What's Your Lathe Acquisition Story?

[13yo]

My wife works in an art museum and has told me unusual provenance stories.
So it recently occured to me each lathe acquisition is its own war story.
So what's yours?

Did someone you had not heard from since high school call you out of the blue, "you'll never guess what I just inherited?"
Was risking your life driving through a blizzard in a crap car so loaded down with iron it barely stayed between the ditches worth it in the end?
What about the one that got away? Are you still kicking yourself for not bidding the extra hundred bucks on ebay to win the auction?

_M

[tragwag]

gonna edit a little bit, but getting my 2nd 6N was very serendipitous.
I started my internship in may/june 2012 with Dietrich at Complete Mastering (hi D!) in Bethel CT, he bought a 6N from Al Grundy for me to learn to make lathe cuts.
my birthday is July 2nd, and despite being a twin and not seeing him that day, I was hanging out with THREE other people who share my same birthday.
we hit up a bar with a birthday special, and went back to one of the birthday people's house. I was all pumped on working on lathe cuts and chatting up everybody about it when the fellow birthday girl goes "this used to be my grandparent's house and my grandpa had a studio in the basement, wanna check it out?"
it was a fully analog tape + disc studio with a 6N at the heart of it. they had been stashing weed in the little storage cubby of the 6N box, and just using the studio for storage so I asked if I could buy the gear, mostly interested in the 6N, 87A amp and the original Presto tape machine.
nabbed the whole basement of stuff for $200

[rsimms3]

I have had a few lathes in the past 8 years since I started this crazy journey but the one that I have kept and sits beside me now is a Frankenlathe. "Back in the day" (I mean when I started looking/buying stuff 8 years ago) you could find stuff here and there. I bought a few lathes through eBay, fixed em up, tried em out, and moved them on. I found this particular lathe on Craigslist 5 hours away from me. I knew the town because growing up we always drove past it visiting relatives. So, with my heart beating fast and my mind racing I worked to contact the seller. It was part of an estate sale for an old building, I was told the original owner was a radio guy from way back. When I was looking the listing pictures the lathe was a complete oddity and I could not for the life of me figure out what model it was...because it was more than one model! This lathe has an early overhead assembly from a Presto Stationary lathe which looks like an 8N overhead with "Presto" on the guide bar, an RCA chrome cutterhead, feedscews from a 6D but with a rare clutch/crank system, mounted on a 6D turntable, all housed in a Rek-O-Kut C7 cabinet. So, I called the owner, we went back and forth a few times by phone before I could make arrangements for a sale and for it to be held until the weekend. Mind you, this was a Tuesday when I found the listing and didn't want anyone else to find it and buy it out from under me. The weekend rolled around, I drove 5 hours, did a LOT of talking in an old building with no AC for a couple hours before loading out. This thing was CRAZY HEAVY! They don't tell you that in the pictures how heavy these things are when you buy them in real life.

[13yo]

gonna edit a little bit, but getting my 2nd 6N was very serendipitous.
I started my internship in may/june 2012 with Dietrich at Complete Mastering (hi D!) in Bethel CT,...
nabbed the whole basement of stuff for $200

thats a great story, do you still have both and use them?

_M

[13yo]

I have had a few lathes in the past 8 years since I started this crazy journey but the one that I have kept and sits beside me now is a Frankenlathe. ...This thing was CRAZY HEAVY! They don't tell you that in the pictures how heavy these things are when you buy them in real life.

have you kept it running as the original Doctor built it or changed it at all?

_M

[rsimms3]

So far everything is just as I received it except I changed the cutter head and added a dash pot. I do have long-term plans to set up a belt drive motor.

[MEGAMIKE]

great stories guys love it...
just after we got the VR from Souri and Fritz..we found an 8n in a basement in an old shop in tasmainia 14years ago.paid little for it and it was full of crap but we bought it all anyway not realizing what was in inside .. the frieght was $500 bucks back to perth..on arrival we found (in bits) a stand alone presto 14B in the cabnet ......both I stripped and fixed and now have stereo heads ..

[handcut]

.....both I stripped and fixed and now have stereo heads ..

Oooooh! How did you get a stereo head on to an 8N??

Great thread.

[MEGAMIKE]

sillitoe head x1 (turned around)..unisex heads x3

[symatic]

Hey cool! another 14B! Alan Graves (RIP) was so suprised to hear I had one here in the UK, as he hadn't even seen one before in real life he said!
I've been looking for other 14b owners so Megamike i'll PM you

I got hold of this one in a really roundabout way.

The guy I started my record label with, Darcy, was living in Oxford at the time, and one day phoned me and asked what I would do if we had our own lathe.
As out label specialises in sample record for turntablists, we have really specific requirements for the cut which generally make most engineers want to cry.
I basically told him that it wasn't even worth thinking about because we were never gonna afford the kind of investment it would take, but he knew how interested i was in it so he got me to explain what I would use it for if i ever got my hands on a lathe.

Then he dropped it on me that he had struck up a friendship with a local soundsystem operator, Dan, who had a Lathe he had been restoring with his brother, but sadly his brother got very sick and died, and he was the engineer of the two, so Dan was stuck not knowing how to proceed.

We arranged to go and visit him, and he basically said that we could take it as long as we made it work - he just wanted to see the project through.

So we hired a man with a van, drove it to my mates house who was willing to put it up in his studio for a year or so while I found a permanent place for it, and I would travel over to London to work on it every other month or so, and collect parts and knowledge in between.

Eventually I moved it to my house, (bottomed out the suspension on the work van and drove very slowly accross the country) and it's sat in our living room, which is more of a workshop becasue of the lathe and my wifes industrial sewing machine haha.

