The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

tape · Joined: 25 Jan 2007 Posts: 93

Hi

I just wanted to check if anyone here know anything about this machine: "Rex Rotary TN6 Recorder"

there is a picture at the bottom of this page:
http://web.telia.com/~u13101111/diktafon.html

It appears to be a dictaphone that cuts in records with pre-engraved grooves. Ofcourse I am interested in cutting with it using e.g. plastic.
The webpage with the picture, thats in swedish, mentions that the machine uses "magnetic disks" so I am a bit unsure if it's actually able to "cut" grooves...

thanks

emorritt · Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 78 Location: Louisiana

There have been many 'flavors' of dictaphone equipment using very odd combinations of technologies.

Needle-type technologies were the Gray 'Audograph' which recorded by embossing grooves on a plastic disc similar to the Soundscriber series of dictation equipment. The Dictabelt machines first started as a clone of the Audograph/Soundscriber machine but embossed grooves on a plastic belt instead of a disc. I think they later used magnetic tape belts and a magnetic read/write head.

Of course, to circumvent Dictaphone's belts there were magnetic-disc type units like the Brush "Mail-A-Voice" that used a turntable and a thin magnetic coated paper disc. The device used a grooved plastic disc that covered the magnetic disc's label when in use and was used as a feed mechanism to guide a magnetic read/write head that was carried in what looked like an ordinary phonograph tonearm. (Similar in function to the Andy Gard Home Voice Recorder toys.)

The Rex unit looks like it may be similar to the Mail-A-Voice with a more complex mechanism for moving the read/write head across the magnetic disc.

And who said hard drives were a new idea??? "It's all been done... before, it's all been done..."