Disc Cutting Lathe Wanted

[concretecowboy71]

Not lies.

Pretty ballsy to call somebody a liar that has more experience than you.

Scully is not Neumann and I think opcode was referring to a VMS70.

You are not going to get higher up the food chain without double the amount you quoted.

shoulda worked in the smilies...comment was bit outta line but can be taken out of context at times.

All good on my end. No worries! I think we were just making sure nobody got a false sense of how much it will cost to "get in the game"

[alein12]

I also know where there is a scully/westrex system for $17000 in good working condition jamaicariddim@gmail.com

[alein12]

In 1991 Manley built a Vinyl Record Master Audio Cutting system, (also known as a Disc Cutting Lathe). It was definitively one of the finest record cutting system ever built. Most of the later ViTaL record LP catalogue titles were cut on this lathe. (The first few releases were cut by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab.)
The lathe was built up from the best Scully & Neumann parts. The Scully chassis, lead-screw and head-carriage and sleds supported the Neumann 30lb vacuum platter and Neumann Suspension Box which is driven the automatic variable depth device.

The cutting head is another triumph of innovation and upgrade. It started off as the last Westrex model built, called the 3DIIAH (A for aluminum coils and H for Helium cooled). The key to this wonderful cutter head's unique superiority (over the European so-called "miniature" heads and regular Westrex stereo models) lies in an innovated torque-tube design developed by the Late Otto Hepp along with Len Horowitz. Otto Hepp was the man who built all Westrex heads in the last part of the 20th century. Otto Hepp's innovative torque-tube design makes it far smaller and lighter than the original Westrex and Haeco models. This enables usage of the shorter shank Neumann cutting stylus, instead of the 3/8" long Westrex cutting stylus.

DM: You can't buy a lathe off the shelf, they're like racing cars, so you start with the "chassis." This machine is built up on a Scully "bed," as it's called—the slide cradle holding the head is far superior to any other built. And it's got a Neumann head, an older model, the SX68 rather than the SX74, as the '68 handles a lot of current and puts more level on the disk. The platter's a Neumann as the Scully platter tends to ring like a bell! And I made the motor and power supply, of course.

[alein12]

My last post is two quotes from David Manley . Bernie Grumann, Charlie Hertzberg also uses scully/westrex/ heaco combination. Bernie is well known, Charlie was one of the top mastering engineer in Miami.

[THD]

I got the Scully LS-76 # 653 with Westrex 3DII, that I bought from Charlie Hertzburg in 2007. Now it's located in Oslo,Norway.
I went down to visit him for three weeks in Melbourne, Florida, USA, when I bought the system. What a genius ! He has made a lot of modifications on the lathe, he also made his own control panel and his own cutting amp, called KINURA, one of a kind.
But when I visited him in 2007 he had serious health problems and ended up in the hospital while I was there, he was 83 years old at the time. I received a few very nice e-mails from him after I came back, but he decided to get rid of his studio and then he didn't have any Internet connection anymore. I would like to get in contact with him again, so if anyone knows how, please let me know?

[petermontg]

alein12 I always admired that lathe. Little does it resemble a Scully anymore

For some reason I keep thinking it's in France.

[powerstrip]

All good on my end. No worries! I think we were just making sure nobody got a false sense of how much it will cost to "get in the game"

Yeah, neither do I! 30K is not a bad figure, but it depends on how much work you want to put into it yourself, and building it from the ground up is important. Every lathe has its own little charm from the elbow grease the owner/builder/engineer has to put into it. When these things break down, there really are not a lot of places to call for help.

I think lots of people are interested in cutting but do not understand the cost and toils of dealing with unobtanium. I have invested about 4K into cutting gear and other things so far, (all on mono presto/audax/rca/ortofon) still planning on investing about the same amount all over again for the next step-Caruso head + new lathe. supporting the new school

Point is, if you want on the ride, you have to pay for the ticket!

