The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

winsleydale wrote:So in a pre-grooved blank, are the grooves recut to shape, or are new grooves cut whilst using the original ones as guides?

Neither. The recording needle simply retraced the existing unmodulated groove without re-cutting it, but imparted a distorted modulation to the existing groove. I did a similar experiment years ago using the lead out groove of a child's plastic record and it does work although the results were not great.

Ah. Okay. I imagine that it would be difficult to really get good sound quality that way.