The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

For experimental purposes, you could always use a high-quality paging amplifier. The 70V line output will properly drive a 500 ohm cutterhead. Or, use a matching transformer salvaged from a music system. Your upper register will be somewhat attenuated, but you will be able to get a "feel' for the us...

For many years(from about 1952 until his death in 1975) my father sold acetate reference copies of performance recordings of operatic and concert material. I cut literally thousands of discs for him when I was in my teens. Our equipment consisted of a dual-turntable Presto Type Y recording system, 2...

has anyone here experience making the embossed aluminum records that were commonly used for airchecks before the introduction of lacquer coated discs? O have several recording lathes, mostly Presto (a couple of 75A's and a K-10, along with an RCA unit) and was hoping to find a diamond-tipped "traili...

This cutting head was used =in several different applications, none really professional. It is essentially a slightly modified version of the phonograph pick up introduced on the 1929 Victor RE-45. This unit was used to embiss pre-grooved discs in the RCA-Victor "store recorder", and with a diamond ...

Stollwerke manufactured chocolate records and little tin phonographs to play them in the first decade of the last century. They apparently sold very well.

VERY NICE WORK, OM! I don't believe that you were the first to use an anvance ball for cylinder recording, however. Back in the late 1970's (1977 as I recall) I built an electric cutting head for two-minute cylinders that was do fitted. The driver was taken from a Western Electric 540AW loudspeaker,...