Making Vinyl Records at Home (with a self build cutting lathe) / Update 2019

This video shows you some updates i made for my self-build record embossing lathe. With this machine i can cut (actually: emboss) sound into grooves onto the flipside of CD's. These grooves can be played back on a turntable.

for testing i used the song: Berto Pisano - Eurodice (1987)
alexrex // 2019

[roytofilovski]

This machine is amazing, really. I'm not really loving the sound quality, but considering you are using hard CD plastic and a self-built machine the results are very good. You should be very proud of your work.

[Kyuuby]

Good work!! Hope to see the tutorial this year!!

[AlpigrooveRecords]

Great Idea....good results... Great Alex!

[N.A._McBee]

Much better than everything I would have expected if I ever knew beforehand somebody would try this at home 😵 😁

[arfansthename]

Wow you actually have a real lead in/lead out groove!

[marklimbrick]

This is good! Norman has the needle angles on his website and using some kind of surface lubricant. I'm impressed you've got the mid-range drivers to work. Kind of built-in RIAA eq and damping. The early mono moving magnet cutters could be done easy now with Neodyn magnets and power amps driving easy to wind coils. How about a custom CD size record player or re-using a walkman type CD player? The Scientologists bought up one of the last direct metal cutting machines, archive all the prophecies for doomsday I suppose.

[beeee__]

Very nice. Just wondering, what is the size of the cutting needle you used?

[rapipago]

Congrat! question, Do yo used a couple of tweeters or speakers to the cutterhead?thanx

[PetersPorsches]

This is so amazing as a vinyl and recording enthusiast ive always wanted to make my own records! Definitely gonna try this. Just looking at the design I think tungsten carbide is probably the way to go it will retain edge sharpness throughout the cut. Have you also considered the possibility of using planar speakers in a clamshell configuration and wired out of phase the help with needle movement reduction. Also as a side benefit they tend to have a flat sound profile capable of sub-bas and treble simultaneously with 0 distortion. Just a thought!

[DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Would it work better if the cutter was heated like the industrial one.

[ff-qfth]

have you considered recording at half speed to increase the quality?

[radiospiritosanto]

it would be very interesting if I played the audio directly from the turntable and not from the speakers ... to evaluate the quality

[ymg]

Alex, what speakers did you use? Thank you.

[danieldorta]

Buenas tardes saludos desde venezuela quisiera saber si me puede facilitar algunos planos para hacer una maquina asi

[ML]

Is the machine move to the center by its self.. or need to program to mooove a lil bit? Thankyou

[EthicRadioArchiveReels]

How much you charge for building a cutting head?

[LuulCrz]

do you have any intention of doing any tutorial or releasing the STL files? Your project is amazing and i like to do something similar!

[vincenzopisani]

Hi I saw your video and I like it. I wanted to ask you for advice i tried to do this job but i don't riesco to record on vinyl for sure i'm wrong something but i don't know what you could give me a help or if you make them and you can buy them. If i don't create too much trouble, you could answer me thanks. Sorry for my English

[command]

Impressive. Have you bya any chance see nthis kickstarter called Phonocut? It might be cool to check out to compare.

[ejwin]

What turntable did you use for this? I reckon it has a rather strong motor