The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

The rubber rollers probably need to be re-done. Check out Terry's Rubber Rollers online and he can do the job. Also, there is an adjusting screw at the edge of each side of the slider that turns the motor on. From your pic I can see the one is dialed all the way in. This is keeping the roller away f...

Uh...records from the 60s were cut on pretty damn good stuff. So good that records are still made using them.

Apollo lacquers have been having issues since late OCT 2017. As of last week, they still have those issues. We currently store all Apollo products on spindles at 70-75% RH (relative humidity) in a small, sealed room. The best thing to do is call and complain. We have been applying pressure on them s...

The real art of mastering is learning how the program material translates to the vinyl format. If you are using a laser to directly cut a stamper, how do you do test cuts and make reference acetates? Less than 1% of the masters we cut are done "flat" with no processing. How do you accomplish this wi...

Did you get your head lift issue work out? I have had two issues in the past. 1)A fuse was blown in the power supply section (this would affect other aspects of your lathe) 2)The leaf spring switch contact point inside the suspension box was corroded. My suspension does not have micro switches, but ...

I would say the reason folks did not take your inquiry very seriously is because your information seems a bit jumbled. We don't use "record cutters," we use mastering lathes. If you are trying perform "lacquer mastering" the idea of spending 15k on a machine is not very well informed. Perhaps other ...

What kind of "vinyl cutting" are you speaking of? One-off dubs? Plastic? Low run lathe cut records? Professional Disc cutting for vinyl record replication? The cost of producing a master for vinyl production is currently TOO LOW with some cutters willing to undercut others with the offer of cheap si...

How do you cut a reference copy?

How do you check to see how the audio reacts to the format?

Do you wait until a test pressing?

That is crazy.

Which Presto? Pics?

Are you referring to lead in and run out grooves?

If your Presto has a hand crank, you use it to do the lead ins and lead out and then you dis-engage the lead screw to lock the groove.

Member OPCODE66 rebuilds heads. He just did three for me and they are great. The presto should be stamped on the back of the head how it is wound (8 ohm, 500Ohm) I would suggest having it wound for 8 ohm so you can use home style or PA style amps to drive it. Mechanically these are a cinch to work o...

Look into old rim drive turntables. Rekokut made quite a few. They have the torque needed to maintain speed while pressure is applied to the cutting/embossing substrate. There is a certain degree of rumble that you will get however.

You may be overloading the head and causing it to resonate. Use EQ to get rid of the problem. Lower the level until the problem goes away. Then raise level until it comes back and use the EQ to tame the bad frequencies and raise the level a bit.

Great! You have verified a lot of what I am experiencing. The rollers are indeed compound (one stacked on the other essentially). I shaved the roller that was in direct contact with the platter and that made the difference that I needed. There is adjustment for roller pressure and I have been experi...

Twofold: We did use a strobe. I understand that it could be misleading because the lights we would be using would be "strobing" at the same frequency that the motor would be locked into. We are also using test tones, cut and transcribed back into the computer using a quartz lock turntable (Technics ...

After a lot of research, it seems that it should be unusual for this kind of motor to run fast. Unless there was a bad problem with the actually frequency of the power from the wall. I ended up solving the problem mechanically by lightly sanding the rubber roller. I could see the motor running slow ...

Here is a pic of the motor:

rekokutmotor

Great thanks. I will look farther into the drive you suggested.

I am also going to pull the rek-o-kut apart again and get info off the motor badge.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Leeson-Speedmaster-Adjustable-Speed-AC-Motor-Control-174930-1-4HP-/262822178481?hash=item3d316c2eb1:g:fNQAAOSwo4pYiALC Is this something that might work? I am sorry for my ignorance here, but this is new territory for me and I know nothing about motors. I thought this would b...

Thanks for the info!

Thanks for the info. I don't have the skills to hack a car inverter. I was hoping for a more off the shelf solution. I have very strong mechanical skills, but lack the skills needed to make something myself.