The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

JayDC

Okay.... I did it.. I made my own scratch plate. Crazy!..

I used a 112LPI pitch, and cut it at 45 although by adjust the sample rate of the master recording, it plays back at 33rpm.

You may ask yourself, why would he do that?

The answer is simple, I'm lazy. I just didn't feel like removing the brass collar, and tinkering with the strobe disc. It's already set to 45.

I made the cut as deep as possible, allowing the least amount of land between the grooves without them colliding. This is one of the only times I actually used the microscope while cutting.

enuff of that silliness, we all know how to cut a record, lets go to the independent test of the Apollo product.

SCRATCHING MECHANICS:

Scratching on acetate is a little weird at first. It's not like plastic or vinyl, it's kinda it's own skill.

Different things apply to the set up of the turntables. Right off the bat you'll notice that you will want to use far less weight, and anti-skate on the tone arm, this will make the cartridge track alot better then the usual heavy tone arm.

Although I also noticed that you will want to raise your tone arm, so that the tone arm is not level, but in fact sloping down toward the cartridge. (ie: \ )

The acetate actually slows down the movement of the record during the back and forth motion, so you will want to use some wax paper under the slipmat to help keep it sliding nice, this will also keep the needle from popping.

SOUND QUALITY:

You start to create surface noise, or scratch burn, fairly quick. It is highly noticeable, although the same could be said for vinyl, this effects the Apollo lacquer alot sooner then vinyl.

The sound does not degrade so much other then the scratch burn.
I'm not sure if I would say that the product would last as long a commercial pressed vinyl record in the scratching arena, though.

Although they do stand up better then a dub, and they will last longer when not used as a scratch record.

Remember that I use a presto 1-C to cut, the stylus is not as wide as other heads, so the grooves will be different. Using high-end equipment may improve tracking performance a bit, due to the wider groove.

I think maybe a 96LPI is really what should be used, you could go a bit deeper into the acetate with that one.