The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

It's speed variation - make sure the idler wheels on your Rek-O-Kut are absolutely 100% clean. I had this when I accidentally got a fingerprint on one. It's especially problematic on piano music or any other instrument with long extended notes.

If it's one of the centering springs that keeps the armature balanced in the gap between the poles of the magnet, that's what took my Presto 1D out of action a couple of years ago and I've yet to fix it. The advice I was given was to use a very short length of a matching gauge of piano wire, cut to ...

This is kind of bringing this topic back from the dead, I know he doesn't post anymore, just lurks... But I had the good fortune to stop by Gus' mastering studio while in Portland last month, to chat record cutting and mastering, admire his setup and cut a dub of an old live rock show. He did the le...

Canada Boy Vinyl in Calgary AB is now up and running, and was in a few news outlets about their grand opening recently - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7hlCiG_NFQ

I've seen one of these in a local record store, and the label is either 3" or very close, maybe 3.25" at most.

The increased "lumpiness" at higher frequencies is because of the FFT measurement of the logarithmic sweep itself - the frequency is moving too fast for the FFT analysis to get a proper picture of it. Either cut a slower sweep, or decrease the window size. (Smaller window = more accurate measurement...

There is no reason to avoid gears completely, unless you like the idea of replacing the leadscrew with a winch pulling the carriage with a rubber band. Is the gearbox on the Neumann coupled directly to the feedscrew? Or is it driving the feedscrew via belt? There's a rubber coupler between the gear...

Helical cut gears, I'm assuming.

Thanks for the explanation. Todd indicates that there is no gear reduction on the motor shaft or anywhere in the path from motor to driveshaft. If this is true, what type of motor is used and what is the shaft speed? Is the reduction done entirely via belts and pulleys? What is the pitch of the fee...

Mark, Neumann uses two motors to achieve this, one for the standard cutting LPI range and one for the faster speed for lead in, lead out and spirals. I don't have such a system but I'm very much interested in the technology behind them. I don't know what type of motors the Neumann lathes used. The ...

Paging W.B. ? What I know: a Scully 501 was a gearbox lathe, with a "gearshift" in front selecting one or two ranges of fixed pitches, the coarser of the two usually being between 88 and 136 lpi. The lead-in and lead-out pitches were a division of the recording pitch selected and the record speed. A...

IIRC the chip from the "slow burning" discs was less likely to catch on fire explosively like the stuff from professional-grade lacquers. Thus the safety - less likelihood of an amateur recordist burning their house down.

If it's the M5 or M12 and not M5S or M12S, the "spirals" they're referring to involve disengaging the feed nut entirely and pushing the carriage inward by hand. I've seen a few very old acetates done this way, and it's abrupt and violent - 1.1 to 1.5 lines per inch at 78. For trackability's sake I w...

Here's how mine was set up back in the day - hand-bent copper tubing strapped to the counterspring arm with the minimum weight for a 2.5 mil groove set, then if I wanted a deeper groove I'd stack coins on the cutterhead beforehand. It was kind of rough and prone to clogs, but custom machining parts ...

This makes me very happy. I was wondering how Alan was doing.

Smithadamm, thanks! Next time I drive through Ohio I definitely want to visit Mr. Hull at Musicol. Anybody else know of anybody actually using Scully 501's today? Besides Robert Hughes in Minneapolis and Mr. Hull at Musicol, I'm not sure how many 501's are still in existence, especially with the fi...

I'd go with an ammeter - excess current is what blows heads. What's the impedance of the head? Do you know what gauge the wires are in the coil?

I'm not sure how legit this is, but it bears mentioning: Africa's last pressing plant, in Zimbabwe, appears to be up for sale for a cool 160,000 quid.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191502743011

I see a Neumann VMS80, two Prestos, an RCA(?), a Scully, and something that looks like a Scully and a Neumann were fused in a transporter accident. That last one intrigues me - I thought only Len Horowitz had something like that. I too would like to see more pictures.

So an untested non-feedback mono head went for $1550, more than double what I paid for my entire lathe 15 years ago. I'm not sure what to feel about that.