"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message
...

(huge snip)
Don't take what Churches says about vinyl too seriously, his
experience is some twenty years out of date.
--

Disc cutting was a mature technology by the time I was cutting
in the late 60's early 70's. Decca had eight cutting rooms, so
quite an important facility, second only in size to Abbey Road.
The equipment was state of the art, Neumann, and Westrex
lathes, with Neumann, Lyrec and Decca cutting heads and
amplifiers. There have been no significant improvements
in technique since that time. I was taught by Harry
Fisher, the senior classical cutting engineer at Decca, so the
instruction was probably the finest one could receive in the
UK.

In those two years, I must have cut several hundred sides of
master lacquer, using my own ID letter.

I would be interested to hear the details of your cutting expertise.

Cordially,

iain