This channel fascinates me I'm an audiophile since birth and have worked in the record industry while in high school worked on AMPEX winding machines but this is new to me absolutely LOVE IT from Toronto
Hi Norman many years ago I made paper cone and pushed a needle through it at the pointed end and used the intro at the beginning of a record and shouted down the horn and to my amazement I could here my self. My parents heard me shouting and thought I had lost the plot.
Hi there, and thanks for writing. Well: you did the original type of mechanical recording! It's amazing, isn't it, to hear your own voice coming back, however faint, from the 'ancient' acoustic (mechanical) recording system? Just lately, I have been trying to do this also. Eventually, a video will appear. Cheers, Norman.
I have a 500 OHM Van Epps Head! And it is Hard to get a Good recording out of it! But sometimes I get a Perfect Record! I had to Restart the Magnet! It was very week! (I cut a old Speaker Doughnut Magnet to make it work much better! I LOVE Your Video`s! I am learning a lot! BOY THE RECORD Sounds GREAT!!! Thank You!
Hay Norman, After you did that nice job of rebuilding that cutter head, YOU FORGOT one thing - YOU DID NOT RE-MAGNETIZE that cutter. Once you pulled those magnets apart, you broke the field. The Gauss is reduce drastically and the volume and efficiency of that cutter would be very low. Then forcing you to feed more power into that coil it and you may burn it again.
Thanks for writing, Mark. Glad you liked it. The MSS head was ultra-simple, but could make quite good recordings, especially at the time that Cecil Watts devised it - ca. 1930. For various reasons, it was never radically updated, so by the the 1960s - when it was still being produced - it was very 'old hat'. The two screw terminals on top proclaim its antique design; but the amplifiers MSS made could largely persuade the head to make a pretty decent recording! 😀
Ahh! Thanks for writing. Yes, the OKeh of Joe Venuti's 'Ragging the Scale' has become my test record for trials of embossing on polycarbonate 78s, for three reasons: (a) because I love all that era of music anyway; (b) the recording quality & presence of that particular side is simply stunning; and (c) the earlier laminated British Parlophone pressings (while not quite up to the standard of U.S. OKehs) are excellent, so we gain that little extra bit of access to the original performance. What more could anybody want? 8^) Best regards, Norman.
Honestly i can't get a stupid filter to work according to specifications and seeing you rebuild a vinyl head is just mind blowing. I feel sometimes the electrons don't spin right where I live.
Very informative indeed! I am trying to use a Van Epps 500 ohm head! Using the 70 volt side of a Bogen Church Pre Amp! It gives Me a great sound, BUT Could be much better! The bass is way too high co I have to adjust for that! But I get a craggly sound around the end of My Recording! What to Do?? And I sometimes get quite a bit of Needle Chatter (Whistling) On some of My recording`s Thank You for any and all info You can give Me! I am pretty sure it will Help other folks Like Me! As will if You have any suggestions!
Really great video as i wanted to see inside one i have made a cutting head using a tiny stepper motor but frequency range is only up to 8 khz i want it a touch higher as i want to do mechanical video recordings ,its fine for SSTV but NBTV a touch low
i like this video.. i have an M-41. ive been told. its not worth the referb,, I been trying your idea on a 3d coil.. I got some to work with a bolt. and a manget.. Now does it need any amplifying.. also whats 13 ohms in the united states.. I have no amp.. just a speaker output.. would have to wind it losely to drive like a speaker,, also been through some stereos to drive the coil.. been unsuccessful.. but your video gives me hope..
Interesting video, I have a very similar MSS lathe, same layout to yours but probably newer. The "cutting arm" on mine is rounded, all mounted in (I think) original wooden case with a Leak tonearm for playback. Also cuts 33 & 45. Mine has the same cutting head as in this video. I always thought my cutter had a replacement base plate, as it's not perfectly drilled etc, looks a bit homemade. But... appears to be the same as yours, the series of holes in the edge of the plate where cutter pivots/ is suspended aren't straight, yours looks exactly the same. Have these all been refurbished by same person in the past?? Interesting! I only have a little bit of history on MSS, do you have any more? I always thought mine was early 1960's but now I'm thinking a bit older
Hi Rog. Your three-speed machine would date basically from the early to mid 1950s and, as you say, well into the 1960s, only being finished off by the advent of stereo. They re-styled the arm, although the re-styling was more 'art deco' than 1950s! Again as you say, the heads have nearly always been 'worked on' - sometimes 'butchered' might be a better term; often I think, by well-intentioned amateurs, trying to make them work better, as demands for extended frequency response grew after WW2. Of course, MSS themselves made lots of improvements in this respect, especially in the equalisation fed to the head, automatic correction (radius compensation) during cutting, and in the damping of resonances in the old-fashioned moving iron armature. Everybody else had largely changed to moving coil cutting heads by this time. MSS were increasingly half-hearted in their work on disc cutting in this period, as they had espoused tape recording as the medium of the future - this is why (IMHO) they kept tinkering with the original old design instead of a totally new concept. I have been working on a history of MSS for several years, and gave a presentation on the subject to the CLPGS: www.clpgs.org.uk in autumn 2015. Hope this is of help. Best regards, Norman.
Hello, I am desperate to find an MSS cutting head, or even the whole MSS lathe, but I REALLY need an MSS cutting head, working or not is fine. If anyone is out there, I'm happy to pay good money for one! It would be going to a good home and be put to great use in a VoiceOGraph record booth! Best regards, Bill wbollman@gmail.com
How interesting: for many reasons. I have a couple of MSS recorded discs - black acetate (?) on metal discs. They were used as packing for some 78s sent in the post! Alas the centre-holes are slightly too small to fit over the spindle on my L75, so I have no idea of what's on them. The cutting head is staggering simple; and the damping Heath-Robinson! Life is an MSS cutting head: open it up and there's little inside! Did you replace the grease-damping? Has the lack of damping from the degraded black lump had subjective consequences for the recorded sound? And don't you get through a lot of wine.
