Presenting a custom record centering accessory, intended as a very quick and simple way of centering vinyl records with oversize center holes.
This compact and lightweight accessory is simply placed on the center spindle of your turntable over the record and twisted, positioning the sharp edge between the spindle and record hole, taking up any excessive clearance.
We have developed a range of precision machined driveshafts that can be supplied in any length required for your applications, with end diameters to your specification. Each end could be made a different diameter, if required, and we can also supply a useful range of accessories, such as constant velocity flexible couplers, vibration dampers, soft-start clutches and mounting flanges, to suit your application.
A good machine spindle is one of the factors defining the accuracy attainable from rotating machinery. This applies equally to machine tools used in industrial manufacturing and to disk recording and mastering lathes, used to make phonograph records.
At Agnew Analog Reference Instruments, we use some of the finest and most accurate industrial manufacturing machine tools ever made, to build some of the finest and most accurate disk recording and mastering equipment ever made, so we have had to learn a thing or three about machine spindles along the way.
For many long years, J. I. Agnew has been examining, adjusting, repairing and replacing bearing systems of all kinds, from disk recording lathes and turntables to tape machines, high precision machine tools, measurement instruments, industrial equipment and all manners of motor vehicles, from passenger cars to heavy trucks. Over the past few years, he has designed and machined countless bearing units to replace worn or damaged units on a diverse range of disk recording lathes and machine tools. Valuable experience was gained, which along with his solid engineering background, was put to good use in improving his designs further and further, up until the current stage of development was reached.
The ultimate vacuum platter is finally here, and it is very reasonably priced. After three years of exhaustive research and development and several prototypes of different versions, along with field testing, we have finally arrived at what we believe is the most advanced and accurate vacuum platter ever made.
The Agnew Analog Research and Development laboratory makes a major breakthrough in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic!
The Agnew Analog Reference Instrument Type 8001 is a unique electrochemical synthesizer, generating strange sounds through chemical reactions occurring in the built in reactor cell.
The Westrex 2B is a motional feedback cutter head, introduced in 1952 by the Western Electric Export Company. It followed hot on the heels of the Westrex 2A, dating from 1947, which was itself a lateral implementation of the principles first described by Wiebusch, Vieth and Yenzer in 1938, with a couple of relevant patents issued by 1939, for a vertical cutter head employing motional feedback.
This Audax cutter head arrived with a fried coil and a completely crusted armature. The damping material had not aged well.
A complete disassembly, cleanup and reassembly would be required, with the renewal of the damping material and drive coil. This was yet another perfect candidate for our feedback modification.
Neumann cutter heads have a rib along the back, for mounting. Presto lathes, on the other hand, together with the vast majority of non-Neumann vintage lathes (Rek-O-Kut, Fairchild, etc.), have a mount with two slots, for cutter heads with two threaded holes on the back (Audax, Presto, Fairchild, RCA, etc).
We recently had the pleasure of having Symatic over, from Bristol, UK, for a week of training on how to cut (and how not to cut) records.
Symatic runs Cut & Paste Records, a record label attracting some serious attention among skratchers, with high quality releases of skipless skratch samples, lock-groove tones, beats, and relevant music.
Requests for a stylus tool kept on coming in, so we decided to design and manufacture them! We call it the Agnew Analog Reference Instruments Type 6019 and it is now available for sale.
All Hardinge HLV and HLV-H variants feature a continuously variable speed drive to the spindle. It starts with a 3-phase, two speed squirrel cage induction motor, rated at 500 rpm and 1500 rpm nominal (less in practice, due to slip) at 50 Hz. This would be 600 rpm and 1800 rpm at 60 Hz.
It would appear that 50 Hz conversions of vintage "made in USA" disk recording lathes are becoming rather fashionable! Last week we examined how we converted a Rek-O-Kut Model V by machining a new capstan and making a special transformer, Type 1760.
We have done 50 Hz conversions (and even some 60 Hz ones!) on many different lathes and turntables, using all of the possible methods of doing so: New rubber rollers, new capstans, new belt pulleys and even electronic frequency conversion (Agnew Analog Type 191 frequency converter) for professional disk mastering systems.
This week, we will have a look at the Presto 75A, a high quality machine, dating from the 1930's, which was even used by the BBC as a broadcasting turntable!
Back in 2015, we started a big lathe project, taking a beat-up Fairchild lathe from the 1930's, fitting it with an RCA cutter head, and eventually going full-on with a stereophonic feedback cutter head, vacuum clamp-down platter and automatically variable pitch.
