Gala Goldentone records

[Growlerman]

I have just acquired a few children's records of the 1960's and amongst then were some Gala Goldentone records. I have done some web searches and found that they were made by a Selmer company(Selcol).
The records are pressed in a non flexible orange plastic and play at 78rpm.

I remember my sister had a Chad Valley battery children's record player back in the '60's and if my memory serves me right I thought that played small records at 78rpm. Does anybody know if these records were designed to play on such a machine?

[dseymo1]

Yes, they were.
I also had a Chad Valley gramaphone (to be pedantic-not a record player, the batteries were only to drive the turntable, reproduction was purely acoustic) as a young child, and it came with a couple of Gala Goldentone records.

[Growlerman]

Yes you're quite right it was an acoustical gramophone made in bright plastic but I can't remember much else about it.

[Brigham]

Originally Posted by dseymo1

Yes, they were.
I also had a Chad Valley gramaphone (to be pedantic-not a record player, the batteries were only to drive the turntable, reproduction was purely acoustic) as a young child, and it came with a couple of Gala Goldentone records.

The pedantry is lost on me.

[dseymo1]

In common usage, the term 'record player' usually implies electronic reproduction, whereas 'gramophone' suggests acoustic amplification (usually via a horn of some sort). 'Acoustic gramophone' is sometimes used for clarity.
It's not very important in this context

[michamoo]

was it this one?

[ben]

I also still have a few of those gala records. The little orange ones had some quite (compared to lot of what was about) good material, stuff from hanna barbera and disney (yogi bear and flintstones come to mind) .They were American and I seem to recall Mitch Miller's name cropping up on many of them, along with other fairly well known US names of the day. I think the players were made by marx toys.

There were lots of Gala pop EPs, a bit like the Avenue records /TOP 6 /cannon EPs we had in the UK. Also some classical.
You could also tell they were American as they were pressed on that 'orrible lightweight 'styrene' that would crack easily and develop 'cue-burn' surface noise or have the grooves go grey if played on anything tracking over about 4g!

[dseymo1]

Originally Posted by michamoo

was it this one?

Mine was an earlier version in red and cream plastic, with a tonearm similar to that of a 'proper' gramophone. There was an earler version still, not unlike a biscuit tin.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
I had one of those red (or was mine blue?) gramophones with a cream coloured tone arm. It had two Ever Ready U2s under the turntable and a very simple speed control.
Those Gala Goldentone 78s were 6 inches in diameter and I remember trying to play them on the family's Beethoven table radiogram which had a Garrard RC120 deck that had no manual function. It was tricky moving the pick-up arm inwards enough to play the record without triggering the change cycle.
Cheers, Pete.

[ben]

On a related note, last night I was reminiscing with a friend about how you could sometimes find crude 'record players' consisting of a flexidisc with a finger hole allowing you to rotate it, and a folded over piece of card with a gramophone needle in it serving as an arm. For years I thought I'd practically imagined this, as nobody else seemed to remember them - until our conversation yesterday! (bear in mind these were in Europe) - Anyone else recall them?

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
I saw a video clip of exactly that on YouTube recently. If you search 'birthday card record player', you will find it.
Cheers, Pete.

[Junk Box Nick]

I kept one of these 'card' record players - I may still have it somewhere. It was a promotional item for a company with their marketing message recorded on the disk. It might have been for a plastics company - I cannot remember now - and dated from the mid to late 1970s. I thought it was a very clever idea at the time. The 'stylus' was very crude - basically a pin taped into the cardboard arm.

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by michamoo

was it this one?

I think that one played 45rpm 7" singles with a crude stylus attached to some kind of diaphragm in the the lid.

The 78rpm one used real needles (at least I seem to remember fitting the same needles as we used on our cabinet gramophone) and I think there must have been some kind of internal horn arrangement where the sound emanated from a grille on the side. I'm fairly sure the records we played had a yellow label - named Kidditunes if I remember right.

[Grubhead]

Many of them are shown on the 45 Worlds website.
45worlds Gala+Goldentone

[Rubberfingers]

Originally Posted by ben

On a related note, last night I was reminiscing with a friend about how you could sometimes find crude 'record players' consisting of a flexidisc with a finger hole allowing you to rotate it, and a folded over piece of card with a gramophone needle in it serving as an arm. For years I thought I'd practically imagined this, as nobody else seemed to remember them - until our conversation yesterday! (bear in mind these were in Europe) - Anyone else recall them?

I've got one here in the form of an unused Christmas Card, bought from a Jumble Sale a long time ago!
Edit: There was a short article in the February 1975 New Scientist "Lord Gnomes answer to Hifi", on these. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...dublin&f=false