[Electronic M]

Likely is one of the problems that Radiotvnut posted, but here are some other things to keep in mind.....Vinyl records 45's especially (because they are often not kept in their paper jackets for storage) can get so much dirt in their grooves that the stylus of a correctly adjusted lightly tracking player will literally scrape a trail of dirt and debris out of the groove as it plays (I use the wood glue cleaning method* to save my needles on those records). Your amp and speakers likely lack the frequency response to fully realize this effect, but I'll tell you any way. 78 RPM records were not meant to be a HiFi format most players they saw when new ground the hell out of the grooves and thus made high frequency hash....78 era phono amps often had a deliberately limited frequency response so the treble range hiss would be suppressed along with some of the music. Mechanical era 78's and to an extent later electrical era ones made the discs out of shellac so that the playing surface would rapidly grind the non-precisely made steel needles to the shape and size of the groove. Bits of steel would lodge in the shellac and increase wear in newer gem styli, and create increased roughness and surface noise. When vinyl was developed it was billed as a durable LOW NOISE alternative to shellac.

Shellac can sound quite and awesome, but it has to be nearly a virgin disc. Case in point I have some Vdiscs that look to be unplayed, and sound about as good as vinyl on a modern light tracking player.....I then played one on a 20's windup and it never played even close to how good it first sounded again....A majority of 78's have been played on groove grinders so don't expect them to sound too good.

* Wood glue cleaning method: This only works on vinyl (NEVER use it on shellac and styrene records it will probably ruin them). PVA wood glues (Titebond II is recommended) do not stick to vinyl, but will stick to dirt in the grooves (and the labels), so coat the playing surface (but not the label) in it, let dry completely, and then peel it off. I've gotten muddy and moldy vinyl that was unplayable back to like new this way. No scratches or wear were present on those discs only dirt cleaning only removes garbage on the surface it is NOT able to fix parts of the surface that were scratched off from abuse.