Curious about its performance , wanted to start cutting immediately but i didnt as i wanted to be sure at first that everything works as it should.
First had to lubricate/grease carefully all moving parts. Motor is also important and can be lubed as shown on following pictures :
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I also felt the belt that feed the pitch was alittle loose so i replaced it with a round one which feels much better by now.
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Last thing was to install a protection fuse for the cutterhead.
Maybe useless but just in case because you never know..
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Once i was done i felt the lathe is ready for new cuts! For that purpose i had ready a Triangle Embossing stylus i made for it and Diamond Cutting stylus i bought
I did 2-3 test cuts using both methods and what i realized is that the sound was all muffled. I was looking what the problem could be and i ended up to be a rubber ring around the stylus that works a damper .
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Removing it the sound immediately open up , get louder with more depth but now it way too bassy!
Next i checked the amplifier output. As cutting amp uses a SI1010G hybrid amplifier which states to be Class-B , 10W with less than 0.5% THD at full power. Measuring it was almost dead Flat from 10Hz to 1kHz. There was an immidiate fix of that curve.
On the picture below , the PURPLE is the iRIAA curve. RED is the Hara Amp freq. response and GREEN is the fix (still not ideal but much better)
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Now is time for some more tests
Flat LineIn audio signal was applied , same level to all 3.
While testing i realize that Diamond Cut sound the best (as expected) and +3dB louder than embossing. The Triangle embossing sound was not that extended but sounded smooth. That made me make an additional Tungsten Cone this time which suprisely come closer to the Diamond cut sound characteristics! I also notice that Motor noise was more intense when cutting using Diamond.
Following are WhiteNoise tests.
. Diamond Cutting Stylus
. Tungsten Cone Embossing stylus
. Tungsten Triangle Embossing stylus.
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Will need to check other stuff the following days, such as the motor temp and different cutterhead settings as i am going to use it , hopefully , for some direct-to-disc recordings.
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