quest for an acoustic vynil recorder

[alang]

Sorry, yes of course, these are not acoustic. My bad.
Andreas

[aidan]

Hey thanks everyone for the ongoing help. I really appreciate it.

.....Those devices were never successful, really, and even if developed a bit further would never be able to equal the quality of studio made acoustical recordings. Plus, the blank discs intended for their use are non-existent. Neither could record on vinyl.....

Hi Phototone.
great input. thanks. I'm thinking cylinders are a good idea whatever happens. But, the problem is that I wont be able to share the music with anyone unless they have a cylinder player too,,, which, let's be honest, really limits my audience. Im not exactly going for fame and fortune here, but it would just be nice to share something with the average dude that can actually be heard, even if it would sound really rough.

So, Im still considering the possability of tweaking those acoustical disc recorders (like the Neophone or the Acoustograph I mentioned before), even if they sound really terrible. If its the right kind of terrible, It could be exiting in its own right.

You mentioned that blank recording plates would be non-existent, but I wonder....

Is it possible that I could find a material that I could record on with those acoustical disc recorders, that could also be played back on modern record players?

i.e. find out what the original blank discs were made out of and use something similar, or a modern material a bit closer to the density of vynil or acetate?

renegade experimenters seem to be cutting on many materials like plastic picnic plates with suprisingly clear results.

Its a shot in the dark but I still hanging on to a thread of hope.

I also still wonder about coming at it from the opposite angle; make adaptations to fit a modern dubplate cutter.
- use an old wind-up/pull string record player mechanism to drive the modern turntable.
- modify the modern electronic lathe head to work purely mechanically, without electricity or signal (In my mind, I see a big paper cone atattched to the needle!)

I realise its not that simple, and i have no idea what I'm doing, but with someone who did know what they were doing, i wonder if, in theory, it could be possible to record something?

[frenchmarky]

Recording directly onto vinyl is impossible in my view, due to the elastic properties of the material. Unless you have a very sharp cutting stylus and a relatively rough groove, the result will always be extremely poor.

An absurd question probably and impractical, but how about if the disc was heated before and during the recording? I.e. enough to soften up the vinyl but not enough to melt it?

I remember when I was a teenager in the mid 70's my mom picked up some big old cabinet phonograph cuz it looked antiquey and thought maybe it would work as a record player. I'd guess now it was from the 30s or 40s but remember it had a cutting arm on it and one of those tuning eye tubes. Don't remember if it was a separate arm from the regular tonearm or not. This was when I was a dumb teenager with no ability to fix *anything* so needless to say it never worked. Anybody have a guess as to what type/brand of phono this was? Wish I had it now cuz now I could FIX it! : (

[Steve E.]

You've all pretty much covered the basic facts here in this thread.

That said, you may want to check out www.LatheTrolls.com.

This is a forum I set up to deal specifically with questions about record cutting. And the reason I started it was to get answers to this specific question. It took on a life of its own and it covers a lot of the professional aspects of record cutting, too.