Insights into the kind of crap 78-rpm records were made of, and other scarce technical infos.
If you’re not sure what ‘a record’ is, or haven’t ever seen one, you’re excused.
Oh, and by-the-way, 78 is the approximate number you get when you rotate a 46-tooth gear with a 3600 rpm motor. (60 cycles per second.)
Further wisdom such as this is found by the ton here: http://www.78rpmrecord.com/links.htm
Not many vinyl heads still around.
Playing 78’s is a niche within a niche.
Vinyl has, AFAIK, been gaining a lot in popularity over the last 20 years. The last few years pressing plants have had trouble keeping up with demand — in part due to supply chain issues, but also because everyone and their grandma wants vinyl pressed.
You should check this out:
https://great78.archive.org/
It’s a great service. I found several of his expertly-created 78 tunes on there that I hadn’t heard in decades. (Some scarce stuff is almost never NOT available on 33 or 45rpm)
Another reason: Some people get deeper into multiple pieces of music because they like to compare performances of them. Fidelity doesn’t matter a whole lot. You want to compare how some bands or singers performed a (non-hit) song recorded in the 1930s or 1950s. You listen around the fidelity. People in the 1950s made million-selling hits everyone heard on AM radio or 45s. Fidelity is over-rated.