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Author Topic: 'new' DMM facility?  (Read 9593 times)

EP

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'new' DMM facility?
« on: March 28, 2007, 05:47:21 PM »

There was mention on a techno producers list that a 'new' DMM cutting facility is open in France, but no details. I'm just curious, as I hadn't heard of anything.

Anybody know the scoop?

(obviously if a new facility opened that means an existing one shut down as I doubt there were any vms-82's sitting in storage Smile

Cheers,

Erik
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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2007, 07:05:40 PM »

Interesting.  
fwiw - The only bidder really in the going against the Scientologists for the Europadisk DMM lathes at the auction was in fact a Frenchman - so maybe the same person was able to locate one in Europe.

DMM lathes are kind of like the Rings of Tolkien - afaik there were only 12 made and they have been scattered to the far reaches of the earth as if they were ever in the same room together the Mastering Engineer who resided at this location would transform into the Dark Lord of Metal Mastering!!

In North America I believe:
* K-disc had one - this one was bought up by the Scientologists back in either the early or mid 90's and resides in their California based mastering studio
* Europadisk had two (one wasn't complete though) - these were sold to the Scientologists at the auction in September 2005 and also reside now in California
* Masterdisk had one that was converted to lacquer cutting sometime in either the late 90's or early this decade.
* I believe Sterling had one that was converted also.

In Europe afaik DMM lathes are still in use at:
* GZ in Czech Republic - http://www.gzvinyl.com
* Abbey Road in London - http://www.abbeyroad.com/
* The Exchange in London - http://www.exchangemastering.co.uk/
* Optimal in Germany - http://www.optimal-online.de

I believe the folks at Vinylium also had a DMM lathe that was not in working condition in storeage - http://www.vinylium.ch

So seems there are one or two "missing" based on that list.  Anyone care to fill in the blanks?

Best regards,
Steve Berson


Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2007, 07:09:25 PM »

TotalSonic wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:05

So seems there are one or two "missing" based on that list.  Anyone care to fill in the blanks?



Mum is the word.
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Paul Gold
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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2007, 07:24:10 PM »

Kind of slightly OT of the thread - but might as well mention that a Bob Weston's new mastering studio just opened in Chicago also has a VMS-70 lathe - http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com

I'm not sure where the now defunct Master Cutting Room's lathe went - is it here?: http://www.poorsparky.com/

So - there seems to still be some vinyl cutting rooms actually still opening in the USA.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2007, 07:36:10 PM »

TotalSonic wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:24

I'm not sure where the now defunct Master Cutting Room's lathe went


It was broken up. The lathe cabinet went to Korea to be used as a turntable. The rack is being rebuilt and the cutterhead is sitting on a shelf.
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Paul Gold
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Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2007, 07:42:18 PM »

BTW it looks like the incomplete spare lathe from Europadisk is well on it's way to being resurected. It didn't go to the scientologists. It's in Hamburg, Germany.
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Paul Gold
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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2007, 07:48:58 PM »

Gold wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:42

BTW it looks like the incomplete spare lathe from Europadisk is well on it's way to being resurected.


Is it being converted to lacquer cutting?  Or is this the one going to the "new" facility?

Best regards,
Steve Berson  

TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2007, 07:51:50 PM »

Gold wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:36

TotalSonic wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:24

I'm not sure where the now defunct Master Cutting Room's lathe went


It was broken up.


Sacriledge!  Always is a drag to hear these things for some reason, even though I kind of expect it.

Quote:


The lathe cabinet went to Korea to be used as a turntable.


Kind of the equivalent of putting a 57 Strat behind glass instead of having some gifted musician make beautiful sounds with it.

Quote:


The rack is being rebuilt and the cutterhead is sitting on a shelf.



Al is working on the rack?

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2007, 07:54:33 PM »

I edited the above post because I didn't realize you thought it went with the other one. There was no cutting rack with the spare and only one good cutterhead that was part of the complete package.  The other cutterhead has been converted to a lacquer cutterhead. So I don't know what they plan on doing for a cutting rack and cutterhead. I know they are currently using a grampian. It would be pretty funny to have a grampian on a VMS-82.
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Paul Gold
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Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2007, 08:00:23 PM »

TotalSonic wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:51


Al is working on the rack?



