The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

I'm slightly surprised about the lack of reaction to this, as I think it's a great effort and much better than anything I could come up with myself. I won't address technical issues though, there are others who are far more qualified to do that than me.

I'm using a Rega RB250 arm, mounted in a piece of 16mm ply attached to the SP. It's got a small base so you can just about get the required 222mm mounting distance (centre point of arm base to the centre of the spindle - the SP10 was really designed to use 10" or longer arms, the Rega is 9"), althou...

In one of the videos, they're using a scrappy o!d 1970s BSR deck with the arm hanging off. Those things have enough trouble driving their own auto return mechanisms without grinding to a halt, never mind haviing a cutting head dropped on them. It's all extremely weird.

I'd agree with 2bit. That sounds very much like a stylus heating (or not heating) issue.

That's very much untouched by the hands of the Fab Four, unfortunately. It's quite charming though, and better than any Deroys I've ever found!

Lovely scans!

The Quarrymen thing is weird, as the famous 'In Spite Of All The Danger' acetate was made at Percy Phillips' studio in Liverpool, and I don't know of any other Quarrymen acetates ever being made. I need to consult 'Tune In', I suppose.

I think Deroy packed up around 1979. Some of their '70s albums are highly sought after these days, especially the folky ones. There used to be a website dedicated to them but it vanished a couple of weeks ago. They made a big fuss about their Neumann, which it looks like they bought around 1968... £...

His MSS was described as being 'modified', though it doesn't specifically say how, and was run with a 100w Grampian amp (again, it says here). I'm sure I have another period article about JH somewhere, but can't find it at the moment. I also remember him being mentioned in a '75 hi-fi mag, having re...

There isn't a great deal of information out there, but here's a magazine cover with a photo of the man himself in 1967. He advertised his services in the various electronics magazines as far back as the early 1960s, along with similar outfits such as Rapid, Deroy etc. I have a few examples of his wo...

Yes, the main unit absolutely narrows the stereo width down considerably, and there's no way around it other than take it out of the signal chain and do your RIAA and other EQing etc. by other means.