You'll probably need a 3mil needle to get the best playback of those shellac and recordio discs. Most modern needles are.7mil, with some older, earlier LP needles being 1mil. Modern LP's use .7mil (on average, with some smaller, like .5mil)
The preamp is a variable that just takes time and listening to know if you need it or not. The ceramic cartridges, and early magnetic cartridges of the day output such a hot signal that they'll brickwall more modern RIAA-corrected preamps. Early shellacs, the ones recorded/mastered acoustically don't have any EQ'ing, and the later ones have variable, pre-standardization era EQ'ing.
Pre WWII records are definitely shellac. During WWII there was a giant movement towards recycling shellac records for the war effort, because it was needed for waterproofing army gear. So, literal trainloads of shellac records were recycled towards that effort. This also "spawned" the new movement towards more modern formulas like vinyl (PVC), and ushered in the era of the first LP records around 1949. Those early LP's took the 1mil needles; shellac took 3mil needles; and after around the mid to later fifties, there was a move towards the smaller .7mil needles.
Adding:
During WWII, some labels, for example, Columbia Records, started using an inner core coated in shellac. The inner core was quite often cardboard, or thick matted paper, as an inner core.