Mea culpa, dear Hector. To overhaul the head would have taken around 45 minutes; but to make & edit a video of the process occupied over seven hours, so I freely admit I was a bit slurred towards the end. As regards the damping, which Ron L'Herault has also asked about: no. I believe (but have no proof) that the original heads did not have any damping at all. Here, of course, we draw the crucial distinction between the rubber *suspension* of the armature; and any separate *damping* of the armature. Currently, I believe that Cecil Watts contrived rubber suspension blocks that also served as damping against undesired resonances. But when Watts was working on his machine in the early 1930s, the upper frequency limit of a disc record was about 5 KHz. His basic head seems to work fine 'as is' with that frequency response. But later, in the 1940s and onwards, a much extended frequency response was required - up to 10 KHz, & beyond. I believe that then, that old design revealed resonances that hitherto had been unimportant. So to suppress them, it is conjectured that various makeshift damping measures were applied. The grease on the top of the armature might have damped high-frequency resonances; and the black block at the bottom *may* - I only say may - have been intended to remove low frequency resonances. Unfortunately, after 50 years or so, the black block becomes solid & prevents the head from working at all. Being only interested in 78 rpm recording of material no later than the mid-1930s, I have found that the head works fine, for me at least, in its original state. Alas, if I had only asked John R T Davies about this matter years ago, he would doubtless have explained it to me in great detail! Wishing you all the best, Norman. P.S. A light touch with a taper reamer will open the hole in your MSS lacquers, enabling them to fit on the *slightly* oversized spindle that Goldring used on most of their decks. Worst-case scenario: fitting an early Pathé Actuelle onto a Goldring GL75 - more often than not, it won't go on. >8^(
@@bixanorak Hello again Norman! The MSS deck I mentioned in an earlier reply, with high impedance head and matching transformer, actually belonged to John R T Davies. It is fitted with a later motor on a very efficient home made suspension, there was a home made suction tube behind the head, and it is the only one of my 4 machines to have an opposite thread lead screw (IE centre start) some meccano gears corrected this! It was set up for 33rpm when I got it so I presume he mastered all those "Bateu Chinois" records on it. Regards, Rob.
Hi Ron. Sorry late reply! No; the earliest heads were very basic, as you have seen. So our 'conservation' was to return the head to its original spec., which had neither top nor bottom damping. The original heads just had *suspension* of the armature bar - the square rubber blocks. After all, when the head first appeared in the early 1930s, a top response of say 4500 Hz was perfectly OK for disc records. It was only later, in the 1940s & 1950s, when the upper end became extended to 8000, 10000, 12000 Hz, that MSS needed to 'doctor' their original design. Of course, they should have done a complete re-design! But by then, tape recording was in the ascendant, and Cecil Watts, who started off MSS in the first place, had been bought out, & had retired. So they just kept on 'tweaking' the existing head. "A lonely road that led to nowhere", one might say! Moving coil, not moving iron, had been the way forward for years... All the best, Norman.
I think that black stuff was a type of rubber i have seen it before in old gear go's like that with age ,,must of just hardened up and stopped the movement of the cutting head
Hi Norman! First of all thanks for this video. I'm trying to building a cutter head but I have some question. What kind of material are made these 2 blocks near the magnets and where can I find the "socket" where I can put the stylus inside? Thanks in advance
Hello sehr tolles Video. Ist es möglich das man die genauen Masse des Cutter Head bekommen kann. Möchte ihn nachbauen. Drahtstärke und Windungszahl der Spule währen auch sehr gut. Mit freundlichen Gruß : Michael Zimmermann
Hi Norman iv just purchased a Meisner cutting machine & now id like to know if it's possible to change motor speed to 45 to cut disc's.... Any advice much appreciated...
Hi Gene. I presume it now runs at 78. Does the turntable have an idler wheel drive? If so, how does the motor drive the idler? Is it just the motor shaft, or is there a bush or sleeve on the motor spindle? Cheers, Norman.
Hello Norman, great video, I have a MSS machine, works fine mechanically and the head is ok. I believe the range top end is 8k and I’d like to know if that can be extended to something more modern? Are you in the business of working on these heads and is it actually possible to rewind or change the guts to get a wider frequency range. Thanks.
Sorry; I can't help you, because being 80 years old, I can't hear anything above about 6.5 kHz! However, if we had a Zoom chat, I could probably give you some useful info? Cheers, Norman.
@@bixanorak thanks for the quick reply, I understand, I don’t have the know how about these things so information may go over my head that’s why I was looking for someone who could do the technical work.
Perhaps I missed something but what did you do to replace the hardened black foam rubber dampening material? All I observed from your stills was that you reassembled the cutter head and I was not sure what if any substitute for the original dampening material was replaced?
Hi there, and thanks for writing. Sorry, I should have made more plain, the difference between the two rubber *suspension* blocks; and the grease and the black *damping* material. The suspension blocks normally survive extremely well & can usually be re-fitted. Whereas the black block of 'whatever it was' (and the grease), which are the damping materials, are best simply cleaned off & discarded. This is because (a) we don't know exactly what they were, so can't provide replacements anyway; and (b) the original heads never had such damping in any case, and they have always seemed to me to work far better in their original state. Having said that, I have only ever used these heads at 78 rpm for cutting on lacquer, and for embossing on polycarbonate, mostly using 1920s & 1930s programme material, and the frequency response of the head 'as is' is perfectly satisfactory for that purpose. For example, the frequency response of the Western Electric system from 1925 'only' extended up to about 5 kHz or occasionally a bit more. Having said that, IF the rubber suspension blocks actually have become totally rigid, which I have indeed encountered, new suspension can easily be made from bicycle valve rubber and one or more layers of heat-shrink sleeving. This of course produces a round suspension, but it gets squared up when you replace the little securing bridges. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
Hi thanks for the very clear and informative video. Out of interest, is the square paddle part of the armature, sitting in the coil made of steel? It was my first thought but the surely it would stick to the magnets wouldn’t it?