[drdub]

no matter how good the condition of your lathe is, you'll always will end up
spending lots of time and money keeping your diva happy and running...
it's just the nature of the the whole game.
my2ct
mex

ps: on the other hand you get plenty of reward if it's wworking!

[mossboss]

Well said
Our VMS in oz has never been so good. It's a pleasure to work with it
After weeks of chasing down lots of little issues including an unstable metering issue it is really singing a lovely song
By the way silicon oils as used in some older photocopiers and freely available seems to be prefect for the dash pot
After lots of trials with various silicon oils it seems to respond best with the suggested setting of 1-1.5 turns from the top of the little spot welded bearing that holds the piston shaft.
All other silicon oils tried out did not quite made the grade.
Cheers

[drdub]

silicon oils as used in some older photocopiers and freely available seems to be prefect for the dash pot

we use silicone damper oil for model cars in our dash pod. they come in all kinds of viscosity and can be bought in very small units to experiment with. this works perfect for us.

mex

[dubcutter89]

model car -> radio controlled (rc) car
model car -> funkferngesteuertes modellauto

[mossboss]

That's also a good thing to know. Model car silicon oil. Tks. Cheers

[ruddybopp]

I have 3 EA Radiotone Hollywood cutting lathes on ebay for sale right now

[ruddybopp]

Hi all,
It looks like I will not be able to mount my WESTREX 3D on my Presto 14-B lathe (I have both Westrex and Grampian/Presto mounts with it, the drive motors and assembly have been restored with new rubber mounts and oil and grease)..so it should probably leave if its not getting used...feel free to shoot me an offer...

Eli

what are selling these for,or I will trade you for a radiotone cutting lathe,have 3 0n Ebay for sale now.

[equalvision]

Hi, all my label is looking to invest in a hand cutting lathe system. We are looking at the Starter Set T560 from Souri. Is this a good place to start? Any info on other lathes that work like this or classes you can take to be an operator would be much appreciated. Any where we can visit to watch the process? Like I said we are newbies to this but would love to get involved.

Thanks
Alex

[mischmerz]

Hi all,
It looks like I will not be able to mount my WESTREX 3D on my Presto 14-B lathe (I have both Westrex and Grampian/Presto mounts with it, the drive motors and assembly have been restored with new rubber mounts and oil and grease)..so it should probably leave if its not getting used...feel free to shoot me an offer...

Eli

Beautiful. I would really love to mount my Grampian to a Presto 14-B .. but probably way out of my league.

Michaela

[tragwag]

Hi, all my label is looking to invest in a hand cutting lathe system. We are looking at the Starter Set T560 from Souri. Is this a good place to start? Any info on other lathes that work like this or classes you can take to be an operator would be much appreciated. Any where we can visit to watch the process? Like I said we are newbies to this but would love to get involved.

Thanks
Alex

hey there!
you're welcome to come visit me up in Connecticut if you're up this way, I run two Presto 6Ns for LOFI lathe cuts, and the VR T560 for Stereo HIFI cuts.
give the site a look and get in touch, www.audiogeography.com
-Tyler

[jesusfwrl]

To avoid confusion, it is important to understand that there is a huge difference between a barely working lathe, a wreck of a lathe, a fully refurbished lathe or even a brand new lathe.

Whether its a Neumann, a Scully or anything else, is less relevant. A barely working lathe means that you need someone who knows how to get it running and unless you are able to do this yourself and you already have all the tools both for the electronics and the mechanical side of things the few people in the world who can offer this service are usually too busy and far from cheap.

A wreck of a lathe means that you cannot even begin to estimate how much it would cost to really get it running. You would first need to fix the obvious problems, replace missing or broken parts and then fire it up to find all the hidden problems. In the worst case, you might run out of money before you can get it running.

