Rebuilding an Audax R-56 Cutter Head with 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.

The drive coil was redesigned with a custom coil former, allowing the implementation of feedback, while different damping materials were selected to achieve a good balance between mechanical damping and feedback.

Upon reassembly, the armature was adjusted and several tests were conducted, to document the performance benefits. The head was then fitted to our *heavily Agnewized Fairchild lathe and test cuts were taken to confirm that it sounded as good as it measured, which it did.

This modified version shall be called the Audax R-56A. It is now in active service in England.

Stay tuned for more feedback adventures and be sure to check out the Neumann MS-52HA cutter head feedback modifications, presented here a while ago.