First cut on RCA lathe with Presto 1D

[thetoneloft]

Hey everyone,

Just made my first cut with a set up I acquired. It's an RCA lathe with a Presto 1D cutter head. Everything seems to be in great condition. I've been researching for about a month leading up to today, and now that it's done I have some questions!

First of all, what a great feeling it was to have that needle hit the record, cut a groove (no matter how terrible it may have been) and then play back without it skipping. That was beautiful.

The major issues coming out of today were pitch and speed fluctuations. I seem to consistently be a half step off with he original recording. Also there is a pretty consistent irregularity through out the cut, there is subtle speed change back and forth every 2 seconds or so, a vibrato if you will. This is mostly an issue at 33 rpm.

I'm not so worried about the pitch, as I am about the vibrato. I definitely need to level out the work space, no doubt about that. Is there any other good place to start with correcting these issues? Is there a problem with the lathe, does it need to be greased?

I am very new to this, so please excuse my lack of knowledge. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[markrob]

Hi,

Unless its been in operation recently and had basic maintenance performed, you probably need to do a complete teardown and perform lubrication and inspection. Over time, old oil and grease can dry out, motor lubrication can be gummy or nonexistent. You will also probably discover that rubber belts, pulleys, drive and idler wheels are dried out, cracked or have flats worn into them. All of this can be fixed. There are places you can send rubber rollers for re-building.

You will also want to send you head out to Todd (Opcode66 here on the trolls) for a rebuild.

Good luck with the lathe.

Mark

[Gridlock]

That's awesome. Love me some RCAMI. where you located at and does your machine do 45? Pictures? Best of luck

[thetoneloft]

Thanks for the reply guys, I didn't see them until now! The head rebuild contact is much appreciated. Cleaning seems to have been a must. This is definitely a frankenlathe, it's being driven by a technics 1200, I suspect the turntable is also a problem with the flutter/wow. I'm quite new at this, and as I continue to experiment, I'm sure I'm ripping my stylus apart.

I run into skipping periodically, which typically seems to be associated with chip building up around the stylus. I can imagine suction will be a good investment at some point. Also the spring that adjusts the cutter head height seems to be pretty unreliable. I'll adjust it, get a great cut, put another record on, and the stylus is either doesn't touch the record, or it digs in way too much. Is this a sign that the spring needs replacing, if so what should I go with?

Thanks again for the support.

Pictures shortly to follow!

[thetoneloft]

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[markrob]

Hi,

Looking really nice. I'm surprised that the 1200 is able to drive the overhead at all. Just having the 1200 deal with the load presented by the cutter is marginal let alone the extra power needed to run the overhead. I would convert this setup to have the overhead driven by an external pitch motor (see Soulbear's posts on his setup with a simple open loop PWM controller). The Presto 6N's used to be driven by a 1/15 HP Bodine motor. That should give you some idea of how much torque is required. Alos once you remove the platter drive, you don't need to have different leadscrews for different pitches.

Mark

[thetoneloft]

Thanks Mark, I'll post updates with how things come along.