I have a “homemade” record of my dad singing that he sent home when he was in the army WW2. It was done by the Red Cross. Pretty good quality and I treasure it despite it being a bit scratchy. Cool video thanks!
When i was 15 I built a recording phonograph that used: 1) cardboard discs cut from the plastic-coated cardboard boxes refrigerators came in, 2) old acetate-covered transcription discs, 3) thick candle-wax poured on top of shirt cardboards cut into discs. I used a needle stylus glued to a thin plastic sheet glued to the open end of one of the weight retainers on a barbell, with the whole affair amplified by a swiped orange road-cone horn. The results? Really not bad at all when played on a regular HiFi at 78 RPM. I still have "Shortnin Bread" played by my Troop 188 boy scout band. Other than the fact that you had to shout and record really close to the mouth of the horn, these DIY experiments were really a lot of enduring fun. Keep at it yourself! you'll succeed without Gakken!
That's really interesting! When you get the chance, could you perhaps try uploading some of those old discs? I think it'd be really interesting as a relic of years past.
When in my 20s (mid 1960s) I was servicing electronics, I had acquired a Presto cutter with the hot needle add on, repaired the record amp, and cut many acetate records. I learned how to operate my lathe from Glenn Campbell of G&C Records Pittsburgh, and even worked with him learning the business using the 2 presses he had. I met him when his Ampex 8 track (tube record/play amplifiers) needed service. Watching this video made me wish I had kept the Presto! Glenn retired and I lost track of him. The studio electronics were all tube including Neuman condenser tube mics, Western Electric board, Ampex 1" 8 track, Ampex 1/4" 2 track, Ampex 1/4" full track, Pultek EQs, EMT plate reverb, Altec amps, and more than I remember. As Bob Hope would say.......Thanks for the memories! Lou, Clearwater FL
As a child I used to have fun putting my fingernail into the record groove while it‘s spinning - yes, you can actually hear the music that way! I found that fascinating. As an adult, I have to add that you should only do that to records you don‘t care about too much 😂
why records you dont care about too much? your fingernail is alot softer than the Vinyl so it shud not wear it out, if 40 years of metal needles didnt wear my abba records out, a fingernail wont either
@@Space_Reptile The thing is, your finger also moves. And yes, the vinyl is harser than he fingernail, but these microscopic grooves ON the plate (Or rather the grooves cut into the plate) are very fragile
@@Space_Reptile A stylus has a microscopically small tip to "read" the record, and does so with a weight of usually under 5 grams. A fingernail is much thicker and has a different shape. No doubt it would damage the outer groovewalls of the record, especially since it's probably going to be more than 10 grams of downforce in order to hear anything.
As someone who has worked with both home and semi-pro level lathes for a while now, I think the biggest problem in fidelity is due to cutting cold into the plastic. Try heating the blank record under a lamp just before, or while making the cut. I've gotten much better fidelity simply pressing a groove into a sheet, or "embossing," than I ever have when trying to actually cut into plastic. Maybe something to consider as a mod for the machine?
@@MrThegreatmc using a different needle all together. A shallow cone shape that presses into and deforms the surface rather than the sharp edge that cuts out a strip of material.
I was thinking maybe put a little extra weight on the cutting arm... tape a silver dollar or something on top of it. Might screw it up completely... or it might improve the quality of the cut.
Another thing that might help is EQ the audio as it comes out of the record. But yeah, great ideas on the heating it up. Might want to cut them in a well heated room or temperature controlled box.
@@DavidHilowitzMusic Ok now you HAVE to try doing this with the Wilcox. Perhaps using a blank record from the TE record kit to record on the Wilcox and then run that through the TE to capture the sound would work?
if you are able to get enough volume onto the needle, you can get an ok sound with ambient music. it also helps to use a small paintbrush to brush away the swarf, and it helps if the record blank is warm when you cut. we used to do them on cd singles as bonus tracks. you could play the compact-disc as a record as well as a cd, they were done on a homebrew cutter.
@@eldrickejleest that's the beauty and simplicity of analogue - it literally IS the waveform, inscribed into an object! That's one reason they used the technique for the Voyager golden records, as the method is simple enough to describe in a couple pictograms. Analogue audio tape is basically the same, when you look at it under a magnetic tape viewer there's all these gradients from strong to nothing. Looks a bit like an analogue barcode. And that's also literally the waveform, but viewed from the top-down instead of side-on like records are. (The Edison cylinder was also cut top-down, and so also kind of looked like a long barcode!)
@@Terrydober1 hey I’m glad it helped! You reminded me to check what I said again, and I missed the word magnetic once when talking about tape. So I added that back in. (A deeper/wider groove in a needle-pickup system is exactly equivalent to a stronger magnetisation in a magnetic-pickup system!)