Thanks for writing! The long 'armature' (which is in effect a torsion bar) is clamped at the back end (see vid about 10' 20" - 10' 30"); thus, the paddle in the coil is firmly held midway in the gap between the two pole pieces. The signal going into the coil will make the paddle 'wobble' slightly from side to side, so moving the cutting stylus - but not so far as to click onto one of the poles. If it did so, it would indeed as you say, 'stick' to the pole. There's a close-up at 11 min 18 sec which shows the paddle in the gap, with the rest of the armature going back to the two bolts that hold the far end rigid. Glad you liked the vid! All the best for 2022 - take care - cheers, Norman.
@Mark Animaco Hi There... Well, all the basic info. is in the video! A base of Aluminium (non-magnetic); a torsion bar, clamped at the rear end. It could be 3 or 4mm square mild steel, or round would be OK - just file a flat at the rear end. Near the front, some suspension either side of a vertical steel fin, located on the top of the torsion bar - even soft-soldering might hold it in place. The most difficult part would be winding the coil to fit over the fin. The easy part would be using 3 or 4 small circular Neodymium magnets (quite cheap) either side of the fin instead of a complete 'magnetic circuit'. To make the coil, a former of thin plastic sheet could be cut out and glued together. Wind the former using a lathe or hand drill & layer the wire from side to side - two people best for this! Even better is to make a 'free-standing' coil by winding the wire onto a former through a pad soaked in weak shellac solution. When it dries, the wire will be held together solidly. Enamelled copper wire of 0.2mm diameter will be OK. It takes some judgement as to taking the coil off the former! If it's too dry, it won't want to come off the former. 🤔 0.2mm diameter is about 35 SWG, & resistance is about O.45 Ohms per metre. So winding a coil of say 20 metres of 35 SWG wire will total ~ 9 Ohms, so can be driven from a normal audio amplifier. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
Do you know if the head is supposed to heat a bit while cutting a reasonable volume ? I recall tried to cut a record from an off circuit pickup head I recoiled at 200 ohms and I was frightened to melt it while recording so I stopped x)
Hi there. If your head is noticeably heating up, sorry, but there must be something wrong. A head such as the one in this video, requires only 3 or 4 Watts to work it. They don't noticeably heat up. Commonly, in old portable equipments, a 6V6 valve would provide ample power. In the 1950s, an EL84 (6BQ5) was still OK. Of course, much higher powered amplifiers were used in fixed locations. One MSS amplifier had two EL34s in push-pull, which might have provided 15 or 20 Watts RMS. BUT this did not mean that so much power was needed; it simply ensured that the amp was just idling or 'ticking over', so the distortion would be very low. If your head is heating up, it could be due to: (a) the armature is too heavily damped; (b) part of the coil is somehow shorted out (does it still measure 200 Ohms at the head terminals?) In one head I rewound badly, the coil was not secured firmly, so the coil broke loose & began to vibrate, and because the coil was not sufficiently insulated from the metalwork, the enamel on the wire wore through & caused a near short-circuit - which stopped the head working, & eventually one of the leads burned out, producing a curl of smoke from the head! Fortunately, the 100 W amplifier being used survived OK. (c) 200 Ohms is rather a large value if you're using the speaker (low impedance) output of an amplifier. If that's what you're using, a coil of 10 - 15 Ohms DC resistance would appear to the amp as virtually identical to a loudspeaker - so the amp should be perfectly happy with the cutting head as a load. Hope this is of come help. Cheers, Norman.
Hi Matthew. Alas, they don't turn up all that often. You could put in place an ebay search, but it's a difficult search to define. 'Disc cutter' brings up gear for machining car brake discs. 'Record lathe' usually brings up wood-turning lathes made by the company called 'Record'! Anyhow, keep trying... Cheers, Norman.
Probably not; I'm an enthusiast rather than a strict historian, but I doubt it. The company history of MSS is quite convoluted, especially after WW2. Cecil Watts was eventually bought out, and the company started making tape recorders, which can't have been a success, because I've only ever seen ONE of 'em! But they kept on making the cutting lathes, still using the same model of head, even in 1959 (there's a Wireless World advert. that year); I haven't looked for any later ads though. They were very good at persuading the head to make rather commendably good recordings - by using grease damping, and various inductance/capacitance filters, also they had a multiple contact compensator (on some models) that lifted the top end as the head approached the centre of the disc. Incidentally, the Beatles first record (a one-off lacquer 78) was made by a chap in Liverpool who had an MSS outfit in the back of his shop.
Thanks. I once owned a consumer disc recorder (Wilcox-Gay) and had use of a Universal professional recorder. I enjoyed recording because, unlike today, some skill was required. @@bixanorak
Hello! Some time ago I tried to make a record head.I used in my construction a coil (diameter 1'', wire AWG33, 80microHenries) and a neodyme magnet (diameter 7/8'' length 3/16``).An "anchor" had a slice of duraluminium profile (corner section). I didn`t have any magnetic circuit - there was only a magnet and a coil.I measured resonant frequency - it was 2200 Hz.When I made some records - I found out that the recorder acts as lowpass filter - until 2200...2500Hz.(((
Oh dear! That must have been very disappointing. If you still have the device, pleas send some images of it - maybe it can be made to work OK? Best regards, Norman.
