My Scully project

[Virtalahde]

Some of you have seen these already. I've been working on it on and off for the past 3 years, and right now it's at the state I've been doing unmodulated test cuts with it. Things seem to be good. I have the Westrex 1700A amps (not in the pic since they're on my desk), which I have also went through and done the basic calibration for. Next I'm hooking those up.



The state this lathe came into me was that it had a Capps system installed at one point, but it was removed and there was a simple motor controller board hooked up to a PC running a simple software. All of the original relay boxes were there, as well as a bunch of modifications. I decided to take it all down and start from scratch. I practically removed everything but the lead screw and the carriage. Every bearing is new, motor is serviced, etc.




You might notice the user panel is new..



It's for controlling Flo's Pitch13 system, and also the motor on/off & stylus heating circuits are there. A couple of relays driven by logic circuits, nothing fancy. The motor is controlled by a Siemens motor controller.



That head was recently serviced by Len Horowitz, the other one is going there soon. I think I want to hook up the non-checked head first.



The leadscrew motor mount



Pitch13 with the top open



I used the old terminal blocks for wiring the thing up. Now I have a cover on those, so it's an old photo.





That would be where I hid the Siemens controller.



And my mastering room as seen from the lathe.

What is missing from these pictures is my new LED microscope light controller from TDKK (http://www.tdkk.nl/products.html). It's a great little thing.

Anyway, things have been slow with the lathe since I'm pretty busy doing mastering work and I've been only doing this every now and then. It's good to have it wrapped up soon. In a few weeks I'm taking a little vacation and plan to do modulated test cuts then. Also I need to build a simple head protection card - the head is going to be on a relay, and the relay will be driven by a couple of inputs. The head will be disconnected if it's up, if the power goes out or in case of too much current.

[Sillitoe]

Wow looks great, nice photos!

[dimi751]

Wow ! What fine work, ive said this before and I'll say again flo work is very nice!
The workmanship is detailed & who else would be able to bring a scully back from the dead so to speak, and even implementation there own electronik and machanical equipment.
I'm speechless right now magnifico !

[Virtalahde]

Thanks, guys! I made a small typo - I've been working on this for a little over 2 years, so it has not been as slow as I originally thought!

Here's what it looked like right after arrival:





The Capps system was gutted and the circuit boards were in a box. All that was left was the box, the motor and the meter in a new, very temporary-looking panel. The way the whole system was configured was rather odd. Constant velocity equalizers were bypassed and apparently all the EQ was done inside the DAW. If I remember it right, the feedback also went through the DAW. I don't know how that worked, because of the latency and all.

I looked at the thing for a couple of months, said "screw it" to myself and began the disassembly after seeing Man Made Mastering's Scully while it was still there.

[Virtalahde]

Oh, and I have quite a bit of removed Scully parts if anyone needs them. Mechanical stuff, relay box, power supply..

[Sillitoe]

Very cool, the DAW based feedback sounds interesting... Any more info would be great, are you still in contact with the seller?
Thanks,
James

[dimi751]

Wow look at the lathe when you got it
Great job in the restoration eh 2 years 3 years same same

[studiorp]

Compliments, your Scully will be super when finished. Best wishes for your project. Wonderful machine.

[tragwag]

beautiful! great to see scully lathes getting a little upgrade, your front panel for the controls of pitch and such is really looking good.
best!

[Virtalahde]

Very cool, the DAW based feedback sounds interesting... Any more info would be great, are you still in contact with the seller?

The modifications were not done by the seller, it was all earlier work. Here's a quick and lousy shot of the system plan - not all of it was completed:

[Virtalahde]

One thing I have not even hooked up yet is the depth automation.

The Pitch13 system obviously has one, and my Westrex amps are of the later model that provides a depth control input. I'm going to try out how those two communicate between each other - as far as I understand, controlling the depth by biasing the coils is not a problem with the advance ball. Using automatic depth control might require a buffer between the two, but it's a quick job to try out. One more reason why I want to keep the unserviced head around for a little longer..

[markrob]

Hi,

That is really nice work on the rehab!

It looks to me like he was not planning on closing the feedback loop inside the computer. From what I see from the drawing, he was taking one of the feedback coils (not sure why not both), deriving a mono monitor signal after passing it through an analog RIAA decoder. That signal is passed back to the computer and used to do the pitch control via RS-232 to his black box controller. It unclear if his plan was to run the head open loop and develop a custom EQ curve in the DAW or if the intent was to leave the feedback loop analog.

I have a feeling this was a work in progress and subject to change.

In any event, I very much doubt this would have worked if the intent was to close the loop via the DAW. I still have an RME card here. They are nice and you can run them at pretty low ASIO buffer sizes (IIRC 64 samples). That would yield a total in to out latency of 128 samples. At 96 Khz, the would result in 133 us delay. Way too much delay.

Mark

[Sillitoe]

Great. Thanks for the info Virtalahde and analysis Mark.
Haha I like how the image name is "horror"

[Virtalahde]

Yeah, now that I look at it, the feedback wasn't done in the DAW. But the constant velocity EQ was for sure done there, I have some plots from attempts of linearizing the head. Horror, I tell you!