R/E/P Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6   Go Down

Author Topic: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)  (Read 36025 times)

TotalSonic

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3728
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #60 on: October 16, 2010, 11:27:00 PM »

Gold wrote on Sat, 16 October 2010 18:51

Ahh, it probably is a second gear and worm step down for 45. It has a single synchronous motor that it uses for both pitch and turntable drive. The pitch uses a planetary drive like a Scully. The Lyrec motor on the Neumann is a multitap synchronous motor.

I don't think the speed is very accurate on it. It says it uses a 51:1 step down with a 1500 rpm motor. Unless my math and thinking are wrong (which it quite possibly is) this gives you a speed of 29.41 rpm for 33 1/3 rpm.

Edit: Strange because a 45:1 ratio would give you 33.33. I must be doing something stupid. Please, someone correct my math.


ummmm - actually on the first page of the pdf it says 1800rpm with a 54:1 ratio for the stepdown - which according to my calculator gives you 33-1/3

Anyway - I'd still say all bets are off until I actually get it and can test it for speed, stability and rumble.  My guess is - yes - it's probably going to need work - and yes - there's probably going to be some pain to deal with before the work is done.  

Luckily the stereotypically Hebrew characteristic of always expecting the worst so you end up happy when things are even a little bit better than terrible is a good one to have when taking on a project like this!   Very Happy

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Andrew Hamilton

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 573
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #61 on: October 17, 2010, 12:58:25 AM »

Hearkens back to the 500 Ohm transmission protocol...    

At +/- 2 dB from 30-8,000 cycles, it's yet another reason the hype about SACD was over-rated.     Laughing




Enjoy,
    Andrew








Logged
www.serifsound.com
premastering for CD and DVD-A.  Featuring FTP load in and delivery as well as analog tape transfers.

TotalSonic

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3728
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #62 on: October 17, 2010, 01:24:10 AM »

Andrew Hamilton wrote on Sun, 17 October 2010 00:58

Hearkens back to the 500 Ohm transmission protocol...    

At +/- 2 dB from 30-8,000 cycles, it's yet another reason the hype about SACD was over-rated.     Laughing



You can say that again!   Very Happy
Luckily the cutter head described in that pdf is not the one I plan to use with this lathe.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Gold

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1453
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #63 on: October 17, 2010, 09:43:58 AM »

TotalSonic wrote on Sat, 16 October 2010 23:27


ummmm - actually on the first page of the pdf it says 1800rpm with a 54:1 ratio for the stepdown - which according to my calculator gives you 33-1/3


Damn, I usually did okay in reading comprehension.
Logged
Paul Gold
www.saltmastering.com

On the silk road, looking for uranium.

dietrich

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 315
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #64 on: October 17, 2010, 10:48:20 AM »

1-you have some beefy friends to get it from street up to your place?
2-will you have to build a platform to reduce vibrations?

TotalSonic

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3728
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #65 on: October 17, 2010, 06:26:53 PM »

dietrich wrote on Sun, 17 October 2010 10:48

1-you have some beefy friends to get it from street up to your place?


Figure I'm going to have to call a commercial moving service to get a few non-middle aged backs to haul it up the 2 flights of stairs to my studio as this is a walkup building circa 1900 (no elevator of any kind).  I've gotten an MCI JH110 and the B&W 802's up here - but figure this will need a little more heft and care.

Quote:


2-will you have to build a platform to reduce vibrations?


Yes, I will.  Any advice anyone wants to contribute regarding this is appreciated!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Andrew Hamilton

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 573
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #66 on: October 18, 2010, 11:45:58 AM »

TotalSonic wrote on Sun, 17 October 2010 01:24

Andrew Hamilton wrote on Sun, 17 October 2010 00:58

Hearkens back to the 500 Ohm transmission protocol...    

At +/- 2 dB from 30-8,000 cycles, it's yet another reason the hype about SACD was over-rated.     Laughing



You can say that again!   Very Happy
Luckily the cutter head described in that pdf is not the one I plan to use with this lathe.

Best regards,
Steve Berson



The info I see on the Grampian with Gotham fb amp is 30-15,000 cps.   Much better than 8k by a long shot...   Even if you keep it Grampin.'

I saw the video of the Hamilton Mastering (Argentina) engineer using a similar Fairchild, but it appeared to have a belt drive to advance the head.   A motor sat up on a shelf, and I was not under the impression that this was his homebrew vacuum.

 http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.yout ube.com/watch%3Fv%3DjF0NX9B0rwA

Keep us posted.

What about moving aside the swarf?


Oh, yes... Just a head's up....  According to their lit, it appears that the timing of the Fairchild might be "absolete."  


index.php/fa/15659/0/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=absolete


(Mmm, but Monsieur, I only bust zee chops, how you say?  It's a sweet lathe from a hep era.  Does anyone have a Fairchild camera?  I'd like to get one to take snapshots of my console settings.   Here's a Vintage Fairchild 35mm camera lens that appears only molested by time.

http://cgi.ebay.com/FAIRCHILD-1-3-8-INCH-35mm-F-3-5-LENS-ASS EMBLY-No-3788-/390251044688?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=i tem5adcc65f50)


Cheers,
    Andrew
Logged
www.serifsound.com
premastering for CD and DVD-A.  Featuring FTP load in and delivery as well as analog tape transfers.

Gold

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1453
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #67 on: October 19, 2010, 12:23:14 AM »

TotalSonic wrote on Sun, 17 October 2010 18:26



Yes, I will.  Any advice anyone wants to contribute regarding this is appreciated!