Hello@@bixanorak ! I took some pictures of the device - 1)A common view drive.google.com/file/d/1FEM4BB4muzbMSQishk5fOr9sBChF4Ty6/view?usp=sharing 2)A homemade cutting head drive.google.com/file/d/1F9vBmTroWap_fyWqtmK5-mOaZJZOe7lB/view?usp=sharing drive.google.com/file/d/1Eqgt68JuELGlXSLgmKrzpWWwc5Wo5QfE/view?usp=sharing The ferequency response has a big resonance pear (roughly 2.2KHz).I used for recording DVD blanks - but this blanks allow to have a good quality only with extrusion by the needle with a triangle shape. I tried to use cutting - there was a horrible noise during a recording process((( - the record was extremly noisy. I`m not satisfied by the results - the record by extrusion was quiet and bandwidth was narrow (untit 4KHz with frequency correction) .I made my records in speed 33 turns per minute. Nowadays this "record mashine" stands on my balcony - I don`t have a time for experiments))
Thanks Norman for you videos they are a great help i'm trying to restore a very similar Mss machine. I measured the ohms on mine and it reads 2k. i have no vibration on the needle, what sort of wattage should i feed to it? and which would be + or - or does it not matter many Thanks John, Link to your page didn't work sorry ask questions on here
Hi there. Sorry, my website is in disarray at the moment - I must really try to get it sorted. BUT - your problem consists of *two* parts. Part I: the resisistance the winding of your head is 2000 Ohms. If this is genuine reading, which it probably is, it means that your head was designed to be located in the anode circuit a a VALVE. Valves are high impedance devices, so 2000 Ohms *DC resistance* is about right. BUT... you probably don't want to start messing around with valves, because (a) it's tedious, and (b) they work on high voltages of DC and so are quite dangerous. Later MSS heads had LOW IMPEDANCE windings, of only about 10, 12 or 15 Ohms. Now these are really great, because they are exactly like connecting a loudspeaker to an amplifier, the output of which is always low impedance. The amp *thinks* it's driving a low impedance speaker & it doesn't mind at all. Having a low impedance coil in an MSS cutting machine makes life much, much easier! Youy won't get any needle movement, feeding a Lo-Z signal into a Hi-Z head. Part II: The suspension of the armature may be totally rigid anyway. In that case, the above video shows you the way forward! Personally, unless you are addicted to keeping gear in its pristine original condition, my advice is to dismantle the head according to the video, an replace the coil - which will have thousands of turns of hair-fine wire, with another, consisting of perhaps 300 or 500 turns of thicker wire that will have a DC resisitance of around 10, 12 or 15 Ohms. Then you can drive it from a Lo-Z loudspeaker on any amplifier. They don't want a lot of power, by the way; an ordinary domestic 15 Watts per channel amp is fine. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
@@bixanorak many Thanks for your reply and time, I was thinking of trying to get a impedance matching transformer, if not i'll try replacing the coil, the suspension seems fine. cheers again John
@@rockingroots Hi there . Well - if you know the suspension is OK, YES! Easiest is to use an impedance matching transformer! I have done so several times. For instance, the output transformer from a valve (tube) radio, that had an output valve such as a 6V6 (1930s/40s), or an EL84 (U.S. 6BQ5 maybe?) , can simply be used the other way round. After all, It matched a high impedance valve, down to a very low impedance loudspeaker - 4 or 8 Ohms. Therefore it will work the other way round - feed what was the secondary from a normal modern amp speaker output, & connect what was the primary, to the head. But BE CAREFUL: you'll end up with quite a few volts on the head, maybe 200V or more - I've had a few jolts that way. Still, good luck. Norman. (Remember, these MSS head were pretty easy to drive; they don't need umpteen Watts - a single EL84 (rated 3 Watts out) works fine, for starters.
@@bixanorak Many Thanks again . I'll let you know how i get on, but it might take quite awhile knowing me. I have the advertising 2 page leaflet for an upgraded Mss Type PR 4B with some interesting spec on it. I can send you some photos if you'd like.cheers again John
@@rockingroots Hi there Norman and John I have 4 MSS machines in various states of decay, one deck is from the MSS radiogram. It has a high impedance head and has it's original matching transformer mounted to the bottom of the base board, it is quite substantial and matches the head to a 15ohm output. It must have been a costly item and it makes you wonder why they didn't just wind a 15ohm head? Anyway that was their solution so you shouldn't go wrong with some kind of single-ended valve OPT in reverse. Thanks Norman for another excellent video, Rob.
Yes Simon: sorry; the stress of trying to be 'creative' over a period of well over 6 hours took its toll & had to be sustained by the odd slurp! Cheers, Norman.
Well, as you can see, it's not too difficult! The worst problem you may encounter is a coil that is open circuit. It is surprisingly easy to wind a replacement low impedance coil. (If the defective coil was high impedance, then it's extremely difficult because they have thousands of turns of very fine wire. So wind a new low impedance one & drive it from a loudspeaker output.) When I get round to it, will make a video of how to wind a low impedance coil like the one in this head. Cheers, Norman.
I have rewound it. the problem is i broke my magnet on am M-41 cutter head.. I had sent it out to west tech to fix it and he rewound it with low impendance. and i blew the head.. He said no more than 5 volume.. I wanted the loudest cut.. so was cutting at 6 volume,.. head lasted 1 month before the coil burned inside.. 4 weeks... So heads been dead since,.2006.. I keep trying ideas.. and have an idea i thinks works, but no sound is being cut in the grooves..?? I can biuld coild from scratch card board. but do i add the magnet on top or sideways.. I origionaly wanted it for 16 ohms.. he wouldnt do that for me..
Having watched your video on cutting(or as you say, "embossing") your own 78rpm records, it got me thinking: "why isn't there something like this for cutting home-made stereo 45rpm singles or EPs, or even 12-inch 33rpm LPs in Stereo. Oh the fun I'd have cutting my own stereo 45s of old favourite 1960s hits(not for sale though, Oh no! I'd never want to part with them!)
Hi - there is actually, a number of videos showing home made 33/45 discs in stereo! Just have a look around - maybe start with ua-cam.com/video/8y7osjazhLE/v-deo.html . Good luck!
This channel fascinates me I'm an audiophile since birth and have worked in the record industry while in high school worked on AMPEX winding machines but this is new to me absolutely LOVE IT from Toronto
NORMAN IS GENIUS. So pleased to see this
Good work, Norman! I keep learning heaps from watching your videos.
Hi Tim. Thanks for writing. We do what we can, while we still muster a long enough attention span! All the best to you & yours, Norman.
Hi Norman many years ago I made paper cone and pushed a needle through it at the pointed end and used the intro at the beginning of a record and shouted down the horn and to my amazement I could here my self. My parents heard me shouting and thought I had lost the plot.
Hi there, and thanks for writing. Well: you did the original type of mechanical recording! It's amazing, isn't it, to hear your own voice coming back, however faint, from the 'ancient' acoustic (mechanical) recording system? Just lately, I have been trying to do this also. Eventually, a video will appear. Cheers, Norman.
