Edison Recorder - Good or Bad Stylus??

[CDBPDX]

Well, I tried to record to an Edison VoiceWriter Master Wax cylinder and had a couple issues. The first cylinder was way too thick, the cutter was cutting into the surface even when it was in the raised position. Fortunately, I have a very heavily used cylinder that was just the right thickness. Next, when I lowered the cutter, there was a high pitched wail emanating from the recorder. A close look at the cylinder showed a series of minute gouge marks and when played back, it was the same high pitched wail. I set the cylinder in front of a heater and tried again, same thing. I reset the cylinder by the heater again until it was hot to the touch then tried again, this time with success, at least until the cylinder cooled off, then it started gouging/wailing again. The playback of the good 10 seconds or so was OK, not great, though.

Conclusion, the MasterWax cylinder is not the right blank for this recorder, either because the wax is too old and brittle or maybe it was just meant to be cut with a different cutting stylus. Gonna have to get something with softer wax to record on, I think.

Cliff

[PeterF]

no, it will work. do you have a shaver? you need to hone it down beyond the old hard wax to find a level soft enough to handle the cutter. also check clearances visually to assure everything is floating freely.

[CDBPDX]

These MasterWax cylinders were salvaged from an old Ediphone and I shaved them down quite a bit, the outer layer of old hard wax came off in tiny divots, took a few shavings to get them to smooth wax. The thickness of the wax is an issue, though. The one cylinder I have that is heavily worn and shaved is thin enough to allow the weight/stylus to float on the cylinder surface. Maybe I need to shave them more to get to softer wax...

[Chuck]

No! Something is DRASTICALLY WRONG!!!!!

Look at my previous posts. I gave you the
specified maximum diameter of the cylinder that
it MUST be shaved down to, in order for it to work
properly. I also outlined how to cut these off
neatly using a darning needle while the blank is
spinning on the shaver mandrel powered by the motor.

Ediphone wax is the correct consistency to be
cut using a good 2 minute Edison recorder, without
heating it.

Something is either very badly wrong with the recorder,
or the outside diameter of the blank.

You MUST use a calipers to accurately be able to
measure the O.D. of the blank.

IT MUST BE at or below 2.196 inch diameter to work.

The geometry of the recorder must also be correct.
If it digs in, oscillates, and squeals, that means
something is wrong with the angle that the cutter
attacks the wax at.

Try different blank diameters in the range of
2.196 down to 2.112 inches.

Quite often a certain recorder will have tendency
to work better at some higher or lower diameter, but
always within that range.

Could possibly be that your recorder cutter is very dull. Either that or possibly the angle of it
is way off.

At the very least, all I can say is that something
is very wrong in order to produce this result.
Usually, if everything is correct, it works just fine.

[Chuck]

Peter,

Steve Medved is the guy to ask about the
diameter of the 4M recorder cutters. I have it
written down somewhere, but since I have never
used any of them that info is not handy at this time.

The 4-minute black wax Edison blanks are quite hard.
They resemble in a way the black wax Amberols.
They are hard and they wear the 4M cutter severely.

That severe wear can be seen in the pictures Teak just
posted of a very dulled up 4M cutter.

I do know for a fact that the 2M cutters always
fall within the diameter range of .040 to .041
inches. Some of the new modern-day cheap imitations
are made of some metric sapphire rod that measures
.039 inch diameter. They cut a very shallow groove
in order to make a record which has a thread
pitch of .010 inch, with a sufficient land between
grooves to not have echo from the adjacent grooves.