There are a bunch of them we are working on. Some of them came from Sony via EP.
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Paul Gold
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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #10 on: March 28, 2007, 08:05:04 PM »

Gold wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:54

I edited the above post because I didn't realize you thought it went with the other one. There was no cutting rack with the spare and only one good cutterhead that was part of the complete package.  The other cutterhead has been converted to a lacquer cutterhead. So I don't know what they plan on doing for a cutting rack and cutterhead. I know they are currently using a grampian. It would be pretty funny to have a grampian on a VMS-82.


Yeah - thanks for the correction - obviously my memory can get fuzzy after a only a  couple of years!

Anyway - putting a Grampian head on a VMS-82 is kind of like putting a Moped motor in the body of a Bentley!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

EP

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #11 on: March 28, 2007, 08:55:00 PM »

Gold wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:36


The lathe cabinet went to Korea to be used as a turntable.

I was SO happy to sell my complete system to an actual user....there was a moment when I too considered the offer to break mine down for those nutty audiophile types. Glad I waited.

fwiw the lathe at Sony now has was reported to be one of the vms82's 'down-converted' to an '80....

Anyway if there is a new French DMM facility they are not making themselves very easy to find.

Erik
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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #12 on: March 28, 2007, 10:24:10 PM »

EP wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 20:55


fwiw the lathe at Sony now has was reported to be one of the vms82's 'down-converted' to an '80....



I think this might be the one that used to be at Sterling. I'm not sure about this though.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #13 on: March 28, 2007, 11:09:37 PM »

As I understand it the VMS80 at Sony was commisioned as such. It was the lathe Bob Ludwig got for Gateway. Then it went to Sony. Unless the story came from Brad Johnson and he did the conversion. Then I believe it.

There was a DMM at Hit Factory which has seemingly dissapeared off the face of the earth. It wasn't used for years before it closed. I have come up empty in my detective work.
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Paul Gold
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Streaky

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2007, 06:20:23 AM »

We've got one of the lathes. Converted sometime in the 1990s from DMM to lacquer. It''s the lathe-shaped thing in the background in this picture! So how many have we tracked down now?
index.php/fa/4664/0/

Kev - Pure

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #15 on: March 29, 2007, 11:22:14 AM »

Hi,

long time lurker, 1st time poster. You might be interested to know that Alchemy Soho in London are using a DMM lathe converted to lacquer cutting by Sean Davies, if my memory serves me correctly this lathe came from Tape One.

As for the rumours of a DMM lathe in France, one of the guys here was speaking to a sales rep @ MPO (a large French 12" manufacturing plant), and they said they are setting up to do 7" again and will be doing their own mastering.

However as nice as the reps are, they wouldn't know mastering from processing. I am planning on speaking to them later to clarify the situation and will update you.

Cheers,

Kev
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EP

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #16 on: March 29, 2007, 11:30:19 AM »

MPO was my first guess*, but they don't mention anything about it online.

[*considering the source of the comment was a techno list and MPO does a lot of pressing for those labels]

Erik
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Streaky

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #17 on: March 29, 2007, 11:35:31 AM »

I've just got some more info off Kevin:

Our VMS82 was originally bought by Ronnie from Heathmans who went out to Russia with Sean Davis and bought 3 of them.

Kevin bought one off Ronnie in 1997 and had it converted from DMM to lacquer in 1998 by Sean. Apparently it was a nightmare because the suspension unit for the head had to be completely rebuilt to cope with lacquer cutting. So a guy from the Ministry of Defence, of all places, borrowed one off Sean and reverse engineered it, and built us a new one...fun times!

I'd imagine at least one of Heathmans' and possibly Alchemy's lathe  were among those 3 from Russia.

