditional choice, which can be had at less cost, would be a pass-through, EQ-free component. If you go that route, be prepared to address extensive surface noise and perhaps tame the treble end of the recorded spectrum. I believe the labeled space inside no. 5 was intended for a Rek-o-Kut Ultra phono preamp, which indeed does have a no-EQ switch selection as well as limited other settings more suitable for electrical 78s. Beyond having read the descriptive matter on its seller's website, I have no experience with it. I'd also investigate whether something is available with a built-in vertical cut selection in addition to the pass-through option (which will probably be called “flat,” but, if you believe Graham Slee, in other manufacturers' wares really isn't flat when taken together with inherent response characteristics of magnetic cartridges).

Of course, the phono preamp must be connected to a regular sound system. Ordinarily, that would include a preamp and power amplifier or a receiver/integrated amplifier - which may or may not incorporate a phono preamp that can substitute for an outboard one if, and only if, it is capable of mono vertical cut playback as outlined above - and speakers. Nowadays, an alternative approach might be to substitute a pair of powered speakers for everything downstream of the phono preamp, potentially easing physical challenges of situating the Wilson Home, which are at least as important as having appropriate connections on the back of an amplifier. A pair with limited bass response, like the AudioEngine A2+ powered speakers I reviewed for TNT in 2019, can minimize certain issues with rumble that I'll discuss in more detail below. If you go this route, make sure the speakers you choose have a hard-wired audio input and don't rely solely on wireless/Bluetooth.

A Wilson Home default mandrel fits all standard sized and Columbia's six-inch-long Twentieth Century cylinders. Edison's six-inch Blue-Amberol-style training cylinders for the Ediphone business machines (see photo, left, with standard Blue Amberol for comparison) can also be mounted at least most of the way onto the mandrel, and despite supposedly incompatible groove pitch, mine seemed to synch up reasonably well with the Wilson Home's four-minute feed. Nonetheless, it's not suited for playback on the Wilson Home: its recorded speed is significantly slower than the bottom of the Wilson's pitch adjustment range. Thus, anyone trying to transcribe the fake business letters somebody reads on it had better be able to type a lot faster than the specified 140 words per minute! If for some reason you want to play one of these cylinders, you'll need the Wilson Studio Edition or an original Edison dictating machine. Cylinders of other diameters, as we have seen, require different mandrels. Both no. 5 and no. 16 have enough clearance for cylinders up to the Pathe salon size. Don Wilson can supply a suitable mandrel for these cylinders; Wilson mandrels are easily interchangeable, with embedded, threaded steel sockets that screw onto the motor shaft. Alternatively, if you have one of Pathe's own slip-on sleeves, it will fit on the Wilson Home's standard mandrel in exactly the same way it did on that of a Pathe acoustic player. See the photos above right. For the five-inch concert cylinders, however, once again you will need the Studio Edition, as neither generation of the standard Home has sufficient clearance for them.

I have been told the maximum safe tracking force for a wax cylinder on an electric machine is around 4 grams, assuming the cartridge is fitted with a good, properly sized stylus. I have no. 16 set for about 3.5 grams, and although that's slightly below the lower end of LP Gear's recommended range for my cartridges, for most cylinders it has worked well. A few, however, because of slight deformities or like factors, have needed some extra weight to track properly, and of course celluloid cylinders, which are disproportionately represented in that group, can tolerate more tracking force than wax ones can. Therefore, I would recommend getting a set of auxiliary headshell weights and mounting your cartridge or cartridges in headshells that can accept them. A related practical question is, how do you measure tracking force when most gauges are designed to sit on a flat turntable platter but the mandrel has a sharply curved surface? My inelegant DIY solution, shown in the photo to the left, is to take a junk cylinder and, with adhesive tape, append a small flat surface to make a platform for the gauge when the cylinder is seated on the mandrel. The cylinder I chose is a Blue Amberol with split, and hence unplayable, celluloid surface, and the platform is an expired credit card. It's not what you would call “robust,” but, given the light weight and undemanding function of the tracking force gauge, it doesn't need to be, and it is easily 100% reversible should I ever wish to disassemble it.

The Wilson Home is supplied with a standard power brick outputting 12V DC, the usual affair with one cord plugging into the wall and another plugging into the phonograph. Naturally, the plug for mine is the US standard two-pin type, but I would expect any similar device for other countries' electric standards would be fine, as long as it put out the right DC voltage. For that matter, the supplied adapter probably would be perfectly serviceable with the appropriate plug adapter, as it is specified for 100 to 240 V and 50 or 60 Hz AC input.

