Recordette questions

This is where record cutters raise questions about cutting, and trade wisdom and experiment results. We love Scully, Neumann, Presto, & Rek-O-Kut lathes and Wilcox-Gay Recordios (among others). We are excited by the various modern pro and semi-pro systems, too, in production and development. We use strange, extinct disc-based dictation machines. And other stuff, too.

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Muziani
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2016 5:45 am

Recordette questions

Post: # 43755Unread post Muziani
Wed Aug 31, 2016 5:20 am

Hello everyone. I am brand new to this and have been pouring over this forum as much as I can. I literally am starting from a point of zero knowledge on lathe cutting. My question is I recently got a Wilcox gay recordette of of eBay and it's missing the cutter. The guy I got it from say it powers on an the motor works but I have yet to plug it in to test it. I was waiting to send it to a professional. Now it's my understanding that it's a crystal head. Can that be converted to
a magnetic? And can I modify this so I can cut into vinyl blanks? And does anyone know who would do this type of work? Thank you so much for your time. This forum is so helpful.

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markrob
Posts: 1623
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:14 am
Location: Philadelphia Area

Re: Recordette questions

Post: # 60146Unread post markrob
Wed Feb 02, 2022 10:03 am

Hi,

If you can find an old Astatic cutter head, you should be able to make it work. Crystal heads are high impedance devices, while magnetic heads are low impedance and look very much like an 8-16 ohm speaker. The crystal heads were typically driven right off of the plate of the audio amp. However, the same amp drives the internal speaker using the same output tube with a matching transformer. With a bit of work, you can use that transformer to drive the magnetic head during cutting. At worst, you would just need to obtain a suitable matching transformer. I've attached some documents on the Astatic head that has some info on making the conversion. Hope this helps.
AstaticM-41-8M-41-500p1.jpg
AstaticM-41-8M-41-500p2.jpg
AstaticM-41-8M-41-500p3.jpg
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