Cutting a Record on a Solo Plastic Food Plate 

That's what I call a "solo" album.

I'm not going to lie, if I had this kind of equipment available to me I would waste so many hours just doing this. xD

So, I see you cut your first solo album. Sorry, that was bad.

This is the next way to get around youtube's anti-music-piracy filters.

The correct technical name for the "string of stuff" is swarf. In the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 60s, kids would make bootleg copies of Western music by recording it with a machine similar to this onto discarded x-ray films.

I think I've solved your record / playback differential mystery. The cutting arm is applying drag to the turntable, so it's actually recording at a slightly slower RPM. On playing back with the playback tone arm, the drag is eliminated, for the most part, and therefore, the playback RPM will be slightly faster. This results in the chipmunk effect, and is why you will need to upgrade from belt drive, to direct shaft drive. Otherwise, you will need to come up with a way to record at a slightly faster RPM, to compensate for the drag induced by the cutting / recording arm. Hope this helps.

my dad played violin in a band. One of his buddys bought one of these units and was able to " cut" a record of that band. After WW2 there wasnt much else to do but work hard and party harder,expecially for those that survived the great war. My dad really enjoyed making music in his hay days but after having us kids,dropped the band and became a respected hardware man in our town. He went to church every Sunday to pay respects to the God that saw him through a terrible war,worked hard as a respected sales clerk and struggled with alchohol until my mom finally threatened him,and he stopped drinking. Loved that man up till the day he died,and still do.

this is so cool I cant believe you could do this with a plastic plate and it doesn't sound half bad!

Brilliant, lol, reminds me of when I was a kid in the early '70's and you could get records as prizes in cereal...the "record" was part of the box, you cut it out, set it on the turntable with a coin on it to hold it down and had a record to listen to, lol.

"later the lamb was used to make uh..lambchops. ._."

I cut a record when I was just 17 (in 1987). I was at Radio 4BC in Brisbane (playing!), and had NO IDEA what the machine really did! ... I really thought records were only made in big factories... Anyway, I put (what was obvious to me) a 'blank' on the turntable, and got a factory produced record from the library. The song was OLD = "Love is Like a Butterfly" by Dolly Parton... Anyway, as Dolly started to spin, the blank started to spin, and WA LA!! - Four minutes later, I had a perfect copy of Dolly's record! An experience I will never forget!

I like how the tonality and pacing of your voice totally changed. Sounds just like the old recordings! I guess people really didn't talk like that back then, it was a byproduct of the technology!

So that is why people sounded like that in the olden days!

The speed difference is probably due to the high tracking weight of the cutter head slowing down the motor.

HAHAHA the other plate you recorded off the radio sounds hilarious! The way everyone's voice is distorted/sped up, they all sound like Warner Bros cartoon characters, as though Mel Blanc were performing all of the voices on those "serious" commercials! Brilliant!!!

I've never seen a home record recorder before, that's pretty cool. If it has multiple speeds, you'll get the best quality from the highest speed. Also you might try lubing it with a parrafin base lamp oil when you cut your groove. Spin your plate on the turntable and apply with a mink brush from a ladys makeup compact. Found a couple at Goodwill for 25 cents each, great for cleaning glass lenses.

That really is pretty cool. Looking at the cut disc gives me the same vibe as a printed photo. Like you've permanently preserved that moment in time.

Her fleas? Her fleas were white as snow? Those are lice, you should get that taken care of, Mary.

It sounds so 1890's!

Mary had a little bike, She rode it on the grass, Every time the wheel went around, A spoke went up her nose?

the motor isn't strong enough to keep the turntable at the right speed at recording. so it sounds higher pitched when you play it back.

If you have vlc, copy the URL for this video into the "Open Network Stream" menu option. Uncheck "Enable Time-Stretching Audio" in settings and slow the video to 80%. I think the [ key is the default slow down key. This corrects the speed problem on the record, and you can hear what the solo plate would sound like if the cutter didn't operate at odd speeds.