I have a 500 OHM Van Epps Head! And it is Hard to get a Good recording out of it! But sometimes I get a Perfect Record! I had to Restart the Magnet! It was very week! (I cut a old Speaker Doughnut Magnet to make it work much better! I LOVE Your Video`s! I am learning a lot! BOY THE RECORD Sounds GREAT!!! Thank You!
Hay Norman, After you did that nice job of rebuilding that cutter head, YOU FORGOT one thing - YOU DID NOT RE-MAGNETIZE that cutter. Once you pulled those magnets apart, you broke the field. The Gauss is reduce drastically and the volume and efficiency of that cutter would be very low. Then forcing you to feed more power into that coil it and you may burn it again.
Nice fix Norman.
Brilliant Norman!
Ah yes, found the MSS manual on your website. Thank you very much, that appears to by my model at a glance.
Great stuff, & thanks for writing. Hope it will be of use to you. Cheers, Norman.
Excellent repair job indeed.👌
Thanks for writing, Mark. Glad you liked it. The MSS head was ultra-simple, but could make quite good recordings, especially at the time that Cecil Watts devised it - ca. 1930. For various reasons, it was never radically updated, so by the the 1960s - when it was still being produced - it was very 'old hat'. The two screw terminals on top proclaim its antique design; but the amplifiers MSS made could largely persuade the head to make a pretty decent recording! 😀
As always...brilliant
"Ragging The Scale"? Great stuff! Long live Rollini, Venuti, Lang and Norman Field! 😊
Ahh! Thanks for writing. Yes, the OKeh of Joe Venuti's 'Ragging the Scale' has become my test record for trials of embossing on polycarbonate 78s, for three reasons: (a) because I love all that era of music anyway; (b) the recording quality & presence of that particular side is simply stunning; and (c) the earlier laminated British Parlophone pressings (while not quite up to the standard of U.S. OKehs) are excellent, so we gain that little extra bit of access to the original performance. What more could anybody want? 8^) Best regards, Norman.
Good stuff Norman,,, great to see you make another video. Take care m8.
Hi there skycarl. Thanks for writing - much appreciated. Best regards, Norman.
Honestly i can't get a stupid filter to work according to specifications and seeing you rebuild a vinyl head is just mind blowing. I feel sometimes the electrons don't spin right where I live.
Very informative indeed! I am trying to use a Van Epps 500 ohm head! Using the 70 volt side of a Bogen Church Pre Amp! It gives Me a great sound, BUT Could be much better! The bass is way too high co I have to adjust for that! But I get a craggly sound around the end of My Recording! What to Do?? And I sometimes get quite a bit of Needle Chatter (Whistling) On some of My recording`s Thank You for any and all info You can give Me! I am pretty sure it will Help other folks Like Me! As will if You have any suggestions!
Really great video as i wanted to see inside one i have made a cutting head using a tiny stepper motor but frequency range is only up to 8 khz i want it a touch higher as i want to do mechanical video recordings ,its fine for SSTV but NBTV a touch low
Good work we're planning to buy a record cutter machine
i like this video.. i have an M-41. ive been told. its not worth the referb,, I been trying your idea on a 3d coil.. I got some to work with a bolt. and a manget.. Now does it need any amplifying.. also whats 13 ohms in the united states.. I have no amp.. just a speaker output.. would have to wind it losely to drive like a speaker,, also been through some stereos to drive the coil.. been unsuccessful.. but your video gives me hope..
Interesting video, I have a very similar MSS lathe, same layout to yours but probably newer. The "cutting arm" on mine is rounded, all mounted in (I think) original wooden case with a Leak tonearm for playback. Also cuts 33 & 45. Mine has the same cutting head as in this video. I always thought my cutter had a replacement base plate, as it's not perfectly drilled etc, looks a bit homemade. But... appears to be the same as yours, the series of holes in the edge of the plate where cutter pivots/ is suspended aren't straight, yours looks exactly the same. Have these all been refurbished by same person in the past?? Interesting! I only have a little bit of history on MSS, do you have any more? I always thought mine was early 1960's but now I'm thinking a bit older
Hi Rog. Your three-speed machine would date basically from the early to mid 1950s and, as you say, well into the 1960s, only being finished off by the advent of stereo. They re-styled the arm, although the re-styling was more 'art deco' than 1950s! Again as you say, the heads have nearly always been 'worked on' - sometimes 'butchered' might be a better term; often I think, by well-intentioned amateurs, trying to make them work better, as demands for extended frequency response grew after WW2. Of course, MSS themselves made lots of improvements in this respect, especially in the equalisation fed to the head, automatic correction (radius compensation) during cutting, and in the damping of resonances in the old-fashioned moving iron armature. Everybody else had largely changed to moving coil cutting heads by this time. MSS were increasingly half-hearted in their work on disc cutting in this period, as they had espoused tape recording as the medium of the future - this is why (IMHO) they kept tinkering with the original old design instead of a totally new concept. I have been working on a history of MSS for several years, and gave a presentation on the subject to the CLPGS: www.clpgs.org.uk in autumn 2015. Hope this is of help. Best regards, Norman.
Hello, I am desperate to find an MSS cutting head, or even the whole MSS lathe, but I REALLY need an MSS cutting head, working or not is fine. If anyone is out there, I'm happy to pay good money for one! It would be going to a good home and be put to great use in a VoiceOGraph record booth! Best regards, Bill wbollman@gmail.com
I build my own copy of this cutter head, sounds awesome for home made cutter
Glad it's working OK, Michalek. Hope you make some good recordings! Cheers, Norman.
We're can we buy one don't mind me asking
How interesting: for many reasons. I have a couple of MSS recorded discs - black acetate (?) on metal discs. They were used as packing for some 78s sent in the post! Alas the centre-holes are slightly too small to fit over the spindle on my L75, so I have no idea of what's on them. The cutting head is staggering simple; and the damping Heath-Robinson! Life is an MSS cutting head: open it up and there's little inside! Did you replace the grease-damping? Has the lack of damping from the degraded black lump had subjective consequences for the recorded sound?
And don't you get through a lot of wine.
