Best set up for 78's ?

I agree with everything that Pryso said. All of theose things need to be taken into consideration besides the TT. But some of the following coments are, I believe, a bit misleading.

You can certainly play 78s on almost any turntable capable of 78 RPM. But unless you are using the right combination of deck, arm, cartridge and Phono Stage w/ EQ adjustment, you will not be hearing the 78s the way that they were meant to be heard.

Cleaning the records is ultra-important. Shellac 78s are much more delicate than vinyl LPs, so you are going to spend some (OK, a lot) of time cleaning them up. Don't even try to clean bakelite 78s which were promotional items mainly meant for a single play.

I have not tried to record 78s at 45 RPM. In my experience warping is not a big issue w/ 78s - they are either pretty even or they are cracked or broken. Yes, they are delicate. Remember all those old movies where one guy breaks a record over another guys head? They didn't need special prop records for that.

Have fun

"But unless you are using the right combination of deck, arm, cartridge and Phono Stage w/ EQ adjustment, you will not be hearing the 78s the way that they were meant to be heard."

I wonder what the "state of the art" in playback that defined how these might have been meant to be heard was back in the age of 78's?

Surely, technology today should lend itself better to playback if one is so motivated to invest, but I wonder how good the old 78s might really sound given a modern SOTA treatment?

I suppose I'll find out eventually when I carve out the time to tackle playing and preserving the handful of 78s that I currently have.

I used to play these old 78s on basic ceramic cartridge players I had as a kid that commonly supported 78 rpm back then. My recollection is that these were higher output than MM carts and this worked OK without any special processing, though my audio senses were not very refined back then.

Do ceramic cartridge rigs typically apply RIAA equalization curves? I wonder how much better if at all most old 78s created back before the days of RIAA and 331/3 playback would really sound on good modern rig with cartridge? How wide was their frequency range really?

Mapman, you are on target. Important things are higher mass playback setup, variable speed, 78 stylus, and even a cheap equalizer will do. Picking approriate gear is important, but matching for sytem synergies and balancing "PRaT" vs harmonic richness and all that other LP stuff is not on the table with these limited band width, high noise recordings.

A $30 Stanton 500 with a 78 stylus. But a passable flip-over ceramic can also yield acceptable results.

A 60s or 70s Dual, P-E, Lenco, Rek-O-Kut, Garrrd 4HF. A cheaper Garrard or an average 1960s changer (V-M, Collaro) will sound good on later 78s but lack varying pitch for the older ones and will have bit more rumble.

A mono blend. Blend at the interconnects if you don't have a switch.

Some kind of eq ability. A 10 band eq from an 80s "rack system" and you're good. But wide range tone controls are a help.

Going beyond that, you're dealing with significantly diminishing returns.

Accoustic era 78s (pre 1924 or so) have no eq (as one would expect). The majority of 78s you'll commonly encounter in the US from later periods use a 500 cycle turnover.

But the thing is, the frequency response was so ragged, and quality control and disc history so varying, that there's no reason to knock yourself out for the handful of records you may - or may not - have that use alternative eq curves.

That's not to say you wouldn't get a meaningful improvement with, say, a huge transcription deck like an RCA 70 series, long "transcription" tonearm, archival phono equalizer, and, most of all an array of custom styli. While you're at it, a single-ended amp and a single large horn speaker.

But that also requires spending more time selecting stylus and curves and preping each disc than listening to it. If you're doing serious digital transfers that's necessary. If you just want to listen once in a while to the crate or two of 78s you may have inherited or picked up at a grage sale, IMO it's silly.

Zowie, thanks for all that useful information.

I'd have to say my best current reference for how good or bad old 78 recordings might sound is some of the early period tracks on the Ken Burns Jazz CD box set.

I listen to these regularly on my good system. They are all quite listenable and some are quite good in their own unique way within their frequency range limitations. I suspect the transcription and remastering was done quite well!