A fully refurbished lathe on the other hand is definitely not a cheap deal. A precondition to a fully refurbished lathe is the ability to find a lathe in the first place....
Then it really depends on what level of quality you are aiming for. To offer an example I bought my Fairchild lathe as a barely working lathe with no electronics. It was very cheap. I ended up spending more than I bought it for on shipping and customs. Then, I had to refurbish everything which involved rebuilding the gearbox. Then I found and bought an RCA mono cutterhead which arrived broken. I had to rebuild that one too. Then I had to build the cutter head mounting adaptor from scratch four or five times until I got it right. Then I had to build the vacuum suction system including a chip jar, tubing and pump. Vacuum pumps are not exactly cheap. Then came the current regulated heater supply for the stylus heating. Since the RCA head did not have heating wire clips, I had to built that too from scratch. Then I had to find a suitable microscope and build a stand for it. I then built a heating lamp setup with stand to be able to cut PVC and PC. I put all this in a custom, very heavy furniture made entirely of thick solid wood, which sits on top of an isolation platform. The main motor was meant to run at 60 Hz so I had to build a quartz locked mains power resynthesizer which would give me the required supply voltage and frequency at the fairly high current required to start this beast of a motor, with exceptionally low drift, even under fluctuating load. Then came the electronics. I had to build the RIAA pre-emphasis stage, plus a cutting amplifier, and some metering for signal levels. I already had a fairly good mastering setup so I did not need to invest in high quality equaliser/compressor/limiter, M/S processing and so on as it was already there.

I am now in the process of building a control panel which would automate the lead screw functions with a separate motor plus a precise control system with the basic analog variable pitch system. Needless to mention the amounts of money that have been spent on blanks of all kinds and needles of all kinds which I used to test and develop everything.

If I would be selling this as a complete system I would definitely not let it go for under EUR 15 000, with all the work and parts that have gone into it. This would be without the mastering/transfer console and tape machine. This would easily be EUR 30 000 alone. These figures would leave me wit practically no profit.

Now, you can probably find a basic Fairchild lathe as a wreck or in barely working condition on ebay for between USD 1000 to USD 6000, but unless you only want it for decoration, buying the lathe is the easy part.

Doing the exact same thing with a Neumann VMS70, considering the prices they fetch nowadays as well as the prices of all the associated parts such as SX74 cutterhead and the total price for a fully refurbished one would most likely exceed EUR 80 000 just for the basic lathe and the electronics.

I recently heard of someone trying to sell a broken VMS80 for EUR 80 000... add the cost of refurbishing to that.

Considering that most people in this business value their work a lot higher than I do, I would be surprised if any of the established people would be able to offer a refurbished system for less.

As for a brand new system, just have a look at Souris prices and consider that this lies on the far low end in terms of quality, with the most severe limitation being the lack of a proper turntable and motor with enough torque and mechanical stability for cutting.
A brand new system on the same level as a Neumann system nowadays would be exceed EUR 200 000, even if you are really lucky. Probably more. Just have a look at how much Neumann lathes used to cost when they were new and consider what has happened to food prices since then...perhaps I am even being optimistic.

I was recently selling a fully refurbished tape machine for what I considered a fairly reasonable price. One of the first people who called told me that he could send me some links where he could find the same model for EUR 100 or so on ebay. It might be the same model but it ain't in the same state. Needless to say, he didn't buy it but someone else did, who probably realised that buying the EUR 100 from ebay plus shipping means that you would then have to pay for someone to refurbish it, plus more shipping which in the end would probably cost more than what I asked for my fully refurbished one.

USD 16 000 definitely won't get you a Neumann and most likely wouldn't get you a working Scully either. It would get you a VR T560 with a bit extra to spare and it would also get you a variety of older lathes such as Presto, RCA, Rek-o-kut and Fairchild lathes, maybe even refurbished. It really depends on your requirements. The difference between all these lathes is not just the sound quality. A good experienced cutting engineer will get you a pretty decent result on most of these systems with the same cutterhead fitted to all of them. The ease and speed of use though as well as the reliability and ease of making repeatable adjustments is where I find the biggest difference to be.