Mea culpa, dear Hector. To overhaul the head would have taken around 45 minutes; but to make & edit a video of the process occupied over seven hours, so I freely admit I was a bit slurred towards the end. As regards the damping, which Ron L'Herault has also asked about: no. I believe (but have no proof) that the original heads did not have any damping at all. Here, of course, we draw the crucial distinction between the rubber *suspension* of the armature; and any separate *damping* of the armature. Currently, I believe that Cecil Watts contrived rubber suspension blocks that also served as damping against undesired resonances. But when Watts was working on his machine in the early 1930s, the upper frequency limit of a disc record was about 5 KHz. His basic head seems to work fine 'as is' with that frequency response. But later, in the 1940s and onwards, a much extended frequency response was required - up to 10 KHz, & beyond. I believe that then, that old design revealed resonances that hitherto had been unimportant. So to suppress them, it is conjectured that various makeshift damping measures were applied. The grease on the top of the armature might have damped high-frequency resonances; and the black block at the bottom *may* - I only say may - have been intended to remove low frequency resonances. Unfortunately, after 50 years or so, the black block becomes solid & prevents the head from working at all. Being only interested in 78 rpm recording of material no later than the mid-1930s, I have found that the head works fine, for me at least, in its original state. Alas, if I had only asked John R T Davies about this matter years ago, he would doubtless have explained it to me in great detail! Wishing you all the best, Norman. P.S. A light touch with a taper reamer will open the hole in your MSS lacquers, enabling them to fit on the *slightly* oversized spindle that Goldring used on most of their decks. Worst-case scenario: fitting an early Pathé Actuelle onto a Goldring GL75 - more often than not, it won't go on. >8^(
@@bixanorak Hello again Norman! The MSS deck I mentioned in an earlier reply, with high impedance head and matching transformer, actually belonged to John R T Davies. It is fitted with a later motor on a very efficient home made suspension, there was a home made suction tube behind the head, and it is the only one of my 4 machines to have an opposite thread lead screw (IE centre start) some meccano gears corrected this! It was set up for 33rpm when I got it so I presume he mastered all those "Bateu Chinois" records on it. Regards, Rob.
Norman, Will you add fresh grease dampening? And what of the removed nasty stuff?
Hi Ron. Sorry late reply! No; the earliest heads were very basic, as you have seen. So our 'conservation' was to return the head to its original spec., which had neither top nor bottom damping. The original heads just had *suspension* of the armature bar - the square rubber blocks. After all, when the head first appeared in the early 1930s, a top response of say 4500 Hz was perfectly OK for disc records. It was only later, in the 1940s & 1950s, when the upper end became extended to 8000, 10000, 12000 Hz, that MSS needed to 'doctor' their original design. Of course, they should have done a complete re-design! But by then, tape recording was in the ascendant, and Cecil Watts, who started off MSS in the first place, had been bought out, & had retired. So they just kept on 'tweaking' the existing head. "A lonely road that led to nowhere", one might say! Moving coil, not moving iron, had been the way forward for years... All the best, Norman.
Hi everyone! if I decide to change the original magnet for a neodimium? any tip?
I think that black stuff was a type of rubber i have seen it before in old gear go's like that with age ,,must of just hardened up and stopped the movement of the cutting head
Hi Norman!
First of all thanks for this video. I'm trying to building a cutter head but I have some question.
What kind of material are made these 2 blocks near the magnets and where can I find the "socket" where I can put the stylus inside?
Thanks in advance
good info!!! thanks
Hello sehr tolles Video. Ist es möglich das man die genauen Masse des Cutter Head bekommen kann. Möchte ihn nachbauen.
Drahtstärke und Windungszahl der Spule währen auch sehr gut.
Mit freundlichen Gruß : Michael Zimmermann
Hi Norman iv just purchased a Meisner cutting machine & now id like to know if it's possible to change motor speed to 45 to cut disc's.... Any advice much appreciated...
Hi Gene. I presume it now runs at 78. Does the turntable have an idler wheel drive? If so, how does the motor drive the idler? Is it just the motor shaft, or is there a bush or sleeve on the motor spindle? Cheers, Norman.
Hello Norman, great video, I have a MSS machine, works fine mechanically and the head is ok. I believe the range top end is 8k and I’d like to know if that can be extended to something more modern? Are you in the business of working on these heads and is it actually possible to rewind or change the guts to get a wider frequency range. Thanks.
Sorry; I can't help you, because being 80 years old, I can't hear anything above about 6.5 kHz! However, if we had a Zoom chat, I could probably give you some useful info? Cheers, Norman.
@@bixanorak thanks for the quick reply, I understand, I don’t have the know how about these things so information may go over my head that’s why I was looking for someone who could do the technical work.
Perhaps I missed something but what did you do to replace the hardened black foam rubber dampening material? All I observed from your stills was that you reassembled the cutter head and I was not sure what if any substitute for the original dampening material was replaced?
Hi there, and thanks for writing. Sorry, I should have made more plain, the difference between the two rubber *suspension* blocks; and the grease and the black *damping* material. The suspension blocks normally survive extremely well & can usually be re-fitted. Whereas the black block of 'whatever it was' (and the grease), which are the damping materials, are best simply cleaned off & discarded. This is because (a) we don't know exactly what they were, so can't provide replacements anyway; and (b) the original heads never had such damping in any case, and they have always seemed to me to work far better in their original state. Having said that, I have only ever used these heads at 78 rpm for cutting on lacquer, and for embossing on polycarbonate, mostly using 1920s & 1930s programme material, and the frequency response of the head 'as is' is perfectly satisfactory for that purpose. For example, the frequency response of the Western Electric system from 1925 'only' extended up to about 5 kHz or occasionally a bit more. Having said that, IF the rubber suspension blocks actually have become totally rigid, which I have indeed encountered, new suspension can easily be made from bicycle valve rubber and one or more layers of heat-shrink sleeving. This of course produces a round suspension, but it gets squared up when you replace the little securing bridges. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
Hi thanks for the very clear and informative video. Out of interest, is the square paddle part of the armature, sitting in the coil made of steel? It was my first thought but the surely it would stick to the magnets wouldn’t it?
