New Embossing Stylus!

[JoelSD]

Hi Tasos,

Congratulations! That's a remarkable work progress.
About the position of your needle with 100º angle, how do you avoid the hiss sound and not to turn into a cut record when the needle touches the disc? I suposed you use My Shank PVC, I tried my self and they are very sensible without any heat or wax.

Joel

[EposLab]

100° is the groove geometry. Recording angle is set 90°-85° as shown on the instructions manual below.
I mainly use myshank blanks and prepare only by using zippo lighter fluid. No heat or any lub at all.
I tried lots of different angles of triangle tip focusing for the best results according to sound clarity , frequency response and noise floor (including hiss). i ended up to 100° of groove geometry which is the magic number!
Grinding and carefully polish of the tip helps alot minimize the noise floor.

Screenshot_20231224-224603~2.png

Check the following link for disk preperation :
https://youtube.com/shorts/cqcQmahXMcg?si=5CoBUoWjG9kzw0ok

[tape]

US2544495_stylus embossing.pdf

has anybody with the skills needed ever tried to replicate the stylus described in detail in the attached pdf?

[grooveguy]

Wow, good find, tape! This patent is something to digest; I hope that between the lot of us we can figure it out. It might well be worth looking at the references cited at the end of the patent also. Any departure from a spherical embossing stylus may negate the drawbacks noted by Milton Morse in that 1940s paper on the subject that I posted somewhere on this forum some time ago. If anyone wants to see it I can post it again. With the demise of Transco and the scarcity and expense of cutting styli and lacquer blanks, anything we can do to to improve embossing as a viable workaround will be very welcome.

[tape]

thanks a lot. My great hope for embossing would be a replica of the permanent embossing stylus in the portable Soundscriber 200. That one was made designed to emboss hundreds, maybe thousands of hours. I don't know the material or if it's the same as in the 1945 patent, they probably developed it further. The tip is extremely thin.

[grooveguy]

Yes. And note that the angle to the record surface is similar to what our Trolls typically recommend. What Soundscriber has done here is the proper way, translating the lateral motion of the armature to lateral groove modulation. If instead, as practiced by most experimenters, you "lean the head back," you no longer have true lateral-only modulation of the groove. It probably doesn't make much difference at all, but my own experimental embossing stylus emulated the Soundscriber design, but with a sapphire tip.

Photos copy.jpg

The sapphire tip was taken from an eBay replacement microgroove replacement stylus and did a credible job of recording. The level difference between a lacquer cut with a vintage Capps microgroove stylus and the homebrew stylus embossing onto polycarbonate (all other parameters identical) was about 8dB. Frequency response was very nearly the same. All this is written up somewhere here, and with thanks to one of you fellow Trolls who did the comparison between the two recordings from MP3 files posted with the write-up.

[tape]

nice, so you bend the needle the same angle as the soundscriber?

[grooveguy]

Pretty close, I think. As I recall, I was shooting for 18 degrees, although I'm not sure where that number came from. Maybe an average of what I had read here about other Trolls 'leaning their heads back.'