As the war of the record companies nears its conclusion and Columbia's long-playing record emerges the victor, a new battle is rising to intrigue technically-minded record listeners. This one pits the standard phonographs made by a few well known companies against custom built equipment. These hand-tailored machines are a rising phenomenon which offer better quality often at lower cost than standard items.

The key to phonograph quality is the word "fidelity." Often used as publicity jargon, the word actually refers to a scientific measurement of sound waves an electronic system can reproduce. Fidelity is measured in cycles per second. A true high-fidelity phonograph must reproduce up to 15,000 cycles, the full range of the human ear. Although the actual musical notes may be much lower than this, high fidelity range allows a machine to reproduce orchestral overtones so that the recorded music will sound like the original music instead of a watered-down version of it.

Good quality demands that all the parts of a phonograph be high fidelity and it is here that most standard phonographs suffer. An amplifier that goes up to 15,000 cycles is useless when the needle cannot pick up anything over 6000. Good amplifiers are often found hooked up to poor speakers or changers. The versatility of custom-built arrangements does away with this problem.

Assembling a custom built system requires three or four major parts: amplifier, changer, speaker, and radio tuner (if radio is also desired). How this material is installed and wrapped in a cabinet depends on individual taste and pocketbook.

Boston happens to be blessed with two major sellers of custom built equipment, the Radio Shack and Lafayette Radio. These have intricate machines that can demonstrate the fidelity of hundreds of various combinations of equipment, and the buyer can take his pick. Most of this equipment is made by small manufactures. Pricing is so competitive that a five dollar difference in cost can easily be detected by careful listening. Prices of these custom combinations range from $90 up to several hundred. Prices of comparable standard phonographs, and few are comparable, go from about $200 to over a thousand.

The growth of custom-built sets has been great during the past year and promises to increase. The effect of this is slowly being felt by the makers of standard "quality" phonographs. The coming battle will force them to improve their products to aid the record listener, as the record battle has brought new quality possibilities to record making.