Lathe for one-off vinyl cuts: buy, restore or DIY?

[Skint]

I've been lurking around here for a couple of months now so thought I'd introduce myself - this site is an incredible resource! I'm here because I would like to get to the stage where I am able to cut decent sounding one-off records, in the vein of VinylRecorder or Vinylium.

I've emailed Souri but failed to get a reply. I've read elsewhere that he hasn't sold any for a while now, so possibly that avenue has dried up. It's a shame as other than seeing an acetate master get cut on a Neumann once a few years back when I had a record pressed up, I've got no experience in this area and like the fact training is available/required for the VinylRecorder. I also understand that Vinylium are no longer in business...

That limits the options for a lathe to second hand or DIY only, as far as I'm aware. I have restored period turntables (Garrard 301, Lenco GL75) and built speakers and amps so don't mind getting my hands dirty. I'm wondering about whether it is worth picking up and restoring and old 40s/50s lathe, though they're hard to come by. Also, I assume they'd all be mono, but is there any reason a modern cutting head such as the Caruso couldn't be retrofitted to an older lathe arm? I do want a reasonably decent level of fidelity. Is that unrealistic?

Also, is there somewhere I can read how these lathes work in terms of moving the arm across the record when cutting, spacing out tracks etc.? I haven't picked up on that yet. I am a software developer by trade so I was thinking it might be possible to DIY a lathe entirely and control motors using an Arduino for example.

Finally, hello!

[Sillitoe]

Hello Skint
Welcome!

There will be new lathe available for sale... kinda soon...
Software and the arduino platform are definitely the way of the future.

My system is here, pretty much an open source project (as is the purpose of forum) but you need to read most of the forum to be able to fill in the blanks. (Pardon the pun )
If you develop your own system you will probably end up spending about 5x the money compared to buying one, but you will fully understand your system.

http://www.lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5645

Read, read, read and good luck!

Cheers
James

[Skint]

Hi James. I had glanced over the first couple of pages of your thread and it was one of the ones that made me realise that DIY was possible, although I hadn't read it in full. I'll have to now - I hadn't cottoned on to the fact that you weren't 'just' building a one-off!

[Skint]

Having now read your thread, I can confidently say that is very impressive and far, far beyond my own skill set... Consider me interested when you finally get this to market though. Great work.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[Sillitoe]

Haha, thanks mate!
I was in your position about a year and a half ago...

It has been a very steep learning curve, expensive in both time and money.
I committed to the project and it has been a very rewarding experience.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

Cheers
James