It's also somehow appropriate you're talking about Mary's lamb's fleas, and then about how the lamb was turned into lamb chops, while recording onto this plastic plate!

Its so amazing to me how sound can be etched into something. Its like witchcraft or something lol

Thanks for sharing. This was fun to watch. And it looks like you did a good job on restoring a nice example of early consuber grade recording eqpt. For what they may be worth, as I may be sharing ideas you have already covered, I have the following observations/suggestions.... The slowing down during record so as to result in a higher pitch sound on reproduce is accounted for by the increased drag on the turntable by the cutting head. The reproduce head has nowhere near as much drag, thus less load on a drive system that might have some slippage under load, thus slowing the RPMs. If there is any tension on the swarf as you collect it there might be some tearing of it as it cuts out of the recording surface. This can cause excessive noise. As you may know already, there are record/reproduce curves used in both mechanical and magnetic recording practices. For cutting records the signal is radically processed before it reaches the cutting head. The lows are cut considerably, while the higher frequencies are greatly boosted, following a specific standardized frequency curve. This enables the higher frequencies to be of considerably higher magnitude than the inherent surface noise of the recording medium. On reproducing the cut recording, the program is picked up, and goes from the reproducer head to a filter network that does PRECISELY the opposite of what was done to the signal before the cutting head--cutting high frequencies by the same amount they were boosted, and boosting lower frequencies by the same amount they were cut. This pushes the surface noise level far below what is readily audible under the program. I would study exactly what the designer of that record/reproduce device had done to address this need, and perhaps make the necessary modifications. At best, being of consumer grade at a time when the standard was not what it is today, the audio bandwidth is likely very limited, with the high end being perhaps as low as 8KHz, or even lower. So you may find that you have reached a limit on what quality you will yield from the device if you intend to leave it as originally built.

I am an audio engineer, havent worked with vinyl, but its more than likely noisy because (its hard to explain) but in a digital daw you will have alot of highs and lows in your waveform, and part of our job as engineers is to make sure everything is clean. to get rid of all of the highs peaks on a track we use compressors and levelers. Back in the day when Mastering was a very different job than it is now, one of the main focus's was to make sure that the tracks in the vinyl wernt too rough because if it is too rough the needle can actually bounce all the way out if it is. so try using a leveler or a compressor or both, and see if that cleans it up for you.. very interesting to see someone cutting a plate lol

You inspired me... but I didn't have a record cutter. So.. I took an old vinyl record and ate food off of it! Didn't taste as good as a SOLO plate, but close! :)

I think it is great that there are those who can still achieve the old technologies and do it well. Bravo!

Bro all I have to say is that not only am I proud of you for your accomplishment but its so awesome to see a fellow Gangsta of Audio. Keep it up and thank you.

"Groovy"... I'll be right back. my cringe glands are swollen

super cool! I am an old time radio aficionado. Now I know why the 1932 recording of Jack Benny's very first broadcast sounds like it did. So much old time radio drama was lost forever. I often wish I would have been alive back then to record it. But then I guess I'd be gone by now and thus unable to listen to them. I recall hearing Elliott Lewis' take of driving to deliver cylinders of old drama shows to the AFRN (armed forces radio network?) and they had cylinders falling and sliding around the back of the truck only to be lost forever. Then true corporate blaspheme was when corporations who were sponsors of said shows decided that the cost of storing these old broadcasts was top cost prohibitive so they chucked years and years of shows like Vic and Sade into dumpsters. Employees would be dumpster diving trying to save these old time radio dramas from being lost forever. So sad. I would have lost my job and pulled my car up to the dumpster and loaded every last one up. =`(

This is awesome. I love people who are willing to experiment, hack, and try new things.

You sound like all those old time newscasters. My grandparents used to have a record cutter. We still have the records.

I think for his next album, to showcase his talent, he should do Dixie.

Finally found the guy who does the voice of The Riddler in the Arkham games!

