I tested cutting with this today but it came out very wobbly — not sure why pitch would be unstable but I wonder if it’s related to how I hold it? More tests necessary.
Back to the Sylvania, which is available for $28 in pink… $32 in other colors. Easy decision; people must have terrible taste not to want pink.
Good news on record time, though; 1:16 worth of Starfucker fit on the DVD at top. Partially due to the K’nex piece I’m now using as a turntable clamp, which opens up the last few seconds of space on the disc.
I still need to build an arm or mount for this, but it’s the first record cutter I’ve made that doesn’t require any tools except scissors to make. Instead of disassembling a speaker to get the voice coil, I drove a pin directly through the cone of a speaker. To stiffen the “ball-end,” I drove it through a piece of stiff card paper, which you can see taped to the speaker side.
The vibration is plenty strong to cut grooves, so I’m optimistic that we’re one step closer to an easy-to-build kit.
This is my current setup to cut records — trying to keep it as portable as possible, as I’m typically recording people in person now. My goal is to do a lot of recording as I improve the design, so that I learn more about what works and doesn’t through real use. Also, I learn what’s truly portable and durable enough to travel with!
The new v2 cutter is really nice and small (see yesterday’s post). And it’s quite high fidelity — see this recording I did yesterday off an MP3:
This one is much more compact and works great! It has a built in battery too, and is made from a $4 speaker designed for smartphones. But it took some serious pliers to tear apart.
Big improvements today; I bought a spindle of 100 DVDs, as they’re really beautiful purple and, well, we only cut records into the most gorgeous materials at my record company (still without a name).
But more importantly, major progress on transcribing longer continuous audio, and even some in recording at the correct pitch, more or less. Check out this test, where I also recorded the audio from the output.
Still quite muffled, but doing a lot better than before. And I timed myself, I can get about 1 minute onto a disc, holding the stylus by hand. I think when I automate tracking, we could probably fit up to 2 minutes.
One issue is that I’m having trouble cutting deep enough on the outer edge. I plan to try adding more weight or possibly swapping for a sharper needle.
Anyhow, here’s a great photo where you can see the waveforms. This was when I was using too high a volume, and the stylus couldn’t follow these lines. But they looked beautiful!
Update: More progress, this time cutting on a record player with a heavier platter, which worked really well:
It’s a little premature, but ongoing experiments in cutting my own records into the underside of a CD are showing a lot of promise, so I’m hereby founding a new record label. I’m already in negotiations to sign two different record deals — more on this soon, but the plan so far is for each record to be cut, live, and for there to be only one copy of each.
Anyhow, I haven’t decided what the record label will be called, but here are my tests so far:
OK, not so great fidelity yet, but definite progress over earlier tests. The stylus looks like this, although I’m working on a few different prototypes:
