Fake Record CD's, recording on them???

[alienmanstk]

Hi, I am wondering If it is possible to record on those new cd's that are made to look like records. It appears that the plastic on top is soft. They are already grooved,so maybe they would only be recorded using a gramophone. But that coating looks interesting... anyone know what that is made out of???

[cuttercollector]

Are they actually a spiral or "locked grooves"? I think I tried "playing" one once to see if the manufacturer had done anything clever.
Either way it might be possible to impress some noise on them.
They don't seem to work very well as CDs
I have had a few issues with them on that.

[blacknwhite]

PS. This is offtopic, but I've had CRAZY problems/heartbreak finding reliable CDR blanks to use as CDs/CDRs... researched deeply and found the only reliable solution is Taiyo Yuden (sp?) disks from here, thats ALL I buy now, no more problems (yet): for dvd's too:

www.rima.com

(No I don't work for them)

[alienmanstk]

hmm, no clue if they are spiral, (hopefully they are), I unfortunetly have none at the moment. Can anyone who has one of these fake records see if the grooves are indeed locked? If they arent, then this could be a big step in finding recording media! Maybe, the disks could be coated with a laquer aswell? On a real blank, is it important to oil or apply anykind of cleaner to the disk before cutting it??? I havent tried this yet

[Damien86]

I only have a very old version of the Verbatim Digital Vinyl CD-R lying around, but it seems that not only are the "groove" rings concentric therefore locked, but they are also raised and not actually grooves at all. Also there is only like 30 grooves per inch on it.

[so still dog]

I think we need a custom solution where the cd has an 1/8 inch blank vinyl lathe stamped on top

[Aussie0zborn]

The "grooves" on these CD-R discs is clear ink or varnish printed over the printed layer. CDs that have the ink "caked" on in layers are screen printed. DVDs are more commonly offset-printed which give higher resolution and particularly good for reproducing photographs.

Some disc printers such as six-colour printers use a combination of screen and offset printing methods. The first layer (a white base is screen printed) the next four colours (C,M,Y and K) are offset printed and the sixth colour can be varnish, special metallic colours or a particular spot colour and this again is screen printing.

[Steve E.]

can someone include a link to one of these CDs?

[cuttercollector]

The ones I have are called Verbatim digital vinyl CD-R. They don't record or play right in many cd players for some reason.
They are old now.The grooves are real enough to track with a normal turntable, are locked grooves rather than a spiral, and have a little squeak/swish noise similar to the locked leadout groove of some records.
I will have to see if I can cut/emboss anything in one with some cutter. I think I will first try just blasting sound back into an acoustic player tracking the grooves with a playback stylus.

[VRCM]

I have experimented with tons of different cutting materials because I am to cheap to buy real new blanks right now. I have tried chocolate, wax, cds, pressed vinyl (16" near label; individual cuts so no end groove), a spray painted record, pvc tub surround for bathrooms, and that colored plastic used for lighting. But the one thing that worked the best for me that was not a real blank was a memorex cd spray painted with a few coats of that spray paint made speacially to adhear to plastic. I used a steel long shank needle for the cut.

[blacknwhite]

VRCM, if you have time for experimentation, consider trying this & letting us know how it goes

How to make your own lacquer blanks
https://lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?t=783&highlight=lacquer&mforum=lathetrolls

[VRCM]

Ok. I have been trying to get better pics of some of the grooves I cut. I have to go through craigslist because I cannot post pics on this site. These pics are of one of the cds that I painted with plastic spray paint. I tried to photogragh the audio discs I am cutting under the microscope but I don't have enough light right now. Ther isn't a lot of movement visible and they apear to be a little wide.

http://hartford.craigslist.org/wan/1001003061.html

[alienmanstk]

vcrm, what are you using to vut with, a recordette? How many times are you able to play back the spray paint coated cd ? And, we arent expecting great sound from this, but what can you compare it to?
Thanks for keeping this alive
-sam

[VRCM]

I am using a Rek-o-kut V. The sound quality is like playing an old scrathed up 78 with a paper cone. It is very understandable but not very good quality (also on the quiet side). I found that the layers of paint makes a difference. The thin layer discs seemed louder but noisey because it was cutting into the CD--the 5 layer disc seemed quieter but cleaner. On top of all of that I think I dulled my steel cutting needle (so be careful if you attemp it). If you look closely, one of the pics has an extra little chamfer on each side of the groove. That is on the five layer disc (when my needle dulled). Also some cds don't like that paint---I used memorex blank cds. It would be cool if you could easily post sound clips to compare recordings. In terms of wear they seem to hold up fairly well although I have noticed a slight deterioration of the sound quality and I have only played it 10 times or so. In addition I am not sure I have the right amp set up.

