The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

audiocarver · Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

Hello,
I am rather new to this forum. I have a Bell Sound Systems cutter and am currently looking at purchasing a Presto 8N and setting up my studio. I would love to get a nice Neumann, Scully or even a Fairchild, but thats the future. I currently work as a field service engineer at a firm that manufactures industrial lasers outside of Detroit, MI. I got my start in electronics on vintage audio equipment. I have been cutting since I was 16 and am now 26 and finally got the means to go further into this endeavor. Hopefully I will meet some new and interresting people here.

Aussie0zborn · Joined: 11 Mar 2006 Posts: 63 Location: Australia

Hi. I notice in your other topic of even date, you say you are 15 years old and now you're 26. Anyway, Im curious as to why you hold Fairchild in the same esteem as Neumann - is there something about Fairchild lathes that we should know about?

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 258 Location: San Jose, CA

Hi, my 2 cents...
I have a Bell unit too. These along with many others used a deck with a playback arm and a pivoted cutter arm with leadscrew underneath and a turntable that ran at 78 or 33 rpm, made by General Industries. They tended to use the Astatic crystal cutter. Masco, Meisner and Airline had similar units. I have some examples of all. I have heard what a properly set up one of these can do, and while not hi fi by any means, they are capable of clean quiet recordings, at least at 78 rpm, that probably were about as good as most consumer tape machines of the early 50s. Think slightly better than really good AM radio.
As to the Fairchild system, it was used by some companies like DOT records in the early 60s. I have seen pieces of it including the lathe and one of the amp chassis. They were a very unique early stereo cutting system. They used very powerful transmitting type tubes as the finals in the cutting amps, some sort of RF feedback system, AND they were most unique in using a sum and difference cutter. That is to say, they had one coil cutting conventional lateral mono sum of the two channels, and the other driven cutting vertically, the difference between them or the stereo info. if you wish. This works out (theoretically) to exactly the same thing as the 45/45 system used by Westrex, Ortophon, Neumann etc. I find it interesting because it relates to the M/S micing technique which is convertable, "inside out" to nornal L/R stereo. What might be really interesting is to take one of the Fairchild systems in proper working order,
(does anybody know if one exists?) and use it to cut directly from an M/S microphone setup, bypassing it's own conversion to sum and difference signals, which should then produce a perfect L/R normal stereo recording when played back by a normal stereo cartridge. Just another experiment I would love to try someday.....

Perisphere · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:51 am Post subject:

Rudy Van Gelder used Fairchild 642 cutters on his Scully lathes IIRC. He may still have at least some of his disc cutting gear, though he no longer uses it....

flozki · Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 50 Location: switzerland

hello
thanks for the info about RvG and his equipment
how you know rudy van gelder did the cuts with the fairchild 642?
are there any pictures? would be interesting..
i was quite sure he used a westrex....

i have a 642 head. but no amps....
http://www.floka.com/pics/fairchild_642a.jpg
never had time to do some test cuts with it.
also i have to construct the preamps, hf- feedback system. but that wouldnt be too complicate....

thanx.f.

Perisphere · Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 5:04 pm Post subject:

Somewhere I have an LP on an obscure label (I'll post full details when I find it again ASAP) made around 1959 or 1960 of Hawaiian music that was recorded, mixed and mastered by Rudy Van Gelder. Full stereo, even has 'RVG STEREO' hand-stamped into the dead wax on both sides. The sleeve has a quite detailed explanation of his recording set-up on the back of it. The earlier posting was from my semi-fuzzy recollection of some of the sleeve's information.

Dub Studio · Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 49 Location: Bristol

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 258 Location: San Jose, CA

Yeah, but the whole fun thing is to do it in all analog direct to disc and NOT go through the computer...