7:32 - The hit of nostalgia I experienced for a time I wasn't even born in, is fascinating. So many stories told, so little time to listen to them all.
this is so freaking cute how you two collaborated. thanks so much for introducing this musical tool/toy to me, for the unboxing and essay around the device, and for providing these beautiful, eclectic samples. i greatly appreciate all you two have done and look forward to more collaborative work between you two
The coolest thing in the video is how you turned out the usual expectations around the device and made it into a sound producer instead of a reproducer. Awesome job, Dave.
My grandmother & step-grandfather and (a few years later) my mom & dad got married in Las Vegas in the 1950’s and the chapel recorded each ceremony on a record. I still have the recordings of the ceremonies. One of my prized possessions.
@@DavidHilowitzMusic I’ve watched this video a few times. I have made up my mind to get one of these “toy” record machines. They’re sold out at the moment but I’ll keep checking back. It’s really pretty cool! I love this! Even if the sound isn’t so good. Thanks for your video.
I was super curious about the TE kit, so it’s really cool to see this deep dive into the history of consumer record cutters. My neighbors had a record cutter in their bar/rumpus room, I wish we’d been allowed to play with it. Also learned a few things about how records are made that I never knew. And now I want to write a song called “Swarf” Thank you!
While watching this video, I couldn't stop thinking about a way to use it in sound design and then you went and did it. The sample library sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I think if you apply RIAA per-equalization to the wav file before you try to record it, it will improve the sound AND keep the needle from skipping out of the groove.
A friend of mine had a Kingston Dub Plate cutter, which attached to the standard Technics deck and had waxy plastic disks. I think you would get a kick out of that - and could probably find the blanks easier. It sounded quite good, but he said they wore down quickly.
this whole video is interesting, but i think the thing that grabbed my attention the most was the (i think this is what it was) norwegian teaching vinyl, the one playing basic phrases in english then norwegian. i find it especially interesting because i feel like norway is such a small part of the world, and its always special to me when i see something norwegian so far away from norway :)
Nice vid! I find these old recordable discs and sound letters pretty interesting, since they let ordinary people record their voices and stuff before tape became available to the general public.
There are a group of people here on TH-cam who use the Gakken with blank blank cds, and a different type of needle, and found they were able to make much better reproductions of their music. You should check it out and update this video!
I decided to come back to this video for not only for the fact that you can create homemade vinyls (though that is very cool) but for the one song you used in this. I feel captivated by this song. Think you should turn your sample into a full song for people to listen! I don't think I've heard something like this before! So please do! I would love to hear something just like what you just made!
Jack White has his record booths and there’s also a record booth in a guitar shop in Louisville Kentucky, I’ve thought about going in there and cutting a couple songs just for my own crowd funding campaigns or something. The tabletop units like these never gave me much hope of making anything too good though. But I’ve been following Deke Dickerson getting his Scully lathes working right and that’s been interesting. It could be that in the next decade we will be able to 3D print records if the resolution keeps getting higher. Someone did that a while back but the sound quality was worse than the table top units.
3d printing sounds like a great idea if the tech gets to a resoultion on par or above these table top units. Imagine if the quality got as good as a master record.
Hey, that's funny, just bought one of these and was planning to make a video on it! First time I cut a record with this, I was expecting my first one to come out terribly but it actually sounded pretty great. I was in awe, I couldn't believe I had actually just cut a record with a tiny kit I built hours ago.
Fascinating stuff- definately has a very lo fi sound but the idea of recording various waves then sampling the recorded results is a great one- those sounds have a lovely retro feel to them.
My grandpa had one of those Wilcox-Gay record cutters. When he died I found only a single cut record in his home, and it was a little audio postcard that my grandma and aunt had recorded for him while he was away in WW2. I recorded and cleaned up a digital copy of it for preservation and gave the record to my aunt. I don't know what other records they had recorded, but the audio quality was surprisingly good so I'm guessing they had a lot of practice cutting records for friends all over the place.
the sample library you created out of this product is exactly why i bought it. i wanted to do the exact same thing and have some fun in my sonic journey. thanks for doing this!
5:10 Also important, although the video is already done and produced, is that Audacity comes with a built-in RIAA curve that you're able to apply and even invert for audio like this. If you did try it, did it sound any better than what Teenage Engineering had to offer?
Thank goodness, I can already tell that you guys aren’t going to go into a rant about perfect cutting from a toy rebrand. I feel like the te fan base is the most reactive and vicious, temperamental crowd. It’s so cool! Take my money every time!
