If you thought you’d never have a chance to release your hit single on the wax cylinder think again. A band obsessed with the Victorian era did just that, having a DIY’er produce the cylinders for them. The story was covered by the BBC and includes a lousy attempt to build a phonograph to play back the recording. The video shows their craftsmanship (or lack of it) but it’s not even in the same realm as the masterpiece we saw last September. You do, however, get to see the production equipment used at about 2:45 into the clip.
[Thanks Charles]
Sorta reminds me of this epic moment on TechTV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8
“One of a kind piece, there is no other one like this particular one in the world…”
does it have Dolby 7.1 sourround sound and can it play my MP3s with DRM?
i went looking for the same youtube clip.
OMG!!!! What are they thinking???!!!! Music without DRM!!!! Someone call the MAFIAA gestapo on these people!!! Let’s have their internet disconnected (doesn’t matter why, just do it)!!! Let’s sue them for $150000 per wax cylinder [/sarcasm off]
Nice hack. It’s hard to replicate some old technology. I’d like to see a vinyl record making machine done on the cheap.
Mary had a little lamb…
@JB
Forget your meds this morning?
This is neat. Someone needs to go all-out and steampunk it. It might actually fit this time :)
They Might Be Giants recorded 4 tracks to wax cylinder at Edison Labs back in 1996. Not exactly a hack but cool nevertheless :)
The device shown on the BBC is a neat hack, but until I had an idea as to what the “stylus” was doing to the wax, i wouldn’t go anywhere near the cylinder with it… unless I had a spare.
Looking back at the HAD September masterpiece, it reminded me that the site hosting that design has a whole slew of others, my favorite being the “Tim Brooks” method, which used a turntable whose tone arm swung beyond the side of the device to engage a wax cylinder spun on an old Edison or similar placed along side.
Even the computer at the end is an old mac, running OS8-ish.
the bbc’s effort was appalling, what a piece of rubbish. They couldn’t even get it turning true. Can’t believe they get paid to do this rubbish its shameful
This is really cool……i’d like to get one. Where can I buy one? (if they’re not sold out already)
@draeath: Forget to read the [/sarcasm] part? Get a sense of humor kid.
Neat but the DIY cylinder player might work better if they used a slow speed AC synchronous motor or a low speed tape transport motor and a belt or rubber wheel reduction drive in place of the high speed DC motor and gears.
This would induce a lot less noise.
dear lord, they should be put to death for treating the wax like that.
im truely shocked at the build quality of the diy cylinder player and that they would even want to show that thing.
loved the sound engineers studio though, his recorder showed true build quality.
hmm i’m sure everyones past this entry, however there’s a great project that seems relevant to this and i’m surprised that there isn’t a previous hackaday posting on this crazy cat:
flo kaufmann
http://www.christerhamp.se/phono/kaufmann.html
– got to see him live two years ago where he used a custom built edison cylinder style cutter to record onto tall beer cans. it was amazing – grooves just deep enough to feel and record/playback from.
check the direct to beer website of
flo kaufmann here:
http://www.floka.com/direct2beer.html
and here
http://www.floka.com/lofi/dbmastering.html
or direct into plastic with a cnverted edison machine.
http://www.floka.com/lofi/edison/edison_cut.html
and a video of the performance in german only:
http://www.art-tv.ch/5479-0-soundkuenstler–kaufmann–strotter-inst-.html