Here's where I put on my fireproof Kevlar suit. If you have a subwoofer or speakers with extended bass response, I'd also recommend adding an equalizer between the phono preamp and amplifier. Yeah, yeah, I know: “I want to hear the sound exactly as the recording engineers (and the tone-deaf suits in the executive suite, the penny-pinching accountants, and the compression-happy denizens of the marketing department) intended, and a mere tone control unsalvageably pollutes the audio purity of the record. An equalizer?!?!? Get out now, you tin-ear, and turn in your audiophile license at the door!” Look, disabuse yourself of that kind of thinking. Cylinders are antique records, acoustically recorded with horns and diaphragms, subject to the vagaries of a century's use, abuse, and bad storage, and they were not necessarily manufactured up to modern computer-controlled precision standards even when they were new.^[2] Electric playback reveals that celluloid cylinders - especially Edison's Blue Amberols, the most common type - can have rumble and low level thumps at frightening levels. These are not audible through acoustic players, but they come through loud (I use the term advisedly) and clear when played electronically through extended-range speakers and even somewhat through those with smaller, more limited woofers.^[3] I'll go into more detail in Part III, but for present purposes suffice it to say I'd advise against anything less than an octave model, with 10 bands or more; a third-octave or parametric would be better. If you digitize your cylinders, of course, you can doubtless accomplish the same results in software, but a component equalizer will enable you to correct for low frequency noise when just playing a cylinder over your speakers, as I assume would be a primary goal of owning a Wilson Home.

The saga of no. 5

No. 5 gave me a lot of early adopter problems. I could never get the mandrel or feedscrew speed, as denoted by the digital displays, to show as totally stable, and at different times several elements needed replacement or service. Understand, Don Wilson is a one-man operation and doesn't have a factory and dozens or hundreds of employees to provide support. Thus, each issue that arose became an opportunity for me to do self-help with guidance at a distance, and I will freely admit that soldering is not my strong suit! That said, when I finally had the opportunity to take the machine back to Don in person about a month ago as of this writing, even though no. 5 was out of warranty he spent a good part of an afternoon addressing and correcting its remaining problems without charge for parts or labor. When no. 5 was working correctly, it did a good job of playing cylinders, so the concept was sound, even if the execution had some bugs.

When I brought him no. 5 for service, Don suggested that I take no. 16, which he had on hand after having lent it out for a transfer expert's cylinder copying project, and compare the two, with the idea that I can keep whichever I like better. Having done so, I judge that no. 16, it of the revised design, wins without question. It is easier to use and more stable, and although neither is suitable for stacking with other components in an audio rack, no. 16 is easier to situate. No. 5 does have some advantages. I don't think they outweigh those of no. 16, but here are the ways in which one could argue no. 5 had an edge:

• No. 5 would turn slowly enough to play brown wax cylinders, which, as noted in Part I, usually were recorded at between 120 and 140 RPM. No. 16's speed adjustment is specified as just +/- 10% from 160 RPM, meaning its mandrel will not turn below around 145 RPM (when I checked mine, it got down to a shade over 143). Limiting the importance of this issue is the scarcity of playable brown wax cylinders; I imagine most long-time collectors may have a few, but by far the preponderance of cylinders in collections will be molded wax or celluloid turning at 160 RPM. Those for whom it is an issue may wish to consider the more expensive Studio Edition, which will get down to 80 RPM.

• The turn rate of no. 16's feedscrew is limited to two fixed settings, one for 100 tpi and one for 200 tpi. Again as noted in Part I, some cylinders, particularly certain makers' celluloid records, have changed dimensions, and with them effective groove pitch, over time. The old design allowed for adjusting the feedscrew to match; the new one does not. I think, however, that in most cases the amount of play in the no. 16 tonearm would suffice to enable their playback.

So much for how the Wilson Home operates and what else you'll need to make it sing. We'll pick back up in Part III with more details about how it actually performs, complete with audio examples. Stay tuned!

[1] - About a year earlier, my TNT colleague Graeme Budd reviewed the Accession's performance with modern LPs.

[2] - Cylinders from 1902 on were made by introducing heated material into a one-piece mold. I don't know that the exterior of a mold would have been cylindrical, but its inner surface was like a cylinder with the grooves, or more properly a negative of the grooves, on the inside surface. Hot material shaped as a blank cylinder was introduced into this cavity and expanded to take on the mold's grooves, then allowed to cool. As the material cooled, it would contract. Edison figured out how to arrange for the shrinkage to be just enough that the finished cylinder would clear the negative groove impressions and release from the mold.

[3] - For the sake of comparison, my Pinnacle BD 650 Series II speakers, which have been my main speakers ever since they were the subject of my first equipment review for TNT all the way back in 2014 and through which I did all auditions of the Wilson Home for this one, have claimed response ±3 dB down to 34 Hz, -6 dB at 30 Hz. (In my review, I said "I expect to live happily with my Pinnacles for a long, long time to come." I guess I was right!) I know that's not extremely deep compared to what many TNT readers will have, but it's plenty to present celluloid cylinder rumble in all its thunderous glory. I shudder to think what it would be like through speakers or subwoofers going all the way down to 20 Hz or lower.

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© Copyright 2024 David Hoehl - drh@tnt-audio.com - www.tnt-audio.com

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