Bamboo needles

No, not knitting needles, record player needles.  I remember a friend of mine's parents having a great big record playing machine which had a big horn - you might have seen an old 'His Master's Voice' (which, by the way, was the original name of HMV) picture of a dog listening to a similar device. The arm which had to be manually lowered on to the record (after one had wound up the machine so that the turntable would rotate) had a needle which needed changing or sharpening fairly often; there were steel needles and also some bamboo needles - yes, really! The records were, of course, all 78 rpm records which were rather easy to break and also to scratch so the sound that came out was quite different to what one hears now. Most of the 78s that we listened to on that record player were pre-war (pre- WW2) and I think included Caruso and Mario Lanza