That was great. I love old technology like this. It's funny how much effort was needed to record or copy something. Now a days people just drag, drop and copy. It's a shame that a lot of people will never experience making a recording or a copy the long way. You would appreciate that recording a lot more when I took hours to make it. Anyway, great video. I've never seen anyone cut a plate before.

The reason to is slow on recording is because the recorder pick up drags the disc and turntable like mad and motor needs to be soo strong to deal with it. On the other side, the play arm, doesn't drag at all so the motor runs effortlessly and faster.

Can you play it on an ordinary record player?

A simple explanation for the "sped-upness" of the recording is the change in the motor. honestly the it was a great idea but the device is designed to record at it's stock set rpm so you may want to experiment a bit to find the best record speed. sometimes you have to sacrifice quality for quantity ;)

I REALLY LIKE THIS!! The nearest I came to was a home wire-recording in a radio, probably Philco or a Sears porduct.

I worked on old players in the 60's rebuilt them as a kid. I remember going to the drug store and there was this bespectacled druggist that would reach over and tap his finger on the RCA chart steering me to the correct tube for my radio,. they had a tube tester too. I turned my family radio unto a PA and played my guitar through it, real easy to do just find the right two wires on the volume control and that's it, you are having fun, so keep it up:)

Hi. That was fun. I used to have that same recorder when I was in high school. It was manufactured by General Industries in Elyria, Ohio. The tray with the turntable and record and playback arms were used in several units under different name. FYI The little strand of plastic or acetate is called "SWARF". I don't know why, but it is. Gary Schneider Alameda, California

I love that Old things are making a comeback and that it's just as cool as when is came out for the first time. Love'in it!

Hi! This was an interesting video! You had mentioned about a noise issue even with the proper acetate blanks. This noise was a common issue with the older cutters back in the day. It wasn't until they started using the hot stylus that the noise level became greatly reduced. The hot stylus system is quite simple in design. The cutter head has a coil of wire wrapping around the cutting stylus (needle) the wire is energized with a low DC voltage to heat up the needle which in turn softens the acetate composition to reduce cutting friction. The cutter head on your unit is very small and doesn't have the space to implement a hot stylus system. The hot stylus setup is designed for an overhead cutter which uses a feed screw where the cutter head rides on the feed screw across the disc. Presto and Grampian were the pioneers of the hot stylus design, and was used for many, many years for cutting acetate masters and quick dubs after a recording session. Hope I was able to give you some insight about your noise issue. Cutting to a plastic plate will always be noisy due to the excessive friction. The hot stylus is designed for use with the regular acetate recording blanks. Frank Ferraro--Audio Craft Electronics.

It's hilarious to hear that modern gold bond advertisement. In this context it really sounds like one of the vintage gold bond ads from the late 1950s.

That is one great toy. Merry Christmas from Romania.

How cool. Maybe it was the hum of motors and fans between the recording and my computer, but it sounds like recordings of old tv programs. Legit! Thanks!

as you might have guessed,that "wind" sound you head in the backround is the sound of the needle cuting the hard plastic.

Hiss surface noise can be due to a worn cutting needle or wrong angle. The cutting needle needs to make a 15 degree angle. Cutting needles do wear out, even faster when not cutting with heat. New sapphire cutting styli are made long enough to be resharpened. The angle changes depending on the length left of the stylus. The aluminum acetate disks and the chip that comes out of them are quite flammable. Using a chip vacuum there is concern for the flammable chip. The drive mechanism needs extra torque for the drag of the cutting stylus, so a playback mechanism may be inadequate. With modern digital recording I don't even record tapes anymore. Interesting experiment and video, but something you may not want to continue.

Glenn Johnson Fascinating!Had me glued the whole time.Really enjoyed watching this.

Very nice! Once you sorted out the matter with achieving the proper record speed, I feel almost half tempted to inquire if you would be able to cut an acetate (or in this case, a Solo ace-plate) of some of my songs sometime. LOL

The "stuff" that is created by cutting into the record surface is called with "chip" or "swarf". You might also want to get a small brush and keep pushing the chip toward the center of the disc (an old-fashioned technique.)

