[Original title: "hello hello!! can anyone help please??"]
my name is Lorcan- i am from London UK, i just finished university last year, i studied music. My friends and I are really into music in many many ways, i have decided that i really really really want to buy a lathe/record cutter. Preferably one that would allow instant cutting of a 45, much the same as the voice-o-graph / speak-o-graph, because ultimately i would love to be able to take it around with me and have people record themselves straight onto 45's and then let them keep their own first record of themselves. i stumbled across this site and was like helloooooo!!! so here i am. its amazing to see all the different makes and models that people on this forum have! i have been looking around trying to see where i could get my hands on one but they really do seem like quite an esoteric and arcane object. so i'm gonna need all the help i can get! and this site seems like it will be a great place to get help and advice, and maybe if i'm really lucky someone could direct me to getting my own lathe/cutter!!
if anyone could help me in any way i would be very grateful.
yours sincerely
Lorcan
Wants instant 45 cutter
Moderators: piaptk, tragwag, Steve E., Aussie0zborn
-
Steve E.
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1921
- Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:24 pm
- Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Contact:
Re: hello hello!! can anyone help please??
Hi Lorcan! Welcome!
Portability is never one of the easiest things to find in a lathe. To some extent, I'd guess, this is a function of lathes needing a much higher torque than on a normal TT....but that's just a guess and may not be the true reason. Since there hasn't been large of a market for "home recording" lathes since the late 1940s (when tape machines were commercially introduced), most lathes have been on the monstrous end of things; and those 1940s home lathes were 78 rpm and used crystal cutterheads. The sound is not great on them.
A rather rare item is the VanRock or Atom lathe--it was a Japanese lathe made in the 1970s. That one made almost exclusively 45s. (EDIT: safer to say it cut 7" records.) I don't know where you'd find one or how much they would go for.
Certain Presto lathes of the 30s and 40s were designed to be semi portable units; but by today's standards, they are not portable at all, and I think their more portable ones, again, recorded at 78 rpm. Check out early Fairchild lathes. Gorgeous looking, and I am pretty sure some of them recorded at 33 and weren't too huge.
Souri's Vinyl Recorder is the most complete system currently being produced. Do a search on that and you will see a LOT of info about it, including its pros and cons. Flokzi is making a Caruso stereo head that will need a lathe and a home-built amp, if you are into more of a putting-together-your-own-system thing. And look around here....people are making their own crazy contraptions, too. There is the Vestax lathe of the prior decade....it was a flop. It was expensive. Maybe you can work with that. And Vinylium, from what I hear a great system (also co-designed by Flokzi), expensive, no longer really being produced.
Others should weigh in. This is off the top of my head, and it may be a little sloppy.
Portability is never one of the easiest things to find in a lathe. To some extent, I'd guess, this is a function of lathes needing a much higher torque than on a normal TT....but that's just a guess and may not be the true reason. Since there hasn't been large of a market for "home recording" lathes since the late 1940s (when tape machines were commercially introduced), most lathes have been on the monstrous end of things; and those 1940s home lathes were 78 rpm and used crystal cutterheads. The sound is not great on them.
A rather rare item is the VanRock or Atom lathe--it was a Japanese lathe made in the 1970s. That one made almost exclusively 45s. (EDIT: safer to say it cut 7" records.) I don't know where you'd find one or how much they would go for.
Certain Presto lathes of the 30s and 40s were designed to be semi portable units; but by today's standards, they are not portable at all, and I think their more portable ones, again, recorded at 78 rpm. Check out early Fairchild lathes. Gorgeous looking, and I am pretty sure some of them recorded at 33 and weren't too huge.
Souri's Vinyl Recorder is the most complete system currently being produced. Do a search on that and you will see a LOT of info about it, including its pros and cons. Flokzi is making a Caruso stereo head that will need a lathe and a home-built amp, if you are into more of a putting-together-your-own-system thing. And look around here....people are making their own crazy contraptions, too. There is the Vestax lathe of the prior decade....it was a flop. It was expensive. Maybe you can work with that. And Vinylium, from what I hear a great system (also co-designed by Flokzi), expensive, no longer really being produced.
Others should weigh in. This is off the top of my head, and it may be a little sloppy.