Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/17/cut-your-own-vinyl-records-at.html
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I wonder about the future availability of blank vinyl and replacement styluses. Are those standard, or some special “consumer grade” version that will shortly be unavailable?
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What they need to do with this is produce a kit that cuts a wax master and metal stamping disc for making copies.
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It’s making the metal stamping master that’s difficult - you have to vapour deposit a layer of metal onto the wax original to have something to stamp more records.
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Back to the Future!
My dad cut a record in one of those recording booths in Coney Island back in the day - for she who was to be my mom…
"Hello Ann Marie,
“Voice-O-Graph” machines resembled phone booths and there were at least two dozen of them located in arcades all over Coney Island in the 1940s. The machines were manufactured by International Mutoscope."
Nice pic there…
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I have spent (wasted) most of my life as a “record guy”-- collecting, buying, selling, trading.
I looked at this online a few days ago and briefly considered it (I have some mad money stashed away for a specific guitar I’m hoping will appear on ebay), but until I know the cost and availability of the blank discs there’s no way I could pull the trigger. The machine is useless without the discs, and they represent a hidden cost not mentioned in their promo.
Also-- Vestax offered a similar machine a bit more than a decade ago:
I believe the original price was around $20k, and not many sold.
I know someone who makes limited edition ‘lathe cut’ collectible records, it’s a thing in some circles, but lathe cut records don’t last-- every time you play them you grind off the analog “data” reducing sound quality (arguably true of any record, but with lathe cut records it’s wayyyy more pronounced.) Making a cassette or cdr of your home-produced album is smarter all-around, even if it’s not ‘cool’ enough.
ALSO: multiple times in my flea market/yard sale travels I have come across vintage home-vinyl recorders for cheap, they were available to the public in the mid-20th century. The only value those have in my opinion is if you wanted to make a very legit 1920’s-sounding blues or string-band recording: record it live onto the cutter then transfer the sound to a more reliable medium to be mastered for a pressed LP or cd.
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A recording booth was a major part of the plot of Brighton Rock (published in 1938).
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There’s a lot more to it, as @carbonman says you’ll need a chemical bath to coat the acetate, which is then used to make the stamper (“mothers” and “fathers” in the parlance). You will also need a huge boiler to stamp vinyl-- records are made by placing a small ‘puck’ or ‘donut’ of vinyl onto the stampers, then using heat to melt them down. This video shows how it’s done manually, though most plants have larger automated machines (this also illustrates how unique color vinyl discs are done.)
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Such vending machines could still be found in the sixties. We made a recording at one. I want to say at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, but the machine may have been elsewhere.
I always liked the Mould-A-Rama machines at the Fair, I got a bunch of plastic dinosaurs from them.
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Finally! Home made vinyl records in Polaroid(!) quality. This has to be great!
id love to have a modern record cutter to play with if its not too expensive and supplies are readily available. i have a wilcox-gay recordette sr home record cutter and made this with it. But those machines are very lo fi and you have to improvise quite a bit to find materials to record onto. most unused discs that were made from it are dry and brittle now and dont work at all. plastic picnic plates and CDs seem to work best but theres lots of surface noise issues: https://youtu.be/Gtw5BJeRkiU
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Surface noise issues would maybe be a plus if you were trying to emulate an old 78 sonically.
(watches video) Ha! The improvised spindle adapter from a cd tray is ingenious.
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They seem to be proprietary, so I’m afraid that the lathe might eventually become useless if Phonocut shuts down. I still want one though…
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So, Flo and Florian? Is Flo short for Florian? So many questions…
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I figured we could just send out for that part.
I call complete BS on their “acclaimed singer Alex Lilly” so-called “digital” sample which they use for a comparison between analog and digital sound.
Firstly you knuckleheads, anything heard on your computer via YouTube or any streaming service is by its very nature DIGITALLY delivered. So that’s kind of pointless.
Secondly, the so-called “digital” sample is utter rubbish, worse than a 64kbps mp3 file. If the digital file had been a WAV, FLAC, high bit rate Ogg Vorbis or even a 320kbps mp3 file nobody would say the fidelity was lacking.
My daily turntable is a Linn Sondek LP12 with a Denon DL-110 cartridge and I still love my cd’s, especially the ones produced by people who mastered for them specifically. My Emotiva DAC is a wonderful audio bargain. Unless you’re purposely listening for surface crackle and pop, you’d never know the difference between vinyl and digital. That said, I totally want this gadget, I’d love to press my own vinyl, just not for the reasons they’re pushing.
Lastly - the plural of vinyl is … VINYL. Get off my lawn dammit.
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“connecting it to a music source like your computer or your phone’s headphone jack…”
The whole point of vinyl is to record analog sound. But if your source is your computer or your phone’s headphone jack, this will be digital to analog (the sound was either originally digital or has gone through your device’s sound card and been digitized), losing sound quality in the process. Why would you even want to do this? It will make anyone who understands vinyl laugh at you.
To do this properly you need to plug analog microphones directly into this recorder - assuming it can handle the analog signal. If it’s expecting digital input, it’s just a piece of crap.
What an ignorant article.
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Dunno, is this so vinyl DJs can transcribe their iTunes tracks to records they can spin live?
That’s really niche, but yes, possibly. Too bad the article is just a puff piece based on the company’s own PR.
