Home made model C Edison stylus

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saxymojo
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Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by saxymojo »

Hi
Today I was not doing much so I thought I would have a go at making a replacement stylus for my model C reproducer.
First I broke an old jar to get some glass, then with a gas torch I heated two pointy pieces together and when it was hot enough I stretched it out, this made a glass rod about .7 mm thick.
I then snapped it off and heated the end to make a ball 1 mm wide. I then mounted it to an old stylus bar with shellac and heat, the shellac will travel up the rod to stick the stylus on. Then you just snap off the excess. I tested it on an old cylinder with a bite out of it and it plays as well as my reproducers with the brand new purchased stylus. ;D
Next I want to work on making a cutting stylus for my automatic recorder.
Regards Marcel

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MordEth
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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by MordEth »

While I don’t see me attempting to replicate this process, I am curious: did you take pictures of the process? I think it would be interesting to see how you did it.

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saxymojo
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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by saxymojo »

Hi
No I didn't take pictures, if I do it again some time I will. I wouldn't recommend using this type of stylus on your good cylinders I don't think it would be the best for them, I was just wasting time on a wet Sunday afternoon.
Regards Marcel

JohnM
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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by JohnM »

Marcel,
LOL! That's how we used to do it in the old days (late-1960's-1970's for me, anyway), before replacement sapphires were available. I don't know about the relative durability of silica compounds vs. sapphire, but certainly glass has to be the more brittle of the two. Sometimes the glass would ball up too big and and not fit the groove and the stylus would have to be remade, but it was easy enough to re-do. I recall slowly heating the chunk of glass in above the flame so it would not shatter and the satisfying taffy-like pull when it became soft enough to draw out. I abandoned this practice as soon as I learned that real replacement sapphires were available. Thanks for bringing back memories! John M
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WDC
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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by WDC »

I still have a reproduction Model C reproducer around that is equipped with one of those glass styli. Yes, I did hear from many sides that glass would wear out much sooner than any sapphire but by know I haven't had any problems with this one.
At least it is a cheap way to make your electric pickup needle for 2-minute cylinders:

http://www.christerhamp.se/phono/chamouxstyl.html

Another thing that does work perfectly is the metal tip of an empty (I mean it!) ballpoint pen. Depending on the pen type and your skills you can either cut leave the metal ball in its socket or extract it and glue on the place where the sapphire is supposed to touch the record. Of course, the ball tip has to be clean and should be of an equal size to a bullet sapphire tip. Both types do work absolutely great on acoustic reproducers too, even I don't use this regularly. I did some wide-range tests with different wax cylinders to see any increased wear. In fact, the wear is lower than with an ordinary door knob sapphire, thanks to the bullet shape.

obmcclintock
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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by obmcclintock »

Norman, I used a ball point pen ball as a 2 minute stylus as you spoke of in your post. I just left the ball in the original ball point mounting, removed the ink with alcohol, and mounted it on my own homemade PVC floating Columbia Q reproducer. The interesting phenomena about this arrangement is that the ball rotates in its mounting yet not nearly as fast however as it cannot keep up with the travel of the cylinder record but ensures that no one side of the ball will wear more than the rest. It has incredible sound as you say and will probably last as long or longer than a glass or even a sapphire stylus. Thanks for that tip, it was great !!!! Dave

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Re: Home made model C Edison stylus

Post by Syncopated »

:D Thank you! I recently acquired a C reproducer with the remnants of some sort of experiment on the stylus which I knocked off. I tried the ball point pen trick, keeping a pit of the pen tip. It sounds great and looks good, if you don't look to close. The process made me wish I had better eyes and smaller fingers but a satisfying evening nonetheless.

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