[Perisphere]

On the topic of records made with paint, 30 years ago I made a number of home-brew single sided 78s using enamel spray paint and posterboard.

Part of the idea goes back to when I was about 5 years old, and accidentally dropped a screwdriver one day! Its bit happened to graze the side of the body of a model car kit that had a fresh coat of spray enamel paint on it. The edge of the flat-head bit had traced a groove in the paint coating as it bounced off it.

So saying, about 10 years later I took that memory, a moderately gutted broken Victor Orthophonic sound box and tonearm (the diaphragm in the box replaced with a small transistor radio speaker), and had some fun the summer of 1979.

I used an 11" Pathé disc as a template for making slightly oversize 10" blanks. I used white posterboard that had a slight coating on one side as the basis for them. (This was the only side this process worked with.) I'd cut a disc out of the board, punch out a hole in the centre of it, and tape it onto a disused 12" record, and take this out to the garage, where I'd carefully spray just the right amount of paint onto it.

Before I went out to the garage I'd have a short piece of music cued up on a reel of tape, and levels and everything set as I wanted them.

After I got the paint on the blank, I'd bring it in the house, dash upstairs and put it on the turntable I rigged this homebrew recorder gizmo onto. At the outer section outside the 10" diameter I could make a quick test recording to see if the paint was still too wet, or if it was at just the right state of tackiness for the job.

When it looked like everything would work OK I'd start the tape running, dash back over to the recording rig, lower it onto the wet disc, spiral in at just the right time, and try to hold things together for the one minute or so I could fit onto a 10 inch diameter format of record.

I never had a lathe or other feed mechanism for my crude head, only my own hands guiding it and limiting its pressure on the disc. The recording stylus was simply a regular steel gramophone needle.

I could do lead in and lead out grooves, locked grooves and spirals and a bit of variable pitch (more like varying pitch!) as well as an eccentric stop groove if the mood struck me. (The latter required some trickery with a ruined Edison disc, and offsetting the recorded disc atop it by just the right amount.)

I called them 'Enamelite' discs, a nod to the 'Metrolite' designation on a number of MGM 78s my parents had.

Some people wondered if I could do LPs or 45s, but no. 78 only, and mono at that. (Oddly enough, no-one ever noticed they were mono, or asked me if I could do stereo on them.)

Here is a recent picture of one of the discs. Those that survive play and sound as good or as bad as they did 30 years ago. Noisy and with a top end that stops around 2500 cycles or just a little higher.

[VRCM]

Cool. I did mine with the paint dry--I never though about cutting while it was still someone wet.

[Perisphere]

I tried a few discs early on with dried paint. The 'cutting' was more scratching than anything else, and things tended to flake away.

[cuttercollector]

You were FAR more coordinated than I was. I still have a few discs I tried to cut by hand guiding a steel needle in an acoustic wind up portable player using a 4" speeaker placed over the sound hole. My media was an actual home laquer blank after I stopped trying to record the lead out grooves of my 45s by shouting back into the sound hole. My "self guided" discs are a very wobbly 1 1/2 to 2 "lines per inch" and last just a few seconds if you can get the playback needle to stay in the groove which is shallow and jerks back and forth almost crossing itself and vering off suddenly at random.
In fact the back of the arcade booth machine cut cardboard discs I made also have grooves cut into them but the acoustic machine with it's playback stylus was so heavy it often tore through the coating to the cardboard.

[VRCM]

I am thinking of trying spray laquer on a metal disc. Still fairly simple compared to blacknwhites proposal, but possibly better than paint. I think that a lot of the scrating is from the pigment in the paint.