Thanks for writing! The long 'armature' (which is in effect a torsion bar) is clamped at the back end (see vid about 10' 20" - 10' 30"); thus, the paddle in the coil is firmly held midway in the gap between the two pole pieces. The signal going into the coil will make the paddle 'wobble' slightly from side to side, so moving the cutting stylus - but not so far as to click onto one of the poles. If it did so, it would indeed as you say, 'stick' to the pole. There's a close-up at 11 min 18 sec which shows the paddle in the gap, with the rest of the armature going back to the two bolts that hold the far end rigid. Glad you liked the vid! All the best for 2022 - take care - cheers, Norman.
@Mark Animaco Hi There... Well, all the basic info. is in the video! A base of Aluminium (non-magnetic); a torsion bar, clamped at the rear end. It could be 3 or 4mm square mild steel, or round would be OK - just file a flat at the rear end. Near the front, some suspension either side of a vertical steel fin, located on the top of the torsion bar - even soft-soldering might hold it in place. The most difficult part would be winding the coil to fit over the fin. The easy part would be using 3 or 4 small circular Neodymium magnets (quite cheap) either side of the fin instead of a complete 'magnetic circuit'. To make the coil, a former of thin plastic sheet could be cut out and glued together. Wind the former using a lathe or hand drill & layer the wire from side to side - two people best for this! Even better is to make a 'free-standing' coil by winding the wire onto a former through a pad soaked in weak shellac solution. When it dries, the wire will be held together solidly. Enamelled copper wire of 0.2mm diameter will be OK. It takes some judgement as to taking the coil off the former! If it's too dry, it won't want to come off the former. 🤔 0.2mm diameter is about 35 SWG, & resistance is about O.45 Ohms per metre. So winding a coil of say 20 metres of 35 SWG wire will total ~ 9 Ohms, so can be driven from a normal audio amplifier. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
@Mark Animaco Hi Mark... drop me a line at jazz@normanfield.com & we'll take it from there, OK? Cheers, Norman.
Several bottles o wine later ...He solved the problem
Norman sáo maravilhosos e exenlent teu trabalhos aprecio muito você é muito inteligent abs 73
Do you know if the head is supposed to heat a bit while cutting a reasonable volume ? I recall tried to cut a record from an off circuit pickup head I recoiled at 200 ohms and I was frightened to melt it while recording so I stopped x)
Hi there. If your head is noticeably heating up, sorry, but there must be something wrong. A head such as the one in this video, requires only 3 or 4 Watts to work it. They don't noticeably heat up. Commonly, in old portable equipments, a 6V6 valve would provide ample power. In the 1950s, an EL84 (6BQ5) was still OK. Of course, much higher powered amplifiers were used in fixed locations. One MSS amplifier had two EL34s in push-pull, which might have provided 15 or 20 Watts RMS. BUT this did not mean that so much power was needed; it simply ensured that the amp was just idling or 'ticking over', so the distortion would be very low. If your head is heating up, it could be due to: (a) the armature is too heavily damped; (b) part of the coil is somehow shorted out (does it still measure 200 Ohms at the head terminals?) In one head I rewound badly, the coil was not secured firmly, so the coil broke loose & began to vibrate, and because the coil was not sufficiently insulated from the metalwork, the enamel on the wire wore through & caused a near short-circuit - which stopped the head working, & eventually one of the leads burned out, producing a curl of smoke from the head! Fortunately, the 100 W amplifier being used survived OK. (c) 200 Ohms is rather a large value if you're using the speaker (low impedance) output of an amplifier. If that's what you're using, a coil of 10 - 15 Ohms DC resistance would appear to the amp as virtually identical to a loudspeaker - so the amp should be perfectly happy with the cutting head as a load. Hope this is of come help. Cheers, Norman.
Rubber stuff is dampener for the coil.. it what i've found out.. you can get flat rubber. to replace from any craft shop..
hey Norman. great video. I've never come across any disk lathe here let me know if you come across one going for sale. I'm in the West Midlands.
Hi Matthew. Alas, they don't turn up all that often. You could put in place an ebay search, but it's a difficult search to define. 'Disc cutter' brings up gear for machining car brake discs. 'Record lathe' usually brings up wood-turning lathes made by the company called 'Record'! Anyhow, keep trying... Cheers, Norman.
Did this company ever develop feedback cutters?
Probably not; I'm an enthusiast rather than a strict historian, but I doubt it. The company history of MSS is quite convoluted, especially after WW2. Cecil Watts was eventually bought out, and the company started making tape recorders, which can't have been a success, because I've only ever seen ONE of 'em! But they kept on making the cutting lathes, still using the same model of head, even in 1959 (there's a Wireless World advert. that year); I haven't looked for any later ads though. They were very good at persuading the head to make rather commendably good recordings - by using grease damping, and various inductance/capacitance filters, also they had a multiple contact compensator (on some models) that lifted the top end as the head approached the centre of the disc. Incidentally, the Beatles first record (a one-off lacquer 78) was made by a chap in Liverpool who had an MSS outfit in the back of his shop.
Thanks. I once owned a consumer disc recorder (Wilcox-Gay) and had use of a Universal professional recorder. I enjoyed recording because, unlike today, some skill was required. @@bixanorak
Hello! Some time ago I tried to make a record head.I used in my construction a coil (diameter 1'', wire AWG33, 80microHenries) and a neodyme magnet (diameter 7/8'' length 3/16``).An "anchor" had a slice of duraluminium profile (corner section). I didn`t have any magnetic circuit - there was only a magnet and a coil.I measured resonant frequency - it was 2200 Hz.When I made some records - I found out that the recorder acts as lowpass filter - until 2200...2500Hz.(((
Oh dear! That must have been very disappointing. If you still have the device, pleas send some images of it - maybe it can be made to work OK?
Best regards, Norman.
