Edison Recorders

[flashpanblue]

I have noticed dozens of Edison Recorders on Ebay over the last few months. Hardly any of them have the cutting stylus and bar. Is anyone making replacement parts for these. I would think that there would be a large demand for new cutting stylus's with holding bar!
Pete

[Amberola 1-A]

I don't know if anyone has begun to make these yet, but if someone knows, let us know. I have had to make them for either myself when I found a recorder body cheap or for a customer that wanted one made that had all but the cutting stylus. They were simply shellacked on, so over the years they have often times fallen off.
You can make them yourself. All you need is some copper shim stock, about .011 and some glass rod that you have to draw to about .013 if you can't find the right diameter. If you would like more explicit directions, let me know.

Bill

[Lucius1958]

Of course, you'd get slightly better results with a cupped stylus; but unless you've got a miniature drill press and a tiny diamond point, a flat stylus will do.....

Eric Reiss has instructions for making a recording stylus in his Compleat Talking Machine, if you can get it.

-Bill

[gramophoneshane]

Expert Stylus in UK used to have 2min cutting styli listed on their website, but the website is now gone & I have no idea if they are still manufacturing/selling them. They were listed as the stylus only, so you'd still have to make your own mount anyway.

BTW Lucius- The Compleat Talking Machine is now available to read through google books!
I'm not sure what page the cutter info is on though.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=hVTcbLu ... se&f=false

[Amberola 1-A]

Expert Stylus in UK used to have 2min cutting styli listed on their website, but the website is now gone & I have no idea if they are still manufacturing/selling them. They were listed as the stylus only, so you'd still have to make your own mount anyway.

BTW Lucius- The Compleat Talking Machine is now available to read through google books!
I'm not sure what page the cutter info is on though.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=hVTcbLu ... se&f=false

Unfortunately, the link provided is only a teaser. You would have to buy the book to benefit from all that is included in the 5th edition.
The particular pages that discusses styli construction can be found on pages 62-63 for making a 2M Reproducing stylus and pages 75-79 for Recorders in the fifth edition.

Bill

[Chuck]

I found one of those "Expert" recorder cutters made in England and bought it a few years ago. It is not a cupped point like the real Edison cutters. It has a slanted flat polished cutting surface.

I also carefully followed the instructions in "The Compleat Talking Machine" to make the stylus holder. Those parts were used to rebuild an old defunct Edison home recorder that had only the .002 inch thick mica diaphragm and the paper washers.

Results ok, but not spectacular.

Then I did another two recorder rebuilds using genuine sapphire cupped point Edison cutters and made the stylus holder out of .005 inch thick sheet copper. I copied the Edison copper stylus holder as accurately as possible for one of them, and used the .004 inch thick aluminum from a side of a soda can to make the other.

Both of those recorders work very well indeed!

With a lot of patience, and using the general instructions in the book, you can fold up and form a quite decent stylus holder.

I measured a genuine one, and made a ten-times size drawing of it to use as a guide.

The trick really is now to find a source of the genuine sapphire cupped-point cutters. The sheet copper stylus holders can be made.

It also takes a bit of learning how to use melted flake shellac, beeswax, and stratena to get everything mounted and sealed.

But, right now, the proper cutters are the bottle-neck. There are lots of defunct old home recorders floating around many places just waiting for new holders and cutters. Most have diaphragms and gaskets.