The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

oh and the 100BPM - it's deliberately not 99.999999BPM, when I did this it came out with a drift in the wrong direction. Some drift BACKWARDS is actually desirable, as the playback turntable is probably using a standard tonearm that pivots, so with a slight backwards drift you actually get a nice cu...

As said above I would rather recommend somebody with a good TT - Lyrec will not necesarry keep stable. Also you can probably judge the quality of the master visually before pressing.. yep, I think these drifting issues are probably minute enough not to be noticable on music, but for my geometricall...

Were the lacquers cut on a proper lathe? yep it was on a Lyrec-driven Neumann. the plastic Dub came out ok, it had some drift forwards and backwards which suggests inconsistant motor speed... but when we did the lacquer it was much worse. We figured the motor must behave differently depending on te...

Hey cool! another 14B! Alan Graves (RIP) was so suprised to hear I had one here in the UK, as he hadn't even seen one before in real life he said! I've been looking for other 14b owners so Megamike i'll PM you :) I got hold of this one in a really roundabout way. The guy I started my record label wi...

RIP. great picture.

nice one Martin!

niiiice shouts to nick for keeping the producers in check haha

RIP, Alan was really kind and helpful to me when I had questions about my Presto, and reading his site and threads on here provided so much information and inspiration.

What a legend.

thanks for the suggestions guys, here's an update: I found someone to do the cut, and we did some successful experiments - after one error we fixed, we got a working plastic cut. Really spot-on, with the lock grooves where I wanted them AND everything stayed in-sync, so the end-user can pickup and d...

i saw the same scene, and I thought to myself that the Gravity driven motor looked to be the right time-period but the vacuum suction looked a bit advanced for when the scene was set... Didn't think of the lacquers but that also seems a little early also

looks like I've found someone to try this

I'll let you guys know how it goes!

no offence intended, Misjah. thanks for your time. As I said via email, I still think discussing this over the phone could help move things forward, and might allow me to design the project to suit your equipment. You're most welcome to contact me if you are interested in the job - I'd be willing to...

Hi trolls I'm looking to get a specific type of cut for a record I'm working on. it's a performance tool for DJ's and Turntablists rather than a record to sit and listen to. the cut involves multiple lock grooves, and requires a lathe that has automated head-drop and scrolling functions. all the aud...

Thanks for the update - Peter King is indeed a legendary human and is an inspiration for me too, more power to him!

Thanks for being such a great community resource!

heres to many more years!

awesome piece of history and a relly interesting sounding project

sounds like you're getting way better results than my attempts using a 5C :) however I'm using a pretty bad motor, and my bearings were basically non-existant. I'm waiting on the bearing being repaired before I can try again. your stylus looks a different shape to the sapphire's I've got, mine look ...

nice music! congratulations on the cut and the release also

nice one for the link grooveguy!

Not long ago I read the biography of Cecil Watts, the Brit who was deep into developing recording lathes and lacquer blanks between the wars. An entertaining read that, to me, somewhat demystified the making of a lacquer blank, although wide-groove 78s were more forgiving of imperfections than micr...