Scully lathe restoration project photos

[skyonion]

Greetings trolls,

Over the last 3 weeks I've been restoring a Scully recording lathe for my mastering studio, Sky Onion. Right now the lathe is only somewhat functional - the main motor runs like a champ and it's a rock-solid playback turntable. I'm still working on some of the solenoids and relays for the feed mechanism but over all it seems to be in pretty good shape. It has cleaned up nicely and it wasn't missing any critical parts so that's a relief.

Once the mechanical systems are mostly working I'm going to rebuild the 1574D tube cutting amps and attempt to cut some lacquer. I've got a background in electronics repair and some documentation from Len Horowitz but this has been a huge project. Many thanks to the contributors to this forum, I've learned a ton by reading hundreds (thousands?) of posts over the last 6 months of lurking here. What an incredible resource.

Since there aren't a lot of photos out there of these machines I took some of mine to share.

Cheers,
Gus

[dietrich10]

looks great

impressive you tackled a scully!

[Angus McCarthy]

Holy god, that looks like it's straight from the factory!

It's not often pictures of a machine give me that particular gut adrenaline rush - this one did it - wonderful job thus far!

[concretecowboy71]

Nice looking machine!

Love the chrome. Looks like you have done some great work.

[skyonion]

Thanks! And I agree Angus McCarthy, the lathe's been giving me an adrenaline rush for weeks now. Glad you guys appreciate the photos, Scully truly make a beautiful machine.

[emidisc]

a work of art in my opinion super pictures especially the second picture as its a view I have not had site of before whow! the number of pulleys and switches .......good job indeed

emidisc

[petermontg]

Congrats Skyonion, A true beautiful lathe. Is it cutting yet yes/no?

We need more of those photos of the pulley system. None around from as far as I can tell.

[Aussie0zborn]

Well done. For the first time I have really appreciated the Scully lathe.

[TotalSonic]

Beautiful photos and lathe! Congratulations and best of luck on the remainder of the restoration.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[audadvnc]

That looks like a beauty -except for that relay control unit, what a monster! My compliments to the previous owner for packaging it so well and keeping all the parts together.

I've been working since January on a somewhat older Scully lathe, with 1700 series transistor electronics - and the power transmission system is completely different:



It really works!

I'd love to share information about our machines and what we're doing to renovate and use them. Scully lathes are getting pretty thin on the ground these days, and finding somebody else who's up on the "shop practices" is a handy thing.

[fraggle]

amazing how complicated the drive shaft is....
nice work man!

[mossboss]

People are far mo amazing mate Some of them just talk about things
Others make the lathes than some others many years later after they are made and been in service for many years they take them in, they fix them and they keep them going
Well some do others dream and others just whatever!
Cheers

[skyonion]

Thanks for all of the compliments on this thing guys. I've been making more progress and I'm cutting lacquer now. I re-capped the amps and made some other component upgrades, got them calibrated and it's sounding good so far. I have to say I'm still nervous still every time I fire it up but for now it's working (what a relief).

I'm still not sure how far I should be pushing the 1574D amps & 3D head with volume levels and high frequencies.... I'm able to cut at approximately the same levels of some of the LPs I have but I haven't attempted anything along the lines of a club-level 45 rpm 12", not sure if this system is up to that kind of thing (my guess - probably not at 75w per channel...). If any of you have experience/advice on this particular Westrex system I'd appreciate any knowledge you could share. The last thing I want to do is blow something up at this point.

petermong - here's some more pics of the inner workings, feed gears, pulleys, etc. There definitely aren't a lot of photos of the guts of these things out there, I'm glad to add what I can.

audadvnc - I'd be happy to share info on the Scullys. Thanks for posting the big pics of yours, although I don't know where they went, they're not loading today for some reason on my computer. You can always email me direct if you have any particular questions: skyonion a@t gmail

[Virtalahde]

Gorgeous! I've saved your photos down to my HD for reference (along with a ton of other Scully pics), since I'm also having a Scully/Westrex system coming in. It should be in a working condition, but I'm prepared to throughly check it out. I'm also going to post pictures here.

[skyonion]

Looking forward to your pics Virtalahde! I too searched for all the Scully photos I could find before I got my lathe. I hope mine are helpful as a reference. Are you getting the tube 1574 amplifiers or the solid state 1700 series?

[Virtalahde]

1700 series. That'll work well, but I do have some interest in developing my own cutterhead amps for fun.

Scully pics seem really rare, as are the users. It's good to have a few here!

[W.B.]

That was a Model 601, right? I've always been preferential towards this variant of Scully - especially the lead-ins (among them 32.3125, 14.729167 and 7.625 lpi) and lead-outs which ranged from slow (such as 3.92 or 4.17 lpi) to fast (such as 2.04 or 2.14 lpi).

[skyonion]

Yes W.B., it's a 601. It does seem to have some pretty impressive mechanical automation for those lead-in and out options. Hard to believe there's only one motor involved for all of it.

[W.B.]

I tip my hat to you.

[audadvnc]

So - do you have the machine running? Are you cutting discs now? How's it work?