The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Search for Buchmann Meyer or light pattern at the AES.org website under journal articles, or get the AES disk recording compendium volume 1. The example for crosstalk measurement with light patterns is in there, I know at least one is part of the discussion of the performance of the Westrex stereo h...

There was a nice Westrex 1700 electronics rack on ebay, Deroy Wood was selling it, apparently reconditioned by Len. $3000 is pretty cheap for a redone set. I believe it had limiters.

Depends on the magnitude of offset and type of head magnet material. Ceramic magnets are harder to demagnetize at normal temperatures, rare earth magnets nearly impossible. Alnico magnets are likely the only type at risk in heads. So everyone with Westrex, Grampian, Presto, early Neumann, and other ...

For sale, an Ortofon DSS731 stereo cutterhead and GO741 cutting amplifier system. In working condition, removed from my Scully lathe. $4000 or best offer. Thanks!

-Dylan

I think the Fullersound Scully went to Europe actually, he sold it for something like $12k. That one was a bit different, none of them so far have been identical (hence I think Flo might be right that my lathe is from RCA, most of the other LS76 I have seen have either covers for the Lord shock moun...

Hi Dietrich, this lathe is actually not the Capps Scully, that one sold for $650 last year to a nice guy in the Carolinas. It needed too much work for me as well. Motor missing, damaged castings, bearings all needed replacement. I sold the Westrex cutting system to someone else. This is the last gen...

Steve, thanks for the kind words. I will miss this lathe when it sells, it is really in beautiful shape. I used to keep it in the house to cut records before I moved... I have a good camera, so I will try to take a video of the lathe running and perhaps cutting before it is dismantled. I really like...

I have for sale a complete set of original NOS Scully lathe drive belts, blue, green, and red, and a set of 4 Westrex stereo head heated stylii. One stylus is marked new, the others are used.

I'd like to get $200 or best offer for the belts, and $80 for the stylii.

Just a note, at least the manual recommends 2:1 mix high damping cylinder oil and Shell Tellus 29 for application to the ways under the carriage. The "Heissdampfzylinderoel" is around ISO 460 steam cylinder oil, the Shell Tellus 29 is more like an ISO 46 hydraulic oil. This combo is a LOT thicker th...

Post some pics if possible, and/or a price. Those are pretty lathes. Is it in cutting condition?

No, there were two VMS70's. This is the second one.

That's a Neumann clamp ;-). It was used on the early VMS66 and as an option on earlier Neumann lathes for cutting small diameter lacquers without the vacuum hold-down, and also for cutting both sides of a lacquer without damaging the bottom side. Later, they recommended not using the clamps and inst...

Short list of spares available from the lathes on eBay: -SAL74 system cards (entire rack also available) with accel limiters -SAL74B system cards (entire rack also available) with accel limiters -main lathe cards (SV66 etc.) -cutterhead suspension (3 available, one is ugly so cheaper) -chip jar -vac...

Yes it was my mistake. Dietrich being gracious here. I did not realize how subtle the problems can be on a SAL74 amplifier. The circuit breaker circuit (spread across the SAB, SEL, and LOV cards) is particularly tricky when not working. It seems to involve input offset voltages of several opamps bei...

I'd recommend either Chris Muth or Al Grundy, both have worked quite a bit on the VMS82.

I'm still waiting on some parts for to arrive for my VMS70, so I'll have to wait to try it on that. But if I finish cleaning up the Scully and recap my Westrex RA-1541 I'll try it out later this week...

I have the article on the Fairchild stereo feedback cutterhead, it's actually a few pages later in the same book. So I was incorrect in a few ways about how the Fairchild head works. The feedback is not FM detected, but differential detected, the difference being mainly that it is not sensitive to o...

There's a nice presentation of how feedback and constant velocity recording works, presented on pgs 241-246 of the AES Disk Recording anthology, volume 1. It's an article from some time in 1954, about the operation of the Westrex 2B cutting system. Perhaps one confusing thing, with feedback wrapped ...

Is there perhaps some confusion between the nature of the drive and feedback signals, and therefore the response of the open-loop head versus the closed-loop head-and-amplifier? The Fairchild 642 is a unique case, where the feedback signal from the head has, or at least can have, response to DC (con...

Helium coil cooling, like the 3DIIAH and SX74/SX68.