Hello@@bixanorak ! I took some pictures of the device -
1)A common view drive.google.com/file/d/1FEM4BB4muzbMSQishk5fOr9sBChF4Ty6/view?usp=sharing
2)A homemade cutting head
drive.google.com/file/d/1F9vBmTroWap_fyWqtmK5-mOaZJZOe7lB/view?usp=sharing
drive.google.com/file/d/1Eqgt68JuELGlXSLgmKrzpWWwc5Wo5QfE/view?usp=sharing
The ferequency response has a big resonance pear (roughly 2.2KHz).I used for recording DVD blanks - but this blanks allow to have a good quality only with extrusion by the needle with a triangle shape. I tried to use cutting - there was a horrible noise during a recording process((( - the record was extremly noisy. I`m not satisfied by the results - the record by extrusion was quiet and bandwidth was narrow (untit 4KHz with frequency correction) .I made my records in speed 33 turns per minute. Nowadays this "record mashine" stands on my balcony - I don`t have a time for experiments))
Genius!!
Thanks Norman for you videos they are a great help i'm trying to restore a very similar Mss machine. I measured the ohms on mine and it reads 2k. i have no vibration on the needle, what sort of wattage should i feed to it? and which would be + or - or does it not matter many Thanks John, Link to your page didn't work sorry ask questions on here
Hi there. Sorry, my website is in disarray at the moment - I must really try to get it sorted. BUT - your problem consists of *two* parts. Part I: the resisistance the winding of your head is 2000 Ohms. If this is genuine reading, which it probably is, it means that your head was designed to be located in the anode circuit a a VALVE. Valves are high impedance devices, so 2000 Ohms *DC resistance* is about right. BUT... you probably don't want to start messing around with valves, because (a) it's tedious, and (b) they work on high voltages of DC and so are quite dangerous. Later MSS heads had LOW IMPEDANCE windings, of only about 10, 12 or 15 Ohms. Now these are really great, because they are exactly like connecting a loudspeaker to an amplifier, the output of which is always low impedance. The amp *thinks* it's driving a low impedance speaker & it doesn't mind at all. Having a low impedance coil in an MSS cutting machine makes life much, much easier! Youy won't get any needle movement, feeding a Lo-Z signal into a Hi-Z head. Part II: The suspension of the armature may be totally rigid anyway. In that case, the above video shows you the way forward! Personally, unless you are addicted to keeping gear in its pristine original condition, my advice is to dismantle the head according to the video, an replace the coil - which will have thousands of turns of hair-fine wire, with another, consisting of perhaps 300 or 500 turns of thicker wire that will have a DC resisitance of around 10, 12 or 15 Ohms. Then you can drive it from a Lo-Z loudspeaker on any amplifier. They don't want a lot of power, by the way; an ordinary domestic 15 Watts per channel amp is fine. Hope this is of help. Cheers, Norman.
@@bixanorak many Thanks for your reply and time, I was thinking of trying to get a impedance matching transformer, if not i'll try replacing the coil, the suspension seems fine. cheers again John
@@rockingroots Hi there . Well - if you know the suspension is OK, YES! Easiest is to use an impedance matching transformer! I have done so several times. For instance, the output transformer from a valve (tube) radio, that had an output valve such as a 6V6 (1930s/40s), or an EL84 (U.S. 6BQ5 maybe?) , can simply be used the other way round. After all, It matched a high impedance valve, down to a very low impedance loudspeaker - 4 or 8 Ohms. Therefore it will work the other way round - feed what was the secondary from a normal modern amp speaker output, & connect what was the primary, to the head. But BE CAREFUL: you'll end up with quite a few volts on the head, maybe 200V or more - I've had a few jolts that way. Still, good luck. Norman. (Remember, these MSS head were pretty easy to drive; they don't need umpteen Watts - a single EL84 (rated 3 Watts out) works fine, for starters.
@@bixanorak Many Thanks again . I'll let you know how i get on, but it might take quite awhile knowing me. I have the advertising 2 page leaflet for an upgraded Mss Type PR 4B with some interesting spec on it. I can send you some photos if you'd like.cheers again John
@@rockingroots Hi there Norman and John I have 4 MSS machines in various states of decay, one deck is from the MSS radiogram. It has a high impedance head and has it's original matching transformer mounted to the bottom of the base board, it is quite substantial and matches the head to a 15ohm output. It must have been a costly item and it makes you wonder why they didn't just wind a 15ohm head? Anyway that was their solution so you shouldn't go wrong with some kind of single-ended valve OPT in reverse. Thanks Norman for another excellent video, Rob.
is it just me or had Norman had a few drinky poos just before the final test? a celebration of success as it were? 😉
Yes Simon: sorry; the stress of trying to be 'creative' over a period of well over 6 hours took its toll & had to be sustained by the odd slurp! Cheers, Norman.
I'd really like to get mine up and running.. with some help..? >:)
Well, as you can see, it's not too difficult! The worst problem you may encounter is a coil that is open circuit. It is surprisingly easy to wind a replacement low impedance coil. (If the defective coil was high impedance, then it's extremely difficult because they have thousands of turns of very fine wire. So wind a new low impedance one & drive it from a loudspeaker output.) When I get round to it, will make a video of how to wind a low impedance coil like the one in this head. Cheers, Norman.
I have rewound it. the problem is i broke my magnet on am M-41 cutter head.. I had sent it out to west tech to fix it and he rewound it with low impendance. and i blew the head.. He said no more than 5 volume.. I wanted the loudest cut.. so was cutting at 6 volume,.. head lasted 1 month before the coil burned inside.. 4 weeks... So heads been dead since,.2006.. I keep trying ideas.. and have an idea i thinks works, but no sound is being cut in the grooves..?? I can biuld coild from scratch card board. but do i add the magnet on top or sideways.. I origionaly wanted it for 16 ohms.. he wouldnt do that for me..
Having watched your video on cutting(or as you say, "embossing") your own 78rpm records, it got me thinking: "why isn't there something like this for cutting home-made stereo 45rpm singles or EPs, or even 12-inch 33rpm LPs in Stereo. Oh the fun I'd have cutting my own stereo 45s of old favourite 1960s hits(not for sale though, Oh no! I'd never want to part with them!)
Hi - there is actually, a number of videos showing home made 33/45 discs in stereo! Just have a look around - maybe start with ua-cam.com/video/8y7osjazhLE/v-deo.html . Good luck!