You need an "inertia base". An active system is way expensive and overkill. Putting it in 500lbs of sand would probably be good enough.
Logged
Paul Gold
www.saltmastering.com

On the silk road, looking for uranium.

bigaudioblowhard

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1314
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #68 on: November 15, 2010, 12:55:50 AM »

some nice Fairchild cutting amps just sold on ebay for $50K

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rt=nc& nma=true&item=250722093940&si=fApVGSI%252BD6QN91%252 B%252Bw%252FUpJeTMHGU%253D&viewitem=&sspagename=ADME %3AB%3AWNA%3AUS%3A1123#ht_1797wt_1141

bab

Allen Corneau

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 224
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #69 on: November 15, 2010, 10:35:00 AM »

Damn, $57K for two line amps?!?

Shocked
Logged
Allen
---
Allen Corneau
Mastering Engineer
Essential Sound Mastering
www.esmastering.com

dcollins

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2815
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #70 on: November 15, 2010, 01:51:16 PM »

Allen Corneau wrote on Mon, 15 November 2010 07:35

Damn, $57K for two line amps?!?



They are 30W power amps, but it's the text on the auction that makes it all worthwhile.

Memories of Joly loudspeakers.

DC

Viitalahde

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1069
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #71 on: November 15, 2010, 01:59:07 PM »

Must have gone to asian audiophiles. Somewhere, a pair of big horns just got a little.. Bigger?
Logged
Jaakko Viitalähde
Virtalähde Mastering, Kuhmoinen/Finland
http://www.virtalahde.com
   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Helsinki-Finland/Virtalahde-Ma stering/278311633180

Bob Olhsson

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3968
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #72 on: November 15, 2010, 07:32:20 PM »

I wonder if that's the same one that I saw as a kid in Detroit. I can't remember which studio it was at.

TotalSonic

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3728
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #73 on: December 15, 2010, 04:53:59 PM »

Bumping this back to the top as I finally took a road trip this past weekend courtesy of my friend Keith who has a mini-van and was extremely generous to help me drive up to Windsor Ontario and back to Brooklyn to pick up the Fairchild 523 lathe I had purchased on ebay.  

It turns out that the previous owner was Richie Hawtin! (famous among ravers and electronic dance music enthusiasts for his 90's minimalist techno - and more recently for his productions as "Plastikman" - and in fact featured on the cover of this months' EM) - who was using it to cut dub plates for his own DJ sets. Richard has been living in Berlin and touring most of the time - so he stopped using this lathe to make dubplates about 6 years ago, and just had it in storage at his Dad's place in Windsor. His Dad wanted the work shop space back (Richie keeps collecting 80's era arcade games that take up space as well - saw a vintage Pac Man there) and Richie initially told him to "just scrap it." Luckily for me his Dad bothered with putting it up for auction instead!

The drive back home was slightly adventurous in that we got hit with a snow storm in Ohio & Michigan - but luckily my friend grew up in Syracuse NY so was used to driving in this stuff.  We made stops in Cleveland the way there and in Clarion PA on the way back - with whiskey and pub& diner food to warm us up at these pit stops.  Unfortunately because of the weather we decided to let discretion rule over tourism so didn't get to make a planned stop at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame - but guess I can do this next time I'm ever up there.  

The movers got it up the 2 flights of stairs (the building my studio is in was built circa 1900 and has no elevator) without incident except for a scratch on one of the wooden cases sides (not really a big deal as I figure I'm going to eventually repaint it back to something like the original black anyway).

Plugged it in and did a few basic tests yesterday. All 3 speeds of the turntable motor are working, motor is reasonably quiet, pitch control and carriage control is working, even the lamps on the microscope and controls are all good.
Turns out this lathe is truly continuously variable pitch (instead of discrete steps that I worried it would be) - so theoretically it could be converted to automatic pitch (although probably really difficult to do - we'll see).
It came with the chip jar and all the hoses to hook this up and for the platter lock down to the vacuum as well - and doing a quick test this with just my regular vacuum cleaner all the connections seemed to work ok. So just need to get a decent vacuum for this (any suggestions on one - especially one that runs relatively quiet - is appreciated!).

This thing has awesome torque too - it kicks in to full speed after about a second - no need to give it a push like you do on the older Neumann's - and you can push your hand hard against it and didn't seem to slow down. Smile

Next up is that I need to add a tonearm and do some tests for wow, flutter, speed accuracy and rumble.  Right now the best bang for buck solution I think I've found are the new Rek-O-Kut Transcribe arms for just under $600 - http://www.esotericsound.com/ArmsAndHeadshells.htm (although for $150 more I can get their S-260 MK II arm which includes fluid damping - which should make it able to play more difficult passages as well as minimize high freq resonances more - but don't know whether this is actually desirable on a tone arm which I will likely be checking cuts on more than using for archival transcriptions).

After that the to do list is: an isolation platform, vacuum, stereo cutter head, suspension/mount for cutter head (most likely will need to get custom machined), stereo front end (RIAA encoder/feedback controller/meters) or dedicated cutting amps.  If this is of interest to folks here I'll post my progress on this as it happens.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

pmx

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 78
Re: Lathes, more manual & labor intensive (=cheaper)
« Reply #74 on: December 28, 2010, 09:57:57 AM »

i'd love to hear more about it steve, keep us posted!
Logged
Paul Matthijs Lombert | The Mastering Factory
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6   Go Up
 

Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.033 seconds with 19 queries.