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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 2, January 1942
Page 17
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SPACEWAYS 17 SO YOU WANT TO RECORD? To check this we shall have to cut a few sample grooves for examination. We'll use the 6" disc for all this. As we cut we'll notice the removed material curling away from the styli. The heaviness of this thread should be about half-way between that of a horsehair and a human hair. If you have a micrometer handy, the thickness should be about 2 to 2 and 1-2 1000ths of an inch. A better method to see whether the groove is of right depth is actually to examine the grooves with a microscope or hand-glass. Grooves carrying no sound should be so spaced that any one groove bears to the adjacent uncut surface ("land") a relation of about 60-40. All machines have an adjustment for this. Crystal cutters usually have a small screw on the arm for this purpose. Magnetic cutters have some sort of tension spring and knurled nut arrangement. The instruction sheet will show you where the adjustment is located on your particular machine. This cutting depth will hold good only as long as the one styli and one disc is used. When styli is changed and a different type of disc is used (one made by a different manufacturer or a different brand) it must be again adjusted for best results. Well, we now have the cutter adjusted, so we can start cutting some experimental grooves. On the front of your machine, or inside, will be some sort of volume indicator. On the more expensive ones this is a meter. On the home ones it is usually an electric eye, similar to the turning eye found on the majority of home radios. The meter has its scale marked off showing the best position for the needle to show that the voltage being applied to the cutting head is best for recording. Others are merely marked off showing voltage at all times and only experience will tell you which is the best reading for correct recording procedure. On the meter type the reading during vocal or music recording is anything but steady as it swings with the peaks. One soon learns to read the average reading, however, and this should cause no difficulty. The turning eye type of indicator is by far the simpler to use. Correct volume is such as just to close the eye without causing overlapping. There is less jumping than with the meter and it is slightly easier to use. Regardless of which type of indicator is on your machine, you will have to record a few test grooves at various volumes to find how much one's cutter can handle before distortion sets in. After cutting the test grooves, play them back and note results. Examination of test cuts, each a little louder than the preceding, will reveal overcutting tendencies while listening will show where distortion starts to creep in. You will find that volume for speech can be higher than for music because distortion in the former is not so noticeable as in the latter. But while recording one must always attend the volume control so that when an extra-loud passage comes along that will cause over-cutting, the volume can be adjusted. Or one can adjust the volume for below average volume so the cutter will handle the loud passages without trouble. This, quite naturally, necessitates some sort of rehearsal. One more, but a very important, consideration must be attended to. This is thread kick. On all recordings the cut material from the disc will do one of two things. It will either kink to one side out of the way or become tangled with the cutting styli, causing distortion, rattle, and even jump, ruining the record if it is too severe, and even going so far as to ruin the tip of the styli. Examining the thread while cutting, you will notice it is coming either from the inside of the styli, in which case it almost never tangles; or from the outside, where it is almost certain to. If the thread is coming around the outside several remedies can be adopted to make it to the opposite. If the cutting head is mounted with two screws side by side, the screws can be loosened and a shim, or spacer about 1-16", slipped between the cutter and the mounting beside the screw nearest the center of the (continued on page 24)
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SPACEWAYS 17 SO YOU WANT TO RECORD? To check this we shall have to cut a few sample grooves for examination. We'll use the 6" disc for all this. As we cut we'll notice the removed material curling away from the styli. The heaviness of this thread should be about half-way between that of a horsehair and a human hair. If you have a micrometer handy, the thickness should be about 2 to 2 and 1-2 1000ths of an inch. A better method to see whether the groove is of right depth is actually to examine the grooves with a microscope or hand-glass. Grooves carrying no sound should be so spaced that any one groove bears to the adjacent uncut surface ("land") a relation of about 60-40. All machines have an adjustment for this. Crystal cutters usually have a small screw on the arm for this purpose. Magnetic cutters have some sort of tension spring and knurled nut arrangement. The instruction sheet will show you where the adjustment is located on your particular machine. This cutting depth will hold good only as long as the one styli and one disc is used. When styli is changed and a different type of disc is used (one made by a different manufacturer or a different brand) it must be again adjusted for best results. Well, we now have the cutter adjusted, so we can start cutting some experimental grooves. On the front of your machine, or inside, will be some sort of volume indicator. On the more expensive ones this is a meter. On the home ones it is usually an electric eye, similar to the turning eye found on the majority of home radios. The meter has its scale marked off showing the best position for the needle to show that the voltage being applied to the cutting head is best for recording. Others are merely marked off showing voltage at all times and only experience will tell you which is the best reading for correct recording procedure. On the meter type the reading during vocal or music recording is anything but steady as it swings with the peaks. One soon learns to read the average reading, however, and this should cause no difficulty. The turning eye type of indicator is by far the simpler to use. Correct volume is such as just to close the eye without causing overlapping. There is less jumping than with the meter and it is slightly easier to use. Regardless of which type of indicator is on your machine, you will have to record a few test grooves at various volumes to find how much one's cutter can handle before distortion sets in. After cutting the test grooves, play them back and note results. Examination of test cuts, each a little louder than the preceding, will reveal overcutting tendencies while listening will show where distortion starts to creep in. You will find that volume for speech can be higher than for music because distortion in the former is not so noticeable as in the latter. But while recording one must always attend the volume control so that when an extra-loud passage comes along that will cause over-cutting, the volume can be adjusted. Or one can adjust the volume for below average volume so the cutter will handle the loud passages without trouble. This, quite naturally, necessitates some sort of rehearsal. One more, but a very important, consideration must be attended to. This is thread kick. On all recordings the cut material from the disc will do one of two things. It will either kink to one side out of the way or become tangled with the cutting styli, causing distortion, rattle, and even jump, ruining the record if it is too severe, and even going so far as to ruin the tip of the styli. Examining the thread while cutting, you will notice it is coming either from the inside of the styli, in which case it almost never tangles; or from the outside, where it is almost certain to. If the thread is coming around the outside several remedies can be adopted to make it to the opposite. If the cutting head is mounted with two screws side by side, the screws can be loosened and a shim, or spacer about 1-16", slipped between the cutter and the mounting beside the screw nearest the center of the (continued on page 24)
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