The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

BOOK REVIEW: "DISK RECORDING VOL.1: Groove Geometry And The Recording Process"

BOOK CONTENT: Detailed vintage engineering info on Westrex mono and stereo cutterheads and amps, the Fairchild stereo cutterhead and amp, processes for making high-quality lacquer blanks, materials & steps for makign cutting stylii, etc.

DATES OF ARTICLES IN BOOK: 1953 - 1980

LENGTH: 550 pages

EDITOR: Stephen Temmer

PUBLISHER: AES (Audio Engineering Society)

PRICE: $40 US Dollars (If you are a dues-paying member of the Audio Engineering Society, price is $20 USD)

LINK TO AES SITE WHERE YOU CAN BUY: http://www.aes.org/publications/anth.cfm

REVIEW:
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It's a HOLY GRAIL for anyone looking for harcdore technical engineering info on Westrex mono and stereo cutterheads and amps, the Fairchild stereo cutterhead and amp, processes for making high-quality lacquer blanks, or materials & steps involved in cutting your own sapphire cutting stylii. It gives you enough info that if you wanted to go and re-create some of these items, you might have a good chance of being successful, if you have, or seek out and learn, the basic required electronics/metalworking/gem-cutting skills & tools. It also has an interesting approach to building a hydraulic-powered cutting lathe in one article.

FORUM MEMBERS WITH TIME ON YOUR HANDS: Buy this book, read it, divide up the work amongst yourselves of learning metalworking / electronics / gem cutting, and provide for sale internationally, different sources and price-ranges of record-cutting lathes, cutterheads & amps (lower-priced Grampian-quality mono would be nice), stylii, and blanks!

60% of this book has complex math forumulas and graphs, physics, and other scary stuff for non-electrical-engineers like myself. But the remaining 40% has incredible cool useful material for anyone interested in having a go at building cutting equipment or supplies; it's like a "dark industry secrets giveaway".

A few sample pages:

Some improvements made to the Westrex 45-45 stereo cutterhead in 1959 to improve high-frequency response: Which of course requires some descriptive explanation of the cutterhead design...

Details on making and mounting in metal shanks, high-quality cutting stylii:

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blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

The best mono cutterhead, the 1954 Westrex 2B:

Westrex 3D stereo cutterhead:

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

The Fairchild vertical/lateral Stereo cutterhead (when used with special electronics, can cut standard 45/45 stereo):

Ideas on stylus heating...

More on designing & making cutting stylii...

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

Process info for creating high-quality lacquer blanks:

Interesting "concept car": The Hydrofeed Lathe, a 1950s prototype with hydraulically-controlled carriage, and a cutterhead pivot on the same plane with the blank: (shouldn't matter if your blank isn't warped, but interesting looking)

Despite the many bad things about the RCA Dynagroove system, there were a few good ideas, for certain cutting applications...

Honorary inclusion (1926 Orthophonic article):

Takes you as far as your mid is willing to go into the complex mathematics and physics which led to the design of the 1920's RCA Victor Orthophonic electric cutting equipment, mechanical reproducer, and exponential "folded-horn" Credenza player: This was the CADILLAC of acoustic home reproduction of electrical recordings, sounding just like an electrical amplifier: If you care to wade through the math, it shows how to come up with an electrical equivalent circuit for the characteristics of moving mechanical parts, and shows the circuit equivalent of the Orthophonic reproducer, as well as a response curve graph comparing an earlier, generally-high-quality Victrola, to the Orthophonic: If you want to design cutterheads, and like math, you could use ths info for the moving parts:

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

There are also some interesting systems that never became standard, like a precursor to the audio CD from the early 1980s, the "Mini-Disc digital cassette record", a small record inside a caddy, mastered by physically cutting into a small metal master disc, and played back with a phonograph stylus to pick up the digital signals, which are then converted to analog audio:

Even a 1967 article describing the "Phonovid" LP-image-recording system, which apparently never gained popularity:

Very Cool Stuff.

If you have metalworking skills & tools, and free time, let us all know when you get those alternate sources of cutting gear and supplies available for sale... It would be nice to have a larger availability of lower-priced "hobbyist/tinkerer" 3-speed lathes with separate variable-speed carriage rather than fixed-pitch, and medium-fidelity, but high-output, mono cutterheads & amps...

- Bob

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FULL LIST OF ARTICLES IN BOOK: Click here to view the PDF from the AES site:
http://www.aes.org/publications/anthologies/downloads/jaes_disk-anthology-1.pdf

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 65

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