Dude, huge kudos for making lemonade from those very sour lemons 😆 That was an awesome way to end and I really appreciate the free sounds, as yes indeed, they sound beautiful in their own environment and for that sound design use. I'm very much a fan of lo-fi FX and they're going to get maximum usage, so thank you for your contribution to the sound design arena and if i manage to make anything cool, i shall post it up here so you can hear your samples in action 😉👊 💚
Those Wilcox-Gay machines (Also sold as Airline/Silvertone) were capable of pretty reasonable recordings. If I recall, the model I had had a cutting arm and a playback arm with different stylus types. Mine was beyond my ability to repair, so I sold it to someone who could get it going.
Its because the'res no cut depth modulation. You want your transducer/servo cutter in a V orientation. Any sound with simultaneous frequencies is going to give it a hard time. Soft edge/low slew rate vocals are going to work best for that setup. If you have a 3d printer its not hard to cad out the cutting head assembly. Repurposing voice coils in a small driver assembly can work, like the Gakken, but needle-through-coil works best imo
I'm surprised that no one has come up with an improved version of this since the yrs have flown by ..now vinyl is becoming obsolete maybe some clever person will make one hopefully to prove a point with our improved technology from over the years . I say keep vinyl alive. 🙂
Just hearing that old radio norwegian on the language record makes me really happy (i am norwegian for the record, pun intended) I have some old single records of nordic bird songs that I need to digitize but my old transcriptors turntable isnt in the best of shapes!
Interesting dive into home recording tech! If you've not already come across "bone music" give it a look. In the 50s music from the west was banned in the Soviet Union, and enterprising teenagers would lathe bootlegs onto used x-rays, hence bone music!
Was coming here to say this. You can buy old x rays in bulk from old oddity shops. I know a few local to me if anyone is trying to experiment. Might have to try it myself now actually
With the precision of a 3D printer or CNC machine, could you use a 3D model to creat a record (even just a small one) that's playable? I imagine there's some form of math you can use to convert your audio to a string of data that can be adapted to the varying diameter of a record, at least I'd hope, it'd be awesome to send one in the mail to someone with a postcard, like just a sample of the ocean waves of a specific area, or a type of bird not native to a locale.
i saw somewhere that you can de-noise a record by spraying it with water. i'm not sure if it'll work on these smaller plastic records, but it's worth a try!
I wanted you to put a new blank vynil you got with your new setup in the old recording machine to see if it works better 😭 For now, I go to check the video you quoted
Guitarist Les Paul made some of his 1940s hit records using a homemade lathe he built himself - an old Cadillac flywheel for the turntable and dentist drill belts - I think he was using 16inch blank discs at 78rpm and only recording on the outer edges for fidelity - he and Mary Ford did a number of disc to disc overdub hits before he switched to tape in early 50s - those early discs are amazing for their hifi sound quality
You need the RIAA curve when recording to the vinyl, and then you need to play the record on a turntable that plays through the "phono" side of an amplifier. That way the inverse of the filter you used during recording will be applied and bring the low frequencies back!
Old record lathes like the one you have can sound amazing! but there is an issue. The actual parts of the machine need to be restored. And not just the capacitors, The recording head it's self is the issue at fault here, the rubber in the head had become hard and is restricting movement of the needle, causing low volume, buzzing, and very poor sound. a little work by just removing the rubber should make the recordings sound really good!
This might be my history in Black Metal but I love how awful these sounds are, even compared to other records. Gives otherwise uninteresting sounds (specifically the pure tones) a heartbeat.
Goes to show you that today we have everything given to us on a silver platter. But look at how much work and devotion went into something just to make the process work! I certainly appreciate this learning experience.
I'm so lucky that I have a friend who masters for vinyl and will cut me professional white labels for about $30 a pop. These are really cool mind you. Edit: The samples are beautiful!
Old science projects books used to give instructions for homemade phonograph players and recorders. I think they suggested smoked glass disks and sheets of hard wax for the record material. Keep in mind also that a higher record speed in the pre-microgroove (16/33 13, or 45 rpm) era normally produced a higher sound quality. When people cut their own, 78rpm was standard and the French used 90 rpm for better fidelity.
Try warming the plastic disc before recording is actually working like already is mentioned in the comments. Also try to record through a mixer (your phone is not loud enough) so you can control the gain input signal. You can use a (adjustable for your track) RIAA filter before recording
I have grown fed up of installing endless plugins and held off on Decent Sampler for a while. Usually the faffing required to load banks into a sampler is a turn off. I took the plunge today and downloaded DS, its amazing! I had no idea you could download sounds from the UI within the plugin, that's a complete game changer for time efficiency and staying in flow. I'm sure you have in the past, but a new video quickly outlining decent sampler's ease of instillation/downloading new sounds etc. would surely bring in some people who are holding off from downloading. Just a thought! This is the sound that tipped me over the edge and made me download DS, really glad I did. Thank you.