David: the weight of the record cutting arm is indeed damped by a spring. The spring is actually adjustable. After continuous tries, I was able to get better sound quality at 16rpm recording speed by adjusting that spring setting. I should make a new video showing the results soon!

I inherited a record player and cutter from my grandfather, it is also an AM tuner, and yes, you can feed the AM output back in and record to a record. It looks like an old timey TV only with a speaker in place of a screen :)

It is really neat. I think the reason it sounds faster during playback is because the cutting arm is extremely heavy and you have the rim drive which is fighting against the cutting pressure of the tone arm. I don't know if there would be a way to get a much stronger motor in there, but I believe that's why that is happening as well. This was extremely cool, though. Thank you for sharing.

Recording at 16 rpm, will give a 'muffled' sound, unless you add treble boost, and are using a 'microgroove' cutter. This is due to the wavelength of the higher frequencies being extremely short. If you are using what was known as the 'standard groove' cutter stylus, then you need to run the disc at '78 rpm' where the modulation wavelengths are much longer and the wavelength of the higher frequencies won't be 'absorbed' in the groove width.

What Edison said into the phonograph was not "her fleas" were as white as snow, but "its fleece was white as snow". Amusing mix-up however :)

It never occurred to me that there would be a string of trash coming out of the cut ... doh ...

You replaced the motor drive mechanism with one that did not have sufficient torque to maintain speed during the cutting process, The new one was only designed to handle the drag of a light playback stylus, this is the source of your speed problems. As for the noise, this was a problem for professionals using lacquer as a recording medium, though lacquer, being softer than the thermoplastic you are currently using, started out quieter. They found that heating the cutting stylus with a small electric element made the grooves cut quieter. Don't know how you'd begin to apply that to your setup. Great fun, though! Thanks for posting these videos!

Man, how about that! Recordings so clean you can eat off of them!

Recording with this process at such a slow speed will always create poor results. This sounds worse than an old 16 RPM radio transcription. Why do you think old commercial records played at 78?

the noise is partly from the slow rpm and the rest is from recording directly onto record. If you have prerecorded music and it still comes out noisy it's still probably from the slow rpm.

I'm surprised that the man who made this video does not mention that the PLAYBACK speed is slightly faster. I figured out that the CUTTER must slow down the speed a little bit...so playback appears to be too fast. It would be good if you could adjust playback/recording speed accordingly.

The malleability of the plastic probably prevents the higher frequencies from being written on the plastic, causing the muffling. Essentially a physical high-pass filter.

That playback sounded creepy as hell!

I don't what model I had but I did have an NLS Talking Book machine from the '80's. It had a lever on top that changed speeds between 8- 16- and 33 and a 3rd RPM.

"Mary had a little lamb, roasted nice and slow, every time she took a bite, the juices they did flow" "Clarice had a little lambs liver, with fava beans and a nice Chianti" from the move "Silence Of Mary's Lamb". Hannibal Lecter kills Mary's lamb and serves it up to Clarice with fava beans and Chianti.

Pulling on the plastic cuttings might be causing the noise, as the plastic being cut is in contact with the cutting needle. Amazing piece of vintage equipment though.

I have read that in the Soviet Union people were using discarded X-ray images for cutting come Elvis or jazz records back in the day when even those were forbidden and/or hard to get.

"And you'll be rich and famous"! That one was funny! That was great, recording onto a plate. Funny to hear a website mentioned from the radio, recorded on technology so long before the 'net.

The speed issue could possibly be solved by putting a speed control pot on the motor power wires for the cutter and experimenting with different speeds on the cutter until .you find the correct speed.

Wow, really cool video. I didn't even know they made portable record recorders like that one. The sound is just like it's out of the 30's or 40's. Neat stuff to play with, and I love that you recorded onto plastic plates, good idea.

If you want to go for a higher quality recording experiment then you should order some blanks. You can get virgin pvc blanks for approx. $0.85 to $3.50 each depending on the quantity you purchase. PVC blanks will work with either diamond or a tungsten stylus and probably other types that may be available.

this was awesome! lol@people who think you were serious about the fleas and didn't realise it was a joke

It sounds like pulling on the plastic which is being cut off, affects the sound being recorded. Maybe pull the other way or don't pull and the recording could sound better ?

