Tungsten Embossing Styli

[Farmerjohn]

Hello fellow Lathe Trolls!
My name is John Farmer, and I have been a record cutting hobbyist for about 3 or 4 years now. I was a jeweler for 10 years and also spent a year tinkering around in a friend's machine shop. Always active in one project or another, I've recently been attempting to make polycarbonate embossing/impressing styli. I've come up with a precision ground tungsten stylus that is giving great results. I've sent these to a few fellow trolls to help me test them, and I now feel confident to bring them to the public.

I make the styli through a process of grinding, polishing, and then a final treatment to the tip to help reduce surface noise. Using lighter fluid on the polycarbonate blank as a cutting lubricant, I am getting a low noise floor. The groove that is being impressed in is giving great fidelity. The highs are coming out quite clear, and the general muddiness that is associated with embossing is largely gone. They will obviously not sound as good as cutting a lacquer, but quite nice for embossing. These are also much less frustrating than using a backward ruby stylus. All you do is lock it into the cutter head and away you go. I drop and tone test each one I make.

If anyone would like to try these out I will be selling them for $18 apiece plus $2 shipping (for any quantity) in the US. If you live outside the US, contact me with at the email address below with your location and I'll get you a shipping quote.

I have been using these on a Presto 6N with 1C cutter head, so your cutter head will need to be able to accept the same diameter shank. If your head (i.e. a Grampian) uses something other than the standard long shank cutting stylus for a Presto head, let me know and I can make the adjustment.
If you do order my standard length and it doesn't work, send it back and I will make one to the proper length you need. You will not be able to shorten these with normal snips. Tungsten is much harder than steel, and shatters easily.

Though I haven’t tried them, I doubt these will work on Recordios, General Industry, etc suitcase style lathes.

Please feel free to ask any questions! Thank you all.

John Farmer
thefarmerjohn@gmail.com

[Graham B.]

John reached out to me to test some of these, I've used three styli over the last month and each has given very satisfying results. There is no "conditioning" or "break in" period. They are useable right out of the box. I found that with turtle wax they were slightly noisier than some rubies I've used to emboss but also were less noisy than others. John has added a step to his production process to reduce some of the surface noise which was greatly improved with the third one I used. He also suggests to use lighter fluid which seems to give quieter results. If you are embossing records I feel it is expected there will be more noise than a cut lacquer anyway. I was able to get around 8 hours of cutting time out of each one. If you have larger projects/longer records I'd keep that in mind. The playback was very solid with less distortion in the high end and more clarity in the low end. I've had no tracking issues on any turntables I've played records back on. I primarily only emboss/impress records and having these needles as an option greatly reduces the time and effort of breaking in a ruby and then getting it situated and working. The lifespan is less than a ruby but the ease of use significantly makes up for it. I'm currently using these Tungsten styli supplementally with rubies.

[noizzer]

great news!

[All85]

Hi john is it still available?