Custom made phonograph cylinder records

We specialise in custom made phonograph cylinder record moulds for your personal soundtracks - a unique gift for your family and friends. We can record live performances, copy from original cylinders or take material from .WAV or MP3 format. We deliver worldwide.

To manufacture a custom made phonograph cylinder record from any digital source (MP3, etc) requires several processes, depending on the intended use of the finished product.

There are two options, both of which require that the recording be cut onto a wax master cylinder.

In the first option, the wax master may be the finished product. It will be playable for a limited number of times before the grooves deteriorate too much for useful listening (maybe 20 playings), and it is very fragile. The cost of this option is £50.00 plus postage and packaging. This option can only be used for a 2-minute recording.

In the second option, the wax master is used to produce a master mould, which is then used to make almost any number of hard-wearing plastic cylinders. This option can be used for either 2- or 4-minute recordings. The cost of this option, which includes the first two plastic cylinder records, is £220.00. Any further cylinder records can be ordered at the same price as our standard 2 or 4-minute cylinders plus postage and packaging.

Following is a checklist of items to be considered when ordering custom cylinder records:

Would you like your cylinders delivered in boxes? We have one standard style and colour of box, as shown here. A limited range of other colours can be provided at additional cost.
Do you want your boxes labelled? If so:
Do you want to manage the labelling yourself, OR
Do you want to send us the artwork for the labels and have us make up the boxes for you? If so, you must have the labels designed to our specification – please ask us about this, we will be happy to help and have worked with clients to create many exciting custom designs (some of these can be seen below).
Do you want your cylinders to have a title end (i.e. the details of the recording etched into the end of the cylinder)? If so you must also send us the text that you would like to use. The usual format is: Title, Artist, Type (eg song, band, spoken word, etc), Catalogue number, although it is not necessary to have all of these. There is an additional cost of £40 for a title plate.
Do you have a deadline for the cylinders to be delivered? Please keep in mind that each cylinder is hand made and we can make just one per working day (5 per week). If the need is more urgent, we can make extra masters and run 2, 3 or 4 a day, depending on our other production schedules. Each additional master would cost an extra £150.

To find out more about having a custom cylinder made, please contact us.

Here is a selection of some of the projects we have worked on.

Enrico Caruso, three titles: http://www.berlinphonographworks.com/

Also at this site you will see our new recordings of:
- St Louis Blues
- Kansas City Kitty

These cylinders are only available from the Berlin Phonograph Works through the link above.

Yuppie Exodus from Dumbo: http://music.jeddavis.com/album/yuppie-exodus-from-dumbo?auto=mp3-320

Ghosts of Effingham: http://touchshop.org/product_info.php?cPath=37&products_id=435

The National Library of Norway - the Christian Leden collection (see our blog for more details)