The gear ratio between the new motor and the old turntable is probably what's causing the speed difference. The rubber tire on the drive wheel could be made larger or something could be layered onto the inside of the turntable where the wheel meets it.

The difference of the audio from the mickrophone and the radio, is that on the radio broadcast's they are using audio processing, limiting and eq-ing, to get the louder sound. The audio of your mick isn't processed and therfore it sounds lower and bad.

That honestly sounded like radio recordings from the 1940s.

Thanks for your comments tonight CassetteMaster!

Watson, come here. I need you.

this is so awesome....even though I was born at the beginning of the CD era (1983), I have always preferred vinyl records...this is awesome *subscribes*

Alan's Dad: Amazing that idea design technology for this!

i just wanna say a story , a lot of ancient pots are able to reproduce sounds of the moment they were beeing made , in some cases like in a greek pot u can hear 2 people talkin back from the 400 bc ...

I'm sure someone's already posted, but your pitch issue is from drag, and a weak motor. The motor you're using is from a player, and is probably a bit weaker than the lathe's motor was. When you're cutting the record, the cutting needle actually bites down into the material, causing greater drag than what would be introduced by a simple payback needle gliding along the grooves. Plus the motor is also having to drive the cutting arm too, whereas the playback arm just follows the groove. This puts a greater load on the motor, slowing it down. When you play it back, there is less load, so the motor runs faster, increasing the pitch. You can probably use sped control to adjust it out, with some trial and error, and practice.

The cool part about this is if say there's a song you really like or songs you really like you could record them onto a record it is unfortunate it won't be as high of quality as it would be if it were recorded in a studio but this set up could convert MP3/Similar Codec to LP/Vinyl/Record it would maintain the compressed Quality of the Original Codec but still would be cool to maybe be the only one with a song that wouldn't normally be an LP.

Well that was freaking awesome man!

people would cut records into x-rays too. plates are softer than vinyl so you may be getting a muffled sound from that.

mary had a little lamb how ironic edisons first recording on a cylinder record lol

Haha this is pretty ingenious! Man if only I had about £20,000+ just sitting around so I can buy a proper record cutting lathe, and another load of money so I can rent a storage unit to store the damn thing and make it my own little cutting station. Cutting my own "plates" (not literally plates, like in this vid!) would be like a dream to me, and not having to pay mad prices to get a couple dubs cut by those "public cutting houses".

Cool! And yes!, that is a groovy cabnet!

Super Duper!!! Also..."the lamb was used to make lamb chops???!!!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH :-)

SOOOOO glad we have CDs!

This is for Richard James. I tried to answer your message,But it evidently didn't go through. I did have a blank record and sleeve with my Meissner. I know it's somewhere. Someone didn't put it back in the case. It's missing the mic.Pretty cool little machine. Message me under my name. Donna Ruhl on F.B.

I guess the reason why the result sounds rather noisy is that the recording needle is meant for 78rpm records with wide grooves and the playback tonearm has the LP/stereo cartridge with much smaller stylus. If you can get a 78 cartridge for the new tonearm, I think it might sound better.

I believe the issue your having is voice is played on rpm 11 and your recording on 16 amd playing back on 16. This should both be 11 this will slove your issue.

If you try this again with the solo plate, try putting a solid piece of something underneath it, like when playing a flexi or something to that effect.

I'm a retired mechanic and i would love to have this machine.

Very cool. You took it one step further (or sideways depending on your POV) than I did. The distortion COULD be an issue in the audio feed to the cutter. If there is an issue causing distortion there it'll cut to the "record". I think you would need a scope to check that out.

I think it plays back a bit higher, or lower, depending on the size of the vinyl disc.

The reason records were commonly recorded around 78 RPM because the faster you record, the less you can hear the noise!! Try recording at 45 RPM or so!