can crystal cutter heads be rebuilt?

[flashbk13]

As above title. I know crystal phono cartridges can. Thank you, Rick

[piaptk]

You can regrow crystals, but those don’t sound very good even when they are rebuilt.

As someone who wasted almost a year (and a ton of money) with a POS rebuilt Crystal
Cutterhead, I’d say... save the hundreds of hours and dollars you would blow on trying to get even marginally listenable Cuts on that and spend it on a decent magnetic machine..

[flashbk13]

ok, thank you for the advise, Rick

[timinbovey]

My experience has been quite different.

I would say "yes" if you know what to expect and have it rebuilt by someone who knows what they're doing.

I had Gib as West Tech rebuild the Astatic X-26 cutting head that was in the Recordio console I inherited from my Grandparents. It was completely dead.

I inherited the machine in 1977, and had the head rebuilt probably 20 years ago. To this day it still cuts and sounds fine. Since then he's rebuilt a couple other crystal cutters for me.

That said remember that "sounds fine" is subjective. It sounds at least as good or better than the records my relatives cut on the machine in the 1940's. Perhaps because
I'm using better blanks and being more careful about setup and recording levels. But it's better than I expected. It makes records that sounded like they did when the machine was new.

Obviously you will never get the frequency response of a good magnetic cutter from a crystal cutter.

But yes, they can be rebuilt and bring you back to the sound quality of the head from back in the days when it was new.

If you're intent is to record modern bands with a full range of audio frequencies you won't get that from any crystal cutter, and also not from a vintage mono magnetic cutter either for that matter.
Depends on what you have and how much you want to spend.

Talk to Gib at West Tech. Yes they can be rebuilt and they sound fine as long as you're expecting things to sound like they were made on a home machine in 1947.

Tim in Bovey

[flashbk13]

Thanks Tim for the indeapth info. Rick

[45rpmdude]

He has turned me away in jan 2022.. Telling me he doesnt repaire them anymore.