Anyway, since then I've slowly made progress, trying different motors, setting up a belt to drive the lead screw, having the Presto Head reconditioned while collecting the rest of the parts for the Caruso head that came with it, and I also went and trained with Jesus from Agnew Analog/Magnetic Fidelity.

I've made some horrific embossed cuts, but I think I've got my head round the basics, now I'm waiting on some serious upgrades, like a new platter/bearing system (turnes out the old bearings were totally shot)

Dan, the owner, visited back at the end of 2019 and was really happy with how things were going, and was saying how he hadn't anticipated just how much needed to be done to modify this thing into something a Caruso would work on.

He also explained how he and his brother managed to get hold of it in the first place. apparently it was living in pieces on the floor of some guys living room in New York, and his mum (who he lived with) was so angry about it he was selling it for a really low price.
They luckily had a friend who could help them ship it becasue it was gonna cost more to ship than it would to buy!

I'm planning on fitting modern features to it like a new motor, and a separate motor for the lead screw, computer controlled pitch, computer controlled head lifting/lowering, and of course the Caruso - for which a friend made me a mounting plate. I also added a 16" Audax tone arm which was another lucky find on Darcy's behalf, but my arm mount is aweful, needs a nice metal one not two bits of wood I found in the basement at work

theres still a long way to go but its happening slowly. the pandemic has put everything on pause but I'm using the time to learn what I can.

[Discomo]

HAVING A BAD KREUZNACH

So I had to drive all the way from The Netherlands to the South of Germany for the 2 day workshop of Souri and after, I was subsequently driving home, with an approximate of 800 km ahead.
After about 350 km the car started to give up and I was luckily able to get it to the closest reststop next to the highway. A few hours later, the car got tossed away to the closest little town with the elusive name Bad Kreuznach. Since it was sunday the garage was closed and I had to leave it behind in front of the garage after having called a cab.
All newly bought equipment (Vinylrecorder, main unit, even the vaccuumcleaner had to be taken with me, since I couldn't close off the car (at least I thought so, since the electrical system had totally given up- however later I found out the car still automatically closed off after some time, thank you Volvo ).
Next stop a hotel. Again, all equipment had to be tossed over onto a hotel-trolley and I pushed the entire load to my room.
The next days I was in contact by phone with my insurance company who, of course, wasn't really cooperative at all in helping me out. Long story short, I was forced to stay the next 5 days in this little shithole, which happened to turn out wasn't a shithole at all, but a nice little medieval town famous for being a healing spa resort. I had great dinners each day from the best South German cuisine, with 2 liter sized glasses full of sparkling German beer and fully came at peace and to myself finally, while enjoying the lush, late hot summer and being engulved by the clearest of clear healing water from a wild stream which was running through the midst of this lovely town, in the mean time having little sweet fish nibbling from my exhausted feet... With my 45 years I felt one of the youngest persons there, since most people around me were old enough to having participated in the glorious days of the Nazi era. However, everyone was lovely and at peace by now and this all had a very calming and soothing effect on me. My initial plan had been, as usual, to drive back in one go, as fast as possible (which basically meant 180 km/h). But this unforeseen event forced me to take a pass from everything and enjoying total bliss.
After 5 days my insurance had taken their responsibility and had arranged a temporary car for me, with which I drove back to my Dutch hometown.

Since then, your good ol' Discomo hasn't stopped cutting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Kreuznach
________

[13yo]

nice looking town_M

[piaptk]

Krisd has the best lathe acquisition story... he once pulled a lathe out of the basement of an abandoned Seattle Porn Theater... but had to wait for 8 hours while Hazmat and Explosive techs came in to remove the two 50 gallon drums of High Octane Jet Fuel that were sitting next to it.

[piaptk]

Hey cool! another 14B! Alan Graves (RIP) was so suprised to hear I had one here in the UK, as he hadn't even seen one before in real life he said!
I've been looking for other 14b owners so Megamike i'll PM you

There is a 14b rotting away in a barn in The Hamptons... it's a shame but it will probably sit there forever...

[MEGAMIKE]

get it!!!....better than those 6ns ..there overrated..trust me i have 2

[piaptk]

get it!!!....better than those 6ns ..there overrated..trust me i have 2

The 14b is a good lathe, but it takes up a lot more real estate than and is impossible to move. The 6n is the best of all possible worlds. Portable, heavy duty, plenty of features and affordable.

Trust me, i have four and have worked on dozens more. Im always getting emails from people in Australia looking for lathes if you wanna sell your 6ns.

[MEGAMIKE]

ok ok there not that overated hahaha..ill hold on to them for now

[piaptk]

ok ok there not that overated hahaha..ill hold on to them for now

That’s what i thought....

[soeffingodly]

My journey officially started a little over 3 years ago...

Re-winding to 1994; So I've been spinning records/DJ'ing/collecting records since the mid-nineties. I've always wanted to be able to cut my own vinyl. Fast forward to 2017 or so. I'm still thinking it's "pressing" but decide to explore the world of making custom records. After lots of research and after confusing myself even more I decided to contact Souri in 2017. After much back-and-forth I ended up getting a call to head there in March 2018. Unfortunately, I literally just booked a trip to Bangkok, Thailand 3 days prior. (I hadn't heard back so I figured it wasn't happening.) had to tell Souri "next time."

Before leaving for Thailand I stumbled on a Presto K-8 that worked (amp included) that had a 1C head with it. I immediately purchased it. After returning from Thailand I began really cutting records. Used my K8 for a while and ended up picking up a 6N from Mike. Went to his lathe camp. Loved every minute of it.

Ended up selling the K8. Cut on the 6N for a while. Hit Souri up again for a T560. That dialogue opened up once again so I flipped my 6N and flew to Germany. Now I cut on my T560.

I can't thank Mike enough for helping me along in this journey.