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.
Repairing an SA-74 suspension unit, from a Neumann VMS-70 disk mastering lathe, which arrived with the head lift/drop lever jammed in the down position, preventing the top lid from being removed! The Neumann SX-74 stereophonic motional feedback cutter head was still attached, as it had been glued to the mount adapter, which can only be removed from the suspension unit by opening the top lid! Several mechanical and electrical repairs, adjustment/calibration procedures and even a bit of machining on the 1961 Moore Special Tools Jig Borer later, it was fully brought back to original specifications!
Some time ago we were asked to repair a vintage Westrex 2B feedback cutter head.
As with all Western Electric and Westrex products, their cutter heads were beautifully made and represented the state of the art in their time. Not only did they sound great, they also looked aesthetically pleasing, with curved lines that were not a trivial task to manufacture, in the days before CNC machine tools, CAD software and pocket calculators!
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).
It consists of a Rek-O-Kut Model V 16" turntable, which he found in the USA (where else?) as a non-runner. The motor was in bad shape and refused to run at all. Even if it would run, it was expecting to be fed on a regular diet of 110 VAC/60 Hz!

The best finds always pop up in the summer, when everyone else is on holidays! Still, they are not always nearby or easy to deal with. When this 1954 Hardinge HLV precision toolroom lathe appeared on the horizon, it took all of 5 minutes to decide to go for it and one week of frantic international phone calls to organize everything. An engineer was sent to check it over, local transportation to an industrial machinery crating facility, international transportation, more local transportation and another week later it was finally in our yard!
A customer recently imported a vintage Presto 75A disk recording lathe from the USA, with a view to cutting records in Europe.
He quickly discovered, like many people before him, that it was spinning a bit slower than it should, when operated from 50 Hz mains, via a simple step-down transformer. As with most vintage record cutting machines, the platter is powered by a synchronous AC motor, which "locks" to the line frequency.
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!
Over the past few years, we have restored a number of SME 3009 and 3012 tonearms, covering most of their variants made over the impressively long production life span of this model range.
This outstanding tonearm was first introduced in 1959, setting a standard for high performance tonearm design which is still hard to beat, 60 years later.
We have used our restored SME tonearms on a large number of reference reproduction systems, for our own use and for our customers, such as the Thorens TD160 project which was presented here last February. These systems are excellent for Quality Control in vinyl record manufacturing, to ensure that any defects are caught early.
They are of course also capable of offering an intensely enjoyable, accurate listening experience, coupled with an accurate cartridge.
A rather optimistic gentleman arrived with a Presto MRC-16 disk recording lathe, inquiring about the possibility of repairing the broken suspension and making a cutter head bracket from scratch. He then asked about the possibility of figuring out some way in which lead-in, lead-out, and track mark spirals could be cut on this machine, which was originally intended as a very basic machine, with no provision for spirals, not even a hand crank. Then came the really ambitious part: He would ideally like to be able to adjust the pitch and if possible, control the lathe through his computer!
One glance at the steampunk aesthetic of the manufacturer's name plate and the overall state of this primitive machine would have been enough to deter the average engineer, in fear that there might be something potentially radioactive hiding within...
Swiss Precision Engineering: The legendary Schaublin 102 precision lathe with parts of a Simonet lathe in the Agnew Analog laboratory! These pictures are from a 2016 restoration project, documented on the Agnew Analog website. Read the full report here: Schaublin 102 Swiss Precision Lathe Restoration
