Cutterhead Problem

[PMST]

Hi!

I cut on 3 different Vinyl Recorders. I have just moved house (and country!) which included driving my lathes 2500 miles. Before leaving i was cutting, everything was normal. I even tested all heads, every one was 4ohms on each side.

Since arriving i've set up the 3 lathes and one of my heads has a problem. I noticed that one side wants significantly less signal than the other. A few years back a cutterhead coil burnt out, this took the ohms on one side from 4, to about 1.8 and made this side obviously grittier.

The issue i am having now since setting up is one channel is reading 8ohms and wants much less signal than usual. On this cutter head one side is 4ohms, the other close to 8ohms. I ran off test cuts and both sides sound totally fine, except for needing half the volume on my amp on one side. My system is calibrated, so all 3 lathes have the same set up and hit 0db together and just this one side, of one cutterhead is way louder and needing half the signal sent from the amp.

My signal chain is simple.

Audio Player (i do my own EQ here)
Passive Volume Knob
Cutter Amp

Does anyone know what could cause this during transit? It can't be a burnt oil, and from previous experience a burnt coil lowers the ohms, not doubling them.

Any thoughts?

[leemichael]

Very common on Souri heads! That side will progressively get worse, start blowing fuses and eventually die. Same thing happened to me 10 years ago (and I’ve also rebuilt many since then that had the same issue) which ultimately led me to begin my 10 year journey on perfecting the building of dynamic cutter heads.