Comments on: Record cutter

By: flip

flip — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:58:46 +0000

this is just about the coolest thing ever. definitely the coolest thing on this site so far. nice work.

By: HaX80r

HaX80r — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 01:43:45 +0000

Utterly and absolutely SWEET!
Some of my best albums are on LP…

By: Mesach

Mesach — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 21:39:04 +0000

Hey Steve, Feel free to start your own site.

Seriously.

I want to see what you think is cool…

I’m waiting…

By: David

David — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:32:41 +0000

swingle: n. A wooden or metal crossbar used to attach a horse to a plough.

(chuckles)

By: gijs

gijs — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:14:34 +0000

this record cutter is verry primitive, and so is my englisch (:
but it dos record something.. you can download a audio file here → http://plot.bek.no/~gijs/music/grammophonrecorder/GrammophonRecorder.mp3
in the beginning you here a 808 base kick that i speeded up and slowed down on my computer before recording it on the gramophone recorder, in the end of the recording you can here my voice saying something, i don’t remember what..
becouse it was a project i did in 1999.
the high pitch noize you hear is the sound of the needle cutting in the plexy glass, it makes a verry loud high pitch sound that gets recorded aswel..

it should be possible to make the sound quality better with a more advanced cutter head, and better material to cut on.. maybe i will improve it someday..

the recorded records are quite rough on your record player thou.. sou be carefull, i specialy bought a second hand record player and made the head heavier with a guilder(old dutch coin from back in the days) so it don’t skip so much. the recording abouve has been recorded with this second hand record player

greetings Gijs

By: steve

steve — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:53:59 +0000

yip its retro week think i will go on holiday till its over lets have some decent hacks plz

By: Darkcobra

Darkcobra — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:20:50 +0000

Transferring CDs to ‘vinyl’ at home. Nope, never saw that one coming.

I’d guess using the speaker like that gives poor results; but you could use any driver you want, or maybe slow down the recording to get better response from the driver you have. Slow it *way* down and use a stepper motor to position the cutting needle – direct digital recording! Increase the torque and cut aluminum masters for pressing your own vinyl! Be uber-retro!

By: ulyssesdraco

ulyssesdraco — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:11:11 +0000

Ok I can follow the instructions pretty well up until it gets to the carveheadholder part. I get everything(can’t be too hard to melt down some lead pellets and pour ‘em in a triangle) except for the wood part. Everything afterwards confuses me aswell.

I’d probably replace the crank with a motor. I guess I’d have to use a good speaker too.

By: Fred dasp

Fred dasp — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 06:27:39 +0000

I do not believe that this can record data.
Also that can record, to read the data will need another machine. It isn

By: andrew

andrew — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 05:47:42 +0000

using a speaker to move the needle works fine, but you’ll end up getting sound equivalent to the quality of the speaker. i suppose it’s fine for rough recordings, but certainly not for anything really serious. very ingenius, though — kiss is wonderful :)

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:45:59 +0000

in response to #4: wouldn’t it be easier to connect it to your sound card so it records the output of your media player? Just setup your playlist, plug it in, and cut your mix record. Also, my solution is platform independant. I’m a loyal Slacker, but I saw a lot of Macs at DEFCON.

By: PsychoRNGD

PsychoRNGD — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:03:34 +0000

From the web site: “…a machine that can record sound on perspex.”

From Wikipedia: “Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) … is sold by the tradenames Plexiglas, Perspex, … and is commonly called acrylic glass or simply acrylic.”

Hope this clears this up

By: Computer_kid

Computer_kid — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:24:35 +0000

Very cool, I want to try it. The flash is horible, are the sound effects realy necessary?

By: giskard

giskard — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:10:27 +0000

it’s actualy realy easy to do fsk for modulating the signal onto it. such a chip is like $20 aud, relatively expensive, but easy to use. it may not be practical as data storage, but think of it, the RIA will never think to look foryour pirated mp3s in that stack of vynil. ahh the irony.

By: cooperised

cooperised — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 02:47:29 +0000

Just seen, I don’t think it records in acrylic, it records in wax. Quote: “[a] round hollow wheel has to be placed that has the same size as the basewheel of the recordplayer, in the hollow wheel you have to poor hot wax and let it dry for about an hour.”

Makes more sense really, acrylic is really hard!

For those wanting to record data, I bet you could. I’m not too young to remember loading my platform games from tapes. You’d want to encode a ’1′ as one frequency, a ’0′ as another, and record it as an audio stream.

Go on, you know you want to.