hello all,
I'm working on a lathe project - I have most of it worked out...but my question is regarding the amp. Looking around, there are only a couple cutterhead amps out there that I can find - gotham and vinylium.
What would be an alternative to spending a bunch of money on a cutterhead amp?
What amp is suitable to drive the audio signal into the cutterhead?
Is it simply a phono preamp?
Or is driving the cutterhead like that of driving a speaker from a home stereo?
thanks for the help
cutterhead amp questions
Moderators: piaptk, tragwag, Steve E., Aussie0zborn
Hi,
If the head is a typical non-feedback magnetic type, a standard audio amp will work fine. Most of these are 4-16 ohms. Some are 500 ohms and would need a amp with a 500 ohm output (not common), or a matching transformer to match 8 ohms to 500 ohms. You can use a 70.7 Volt PA transformer in reverse to do this (see some past threads for more info). If the head uses feedback, you would need a summing stage ahead of the power amp to close the loop. I detailed a design for the Grampian style heads and Flo has a nice preamp for the higher end moving coil heads (again see the related threads). In the case of crystal heads, you need some special amps for these as the are high impedance.
Mark
If the head is a typical non-feedback magnetic type, a standard audio amp will work fine. Most of these are 4-16 ohms. Some are 500 ohms and would need a amp with a 500 ohm output (not common), or a matching transformer to match 8 ohms to 500 ohms. You can use a 70.7 Volt PA transformer in reverse to do this (see some past threads for more info). If the head uses feedback, you would need a summing stage ahead of the power amp to close the loop. I detailed a design for the Grampian style heads and Flo has a nice preamp for the higher end moving coil heads (again see the related threads). In the case of crystal heads, you need some special amps for these as the are high impedance.
Mark