The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Hi all, I've found myself some feedscrews, thanks for all the tips. PS, make sure you check the emails you're using with lathetrolls, I've had a couple bouncebacks while trying to respond!

That's super cool! Did you flip the motor upside down instead of poking out of a whole in the plinth? Yeah, it's a new build stepper motor Markrob put together for me, mounted to the plinth so we could tinker with it a lot to dial it in. Very low noise, a little hum behind the tracks, but you'd nev...

Spinner Town has a good blog post on it here: https://spinnertownblanks.com/blogs/spinner-town-blog/how-to-map-and-eq-your-dynamic-cutterhead It's easy to follow and works great for old mono heads as well. You need a program with Match EQ: he recommends using Toneboosters Equalizer Pro. I use the na...

I dunno man, in a world of well over 100 million songs available, I probably just wouldn't have cut one that needs a historically accurate label with a swastika on it LOL

@lowambitionrecords Hey Matt, it's about time I saw your name pop up on the forums - Welcome!

Hey trolls, We've been working on a travel lathe for the past year: a modded ROK Imperial that's easy to move and get setup so we can do events around town, and bring with us on an upcoming trip overseas. The illustrious markrob helped us mount a motor onto the faceplate and hook up the amp onto the...

tiger claws, turtle shells, and kidney stones Don't tempt me! I'm entering my "if it's small enough, it might be a stylus" phase of life... Here's been a fun discovery: I made a stylus using amethyst, and it sounds gorgeous when embossing! Low surface noise, strong high frequencies, and a match EQ ...

If it were a documentary about the work I'm doing, we could call it "The Guy Doing a Largely Unnecessary Niche Thing in an Already Extremely Niche Field"

This whole experiment of making styli has opened my mind to think beyond diamond and sapphire! So far I've tried my hand at: high speed steel, tungsten, sapphire/ruby, almandine garnet, quartz, amethyst, and now...um, a shark's tooth. The high speed steel stylus is currently my favorite, though it d...

Hello fellow trolls,


I had a bit of fun this morning making a stylus from a fossilized shark tooth, then using that to cut the JAWS theme song. I know it's only March, but the sun is starting to feel like summer to me so hopefully this helps to get you in the mood!

- Joe

Oh yeah, I've talked to piaptk about it a few times but he's been out for a little while and I have a big job coming up - thought I'd test the waters here!

Yeah, it's really neat - we've done 14 of these now in the past couple years, so about 250 people, and I'd say only a handful had ever heard the phrase "record lathe" before

Hello fellow trolls, My partner K and I have been running these events we call DIY Discs in Philadelphia for the past few months, in which we cut 15-20 single-sided 7" records for our guests. Most of the events have been for the public library, but we've also held some around the city at places like...

Hey all, I'm looking for an outside-in 6N feedscrew, between 160-210ish lpi would be great. LMK if you have a spare you'd be willing to let go of and your price. I have loads of stuff for potential trades, as well. Thanks!

- Joe

Great topic! I've been mulling this over a lot for embossing. Since beginning to grind my own styli out of high speed steel, I've been doing a lot of embossing on PETG, I find it has a really pleasing surface noise compared to polycarbonate. I've also started thinking about alternatives to using lig...

Thanks you two! It's been a lot of fun, and the option to make styli out of something local has really opened my mind to what else could cut records, haha. Slag is easy enough to find, that's a decent mix of old metals, I wonder how well that could work? Probably too soft to work well for too long, ...

Good evening, fellow trolls, The day I got my first lathe, I eyed a little baggie of almandine garnet I collected from a stream in my local park and wondered if I could make an embossing stylus with it. Three years later, I finally did! It's not much to look at, but the disc came out quite nice for ...

I have a few things to add to this conversation, mostly as talking points: Based on their answer to "Are your vinyl records lathe cut?" on their own website, they seem to be saying that yes, theirs are lathe cut: https://elasticstage.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/articles/30571646736529-Are-your-vinyl-record...

Very cool, I'm going to watch this later today. I live ~20 minutes away from this building, I actually bought a Rek-O-Kut Challenger from them in 2023. They were using it to cut records during live performances at their headquarters - the guy said the last record he remembers using it to make was a ...

Hey Matt,

The next edit and the next cut sounds even cleaner, this is great. I'll need a lot more practice to get here, but this is really encouraging. Thanks!