The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

I wish I had that much spare time on my hands.........

A new stylus for every master!? You wouldn't stay in business very long, what with styli being around $ 60 each. You would have to charge an excessive amount for cutting lacquers. New styli need a wearing in period anyway, depending what you are cutting, they should last about 20 hrs. Remember corun...

Ha Ha,I wonder if the pressings were quiet and not covered with unfill.

The surviving 'reputable' plants in England seem to have horrible problems with this.

Its hard to get quality in the UK nowadays.

Back to hand presses for TP's !!!

Does this flag appear on a lathe or cutterhead? Whats it doing here?

What do you mean 'left side dead'? Has the heater wire snapped?

Great system, the Ortofon was a good sounding head as long as you didn't want to cut todays aggressive dance music with it.

Used it on a Neumann lathe. Had to switch back to a SX 74 when disco
was in fashion to get all that level and top end!

Did this one come from Miami?

In the mid 70's, a few Japanese made diamond styli with burnishing facets and heater wires were around. We used them at RCA, you had to use nearly an amp heater current to get a quiet cut. They sounded absolutely amazing, but we never got past about 40 hrs. use because the wire would fracture due to...

The NAB test record has a 'christmas tree' sweep on it.

Someone told me turntable speed was varied to cut the HF.

Don't see how they could accomplish this, with only one groove on the side.

Probably nonsense!

Will this diamond stylus cut lacquer? Are specs similar to a Transco type M?

Found a sealed box of old 14 in. audiodiscs from the 80's when Capitol made them (black packaging) After airing them out, apart from being slightly abrasive they cut and processed fine.

Go figure!

Does anyone who cut records for CBS in the late 60's to early 70's remember this gadget? It had a bank of 3 Urei 1176 limiters as well as some hidden circuitry and was used to control vertical modulation in Westrex cutterheads. It was followed by the QUASRA for Quad SQ records and was designed by th...

Forgot to mention, this was about 5 years ago!

Earlier inquiries of mine to Full Sail yielded deafening silence....

Check out FINYL TWEEK . COM !!

When I ran a '70 used to tweak the LL sometimes to cut a little tighter or
looser. Just mark down your nominal setting or any changes you may make
in case you have to duplicate the results later....

14 grand indeed! Back in 1990 when vinyl was in danger of bowing out to CD, I couldn't sell a VMS 80 for that amount! PT Barnum was right

Both can be set with 9 db feedback on a SAL 74 and the 120C trip for the 68.
Unmodified SX 68 won't cut the high levels and top end common today in
high energy dance music.

By the way, how do you cut +10 to +12 over reference level?

Been trying to figure that one out for nearly 40 years now!

Thanks for posting BDM, Bob! It takes me back..........

This was published by the Full Sail recording workshop in the early 80's

Does anyone have a copy? Thanks!