great article on record pressing. just the right amount of detail and
length. all i can say is: what a freakin' complicated and obscure
process it is?

in the back of my mind i thought you could scrounge up and old record
lathe and cut some records in a back room if you had the time and
inclination. but it's so much more complicated than that. so, so, so
much more complicated and resource-intensive.

clearly this is something to be left in the hands of dedicated
experts.

In article writes:

in the back of my mind i thought you could scrounge up and old record
lathe and cut some records in a back room if you had the time and
inclination. but it's so much more complicated than that. so, so, so
much more complicated and resource-intensive.

Well, you sort of can, if all you want to do is cut lacquers. It of
course takes skill and experience to do it well, and it takes tools,
knowledge of how things work, and time and patience to maintain the
equipment.

The pressing equipment is on the same order of complexity of that used
to make the precision plastic parts that we see all over the place
today. The difference is that nobody ever considers doing that at
home.

One of the mostly DJ gear companies whose name escapes me now (it's in
one of my NAMM or AES show reports) makes a lathe that's suitable for
home tabletop use. It's designed for the DJ who wants to make a disk
for his show, one that has limited playing life and not a lot of
playing time. I think it does about 15 mintues on a side, fixed pitch,
on a special material. Not for the budget-shy.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

xy wrote:
great article on record pressing. just the right amount of detail and
length. all i can say is: what a freakin' complicated and obscure
process it is?

That's the basic problem, and it's part of the reason that LPs got replaced
so fast. It's a whole lot easier to make CDs than it is to make clean and
consistent LPs.

in the back of my mind i thought you could scrounge up and old record
lathe and cut some records in a back room if you had the time and
inclination. but it's so much more complicated than that. so, so, so
much more complicated and resource-intensive.

Cutting the master isn't that bad. If you want to make one-off acetate
recordings ("dub plates"), it's something you can do in a back room. But
actually doing it well is nontrivial and getting pressings out is a real
issue.

clearly this is something to be left in the hands of dedicated
experts.

I urge everyone to check out the guys at Brooklyn Phono. Their mastering guy
pops up here now and then, and they are really the first new record pressing
plant to open up in a long time. Talking to them gives you some appreciation
for what it takes to start from the bottom-up.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article znr1088856931k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
home.

One of the mostly DJ gear companies whose name escapes me now (it's in
one of my NAMM or AES show reports) makes a lathe that's suitable for
home tabletop use. It's designed for the DJ who wants to make a disk
for his show, one that has limited playing life and not a lot of
playing time. I think it does about 15 mintues on a side, fixed pitch,
on a special material. Not for the budget-shy.

Vestax. I think that their lathe is either a rebadged version or a copy
of the lower end Vinylium DJ lathe. You can see propaganda about that stuff
on www.vinylium.com. They make a cheap fixed-pitch DJ lathe that goes on top
of a Technics turntable, a higher grade variable-pitch model, as well as a
very nice pitch computer that can be retrofitted to standard lathes.
--scott

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In radio, at the station where I worked in the mid sixties, we still
had two Rek-o-Kut lathes driven by McIntosh 30 watt tube amps.
We cut commercials on these and used the cuttings to scare the crap
out of the guy on air by lighting them and tossing them into the
control room!
The discs didn't last very long though with the old RCA washing
machine motor driven 16" inch turntables and the Gray (gouger) arms
with VRII cartridges in them.


On 3 Jul 2004 09:52:51 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

xy wrote:
great article on record pressing. just the right amount of detail and
length. all i can say is: what a freakin' complicated and obscure
process it is?

That's the basic problem, and it's part of the reason that LPs got replaced
so fast. It's a whole lot easier to make CDs than it is to make clean and
consistent LPs.

in the back of my mind i thought you could scrounge up and old record
lathe and cut some records in a back room if you had the time and
inclination. but it's so much more complicated than that. so, so, so
much more complicated and resource-intensive.

Cutting the master isn't that bad. If you want to make one-off acetate
recordings ("dub plates"), it's something you can do in a back room. But
actually doing it well is nontrivial and getting pressings out is a real
issue.

clearly this is something to be left in the hands of dedicated
experts.

I urge everyone to check out the guys at Brooklyn Phono. Their mastering guy
pops up here now and then, and they are really the first new record pressing
plant to open up in a long time. Talking to them gives you some appreciation
for what it takes to start from the bottom-up.
--scott

Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Voice-overs, Newscaster, Engineering and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

In article , Mike Cleaver
wrote:

In radio, at the station where I worked in the mid sixties, we still
had two Rek-o-Kut lathes driven by McIntosh 30 watt tube amps.
We cut commercials on these and used the cuttings to scare the crap
out of the guy on air by lighting them and tossing them into the
control room!
The discs didn't last very long though with the old RCA washing
machine motor driven 16" inch turntables and the Gray (gouger) arms
with VRII cartridges in them.


Ha! I can beat that - we used to put a slug of the swarf in the bottom of
the senior tech's pipe and cover it with tobacco...

--
Mike Clayton