Also regarding the earlier mention of Vinylium, we had our spare cutter head repaired by Flo there and it was a great job, and pretty decent pricing as well considering the rarity of the parts. I'd recommend him any day!

Cheers

TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #18 on: March 29, 2007, 12:02:33 PM »

Interesting stuff folks.  It's kind of like train spotting but for some reason I'm fascinated by all this.

Man, I really miss getting to work on a lathe - and a DMM one at that.  Wish it made economic sense to try and bring back publically available DMM cutting to the USA - but unfortunately it doesn't as far as I can suss it.  

Just to be more complete in our listings here -
the only places I know of making DMM blanks still are:
Optimal - http://www.optimal-online.de
Portal Space Records - http://www.portalspacerecords.com
& I'm not sure but I think GZ also makes their own blanks too.

Anyone know of anyone else.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Kev - Pure

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #19 on: March 29, 2007, 12:11:51 PM »

Eventually managed to track someone down @ MPO "in the know" who confirmed that they do not have any cutting facilities and he is not aware of any plans to introduce it.

Cheers,

Kev
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Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #20 on: March 29, 2007, 12:58:51 PM »

Streaky wrote on Thu, 29 March 2007 11:35

So a guy from the Ministry of Defence, of all places, borrowed one off Sean and reverse engineered it, and built us a new one...fun times!



That's impressive. Most of the conversions just used a spare susspention from a 66/70/80.

The DMM dynamicaly controls the cutting angle of the stylus and the vacuum pressure of the chip removal. That stuff needs to be removed for lacquer cutting. A stylus heater circuit needs to be addded. I think that's about it for the lathe. The SAL rack has the same boards but many componants need to be added/removed/changed. I haven't been involved with a conversion so I may have left parts out.
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Paul Gold
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ak

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #21 on: March 29, 2007, 02:58:50 PM »

Hi,

afaik there are much more DMM´s made then 12.

here are two other ones in Germany:

http://www.pauleracoustics.de/

Vinylum sold their lathe to one guy in
Munich i heard.

greetings

Andreas

Schnittstelle
Mastering & Vinylschnitt
Frankfurt - Germany





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ak

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #22 on: March 29, 2007, 03:01:10 PM »


anway to find out the real amout of DDM lathe sold by Neumann

i will ask (or write because he is deaf)

Mr. Fuchs from Ex-Neumann (the guy who repaired the cutterheads
for years)

greetings

andreas

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TotalSonic

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #23 on: March 29, 2007, 03:12:02 PM »

Andreas -
Thanks much for the link and information.  I knew I was missing a few - but while I agree that more than 12 were made I'm pretty sure there were fewer than 20 made though.   I'm looking forward to hearing what you're contact says about this.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

jason goz

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #24 on: March 30, 2007, 02:04:26 AM »

Quote:

So seems there are one or two "missing" based on that list.  Anyone care to fill in the blanks?




I know where there are two fully working machines(not being used)

rkhush

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #25 on: April 17, 2007, 10:54:56 AM »

Hi Jason,

Do you know where these two working machines are?

Rgds
Raj
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Viitalahde

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #26 on: April 17, 2007, 02:45:40 PM »

TotalSonic wrote on Thu, 29 March 2007 00:51

Gold wrote on Wed, 28 March 2007 19:36

The lathe cabinet went to Korea to be used as a turntable.

Kind of the equivalent of putting a 57 Strat behind glass instead of having some gifted musician make beautiful sounds with it.


Hehe, Asians like this stuff. I've heard Japanese audiophiles buy old UTC & Triad iron for insane $$$$$..
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Jaakko Viitalähde
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Gold

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Re: 'new' DMM facility?
« Reply #27 on: April 17, 2007, 10:02:08 PM »

Viitalahde wrote on Tue, 17 April 2007 14:45


Hehe, Asians like this stuff. I've heard Japanese audiophiles buy old UTC & Triad iron for insane $$$$$..



The WE 111C transformers I got had the original cloth covered solid core jumpers on them. I was told not to throw them away because they increase the value and make them sound heavenly. I threw them away.
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Paul Gold
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