The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

flozki · Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 55 Location: switzerland

hello everybody.
forget neumann, kingston, vestax, vinylrecorder. plastic is out.
lets go one step further....

take a look

http://www.floka.com/lofi/dbmastering.html

cheers
f.

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 285 Location: San Jose, CA

Ha! It's all been done before Smile

So in the interest of history, AFAIK the Songcatcher movie with the cylinders was fiction. Lomax started in America with big klunky Presto lathes run off 6V(!) mechanical inverters from his car batteries. Your scheme should work but they were never electrically cut or laterally cut. I think the crank both turned and moved the cylinder laterally, while the head stayed put. Same for playback. Then a spring wound motor replaced the crank. The cut was vertical, so called "hill and dale" (up and down with respect to the surface, not like lateral mono flat discs)
We your fellow lathe trolls respectfully request an mp3 of your experiment.
Please let us know when your wonderful talking machine is finished! Very Happy

motorino · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 212

diferent beer diferent tone??? hehe
very good!!
the problem if you need a lot of test, you need a big party!!! callme when!!

cementimental · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 32

haha that's genius!!!!
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charlief64 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 8

Brilliant !!!! I have lots of radio transcriptions, cut in the 30's on aluminum. Why not cylinders? We'll all be wating for the Sondek, solid acrylic, playback machine (with dental floss belts)

Charlie

Steve E. · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:08 pm Post subject:

that is one of the most amazing things I have seen. Direct to beer mastering. I can't wait to hear the results.

Steve E. · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:24 pm Post subject:

important question: Are you using empties or full cans?

Steve E. · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:28 pm Post subject: Re: "direct metal mastering"

harper · Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 30

Oh my!

HA!

flozki · Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 55 Location: switzerland

okidoki...did some cuts...i changed the head to a grampian..more power.
i use old steel stylii. best for aluminum.

the cans are full...thats suposed to be the deal. i can cut someones speech, music and he gets the beer....a typical contract in music business...

i also manageed to playback that stuff. but my plyback-some kind of tangential tonearm is a little sticks. so i can only get one turn...

of course there is quite some surfacenoise. but the cut itself is loud and looks nice.

next step forward is to throw away the handcranker. i need a motor so i have stablerotation. then i think the quality is quite good. i hoope to provide some samples soon.

cheers flozki.

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 285 Location: San Jose, CA

As I said in reply to your first post, for both recording and playback I think the cylinder traverses laterally in the oldest designs and the record or reproduce head stays fixed. The reproduce head might have a little movement built in to account for surface irregularities. Think motorized fine pitch leadscrew rotating the cylinder, and causing it to move slowly in a lateral direction for groove spacing. Do the same for playback. I think for a machinist like you, that would be much easier than rotating the cylinder in place and moving the cutter head and the playback arm.

Steve E. · Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 10:39 am Post subject:

I'm dying to hear the results!! I hope you are still persuing this....it's the funniest/coolest thing I've seen in ages.