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The Starr Piano Company files show that Gennett was conducting electrical recording sessions with General Electric equipment as early as the summer of 1925. Gennett issued a few electrically recorded masters (including one by Jelly Roll Morton's Incomparables) in the spring of 1926, with a circled GE logo added to the standard acoustic scroll label. However, Starr engineers experienced ongoing problems with the GE equipment, and company ledgers reveal that Gennett retreated to the tried-and-true acoustic process in mid-March 1926. Regular electric sessions resumed in October 1926, but problems with the equipment continued, forcing sporadic use of the old acoustic equipment through December 1926, and a few back-up acoustic masters were still being cut into 1927, although these generally were not issued.

Gennett's full conversion to electric recording finally came in January 1927, the month in which the Electrobeam label was introduced. Charles Beisel, Gennett's controller of sales, attempted to explain away the delay in the Talking Machine World: "The secret of this lies in a process of tonal modulation, which our engineers have perfected after more than a year's research." An electrically recorded export series, produced for Mexican distribution under the Rayo Eléctrico Gennett label, was introduced a short time later.

Despite the label change, some of the earliest Gennett Electrobeam releases were pressed from acoustically recorded masters. Even after its full conversion to electrical recording, Starr continued to experience sporadic problems with its General Electric equipment, so on July 1, 1928, the company licensed the more reliable Photophone system from the Radio Corporation of America, which had not yet acquired the Victor Talking Machine Company. RCA had initially developed the Photophone process for use with motion pictures and had attempted without success to adapt it to home movies before licensing the system to Gennett and several commercial movie studios.

Commercial Gennett-label releases were discontinued in December 1930, although the brand was maintained for sound-effect and other special-use records. Harry Gennett continued limited production of the inexpensive Superior label through 1932 and the Champion label through 1934, the year in which the Starr Piano Company declared bankruptcy.

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