Presto style arm on a Recordio!

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Kat
Posts: 73
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:20 pm

Presto style arm on a Recordio!

Post: # 63522Unread post Kat
Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:35 pm

It seems that like a lot of newbies, myself included fall into the trap of attempting to restore a recordio or similar General suitcase cutter which are unfortunately very hard to get up to original specs and utilize a 90 volt crystal that needs to be serviced at WestTech. They’re constantly raining on eBay but seem to me like a dead end for cutting. I have yet to get anything but noise on mine.

Prestos meanwhile are the way to go and in fact work right out of the box to some degree with a modern amp, but they’re of course more expensive. I only managed to score mine for cheap with dumb luck.

I was wondering if it would be possible to make a custom arm for a recordio with the spring and knob of a Presto. Interestingly enough if you read the patent, Wilcox-Gay intended the Recordio cutter head to be a more user friendly version of what was available commercially but I’d argue the Presto is far more simple to use and more modular.

I’m not going too far on the head for now, just a basic computer speaker stereo head.


Has this been attempted before? I know Frankelathes exist.

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