I ordered one of these from Japan a while back when I first heard about them. I also have a little Numark PT01 I find playing back the recordings from the Numark sounds a little less noisy and usable than the playback from the Gakken. Some stuff that won’t play back on the Gakken will play back on the Numark. I also 3D printed some adapters to allow me to use the Gakken to record onto old CDRs & DVDRs. I have loads of blank CDRs from when they were the medium.
Knowing of the limitations of the device, at first when watching this video I thought to myself: Why would anyone actually want to buy and use this? By the end of the video it made sense, you demonstrated a really cool, creative way to make good use of it, kudos!
wow! what the heck! i had just discovered this a few days ago and just now you post a review! anyway, super cool to see how well (or not well) this works and i really love the sound of that sample library
The Gakken toy record maker is a lot of fun,and with the proper adjustments and a few mods,it can cut half decent records.Using lubricants as liquid turtle wax,helps a lot with the sound quality.
Damn, I brought the same kit and built it three years ago. I couldn’t get it to work and google translate was weird at the time, and I gave up eventually. Finally there is a better guild on TH-cam and it’s time to revive the little fun toy.
I have seen in a youtube video that before cutting you should spray a thin film of furniture polish on the surface of the blank record which reduces the surface noise and makes the stylus to cut the groves on the surface. Before playing you need to wash off the furniture polish.
I wonder if running a stereo compressor before the cutter input would help. I know for sure that a LOT of popular records were cut with some form of compression, and getting the level towards the peak of what the hardware can handle is essential to reducing the noise. A big record lathe has a heavier arm, so it can cut a deeper groove, which in turn can handle a "bigger" sound to get a better signal to noise ratio. Oh, and the medium being cut can also make a HUGE difference. You could try heating and pressing sealing wax into a flat plate then cutting it to a circle for a medium that would take a better groove. That's essentially what the original Edison wax cylinders were made from.
Thanks for trying these for the rest of us (not that I wanted one, my vinyl collection is large enough). Thanks also for the information about manufacturing and sound engineerings these vinyls. Great
I have a “homemade” record of my dad singing that he sent home when he was in the army WW2. It was done by the Red Cross. Pretty good quality and I treasure it despite it being a bit scratchy. Cool video thanks!
Dang! That sounds amazing. Have you digitized and backed it up? Something like that should absolutely be saved for future generations.
@@PiercingSight Thanks I never thought to do that! Will pursue this.
Was it on bakelite or something else?
@@gingernutpreacher I think it’s called acetate.
@@catloverkitten10 yep please get that stored digitally that stuff does degrade with age
When i was 15 I built a recording phonograph that used: 1) cardboard discs cut from the plastic-coated cardboard boxes refrigerators came in, 2) old acetate-covered transcription discs, 3) thick candle-wax poured on top of shirt cardboards cut into discs. I used a needle stylus glued to a thin plastic sheet glued to the open end of one of the weight retainers on a barbell, with the whole affair amplified by a swiped orange road-cone horn. The results? Really not bad at all when played on a regular HiFi at 78 RPM. I still have "Shortnin Bread" played by my Troop 188 boy scout band. Other than the fact that you had to shout and record really close to the mouth of the horn, these DIY experiments were really a lot of enduring fun. Keep at it yourself! you'll succeed without Gakken!
@jackfinch4482 champion! Thanx
Which of the three types of records sounded the best?
That's really interesting! When you get the chance, could you perhaps try uploading some of those old discs? I think it'd be really interesting as a relic of years past.
@@jackfinch4482 wow 🤯
When in my 20s (mid 1960s) I was servicing electronics, I had acquired a Presto cutter with the hot needle add on, repaired the record amp, and cut many acetate records. I learned how to operate my lathe from Glenn Campbell of G&C Records Pittsburgh, and even worked with him learning the business using the 2 presses he had. I met him when his Ampex 8 track (tube record/play amplifiers) needed service. Watching this video made me wish I had kept the Presto! Glenn retired and I lost track of him. The studio electronics were all tube including Neuman condenser tube mics, Western Electric board, Ampex 1" 8 track, Ampex 1/4" 2 track, Ampex 1/4" full track, Pultek EQs, EMT plate reverb, Altec amps, and more than I remember. As Bob Hope would say.......Thanks for the memories!
Lou, Clearwater FL
As a child I used to have fun putting my fingernail into the record groove while it‘s spinning - yes, you can actually hear the music that way! I found that fascinating. As an adult, I have to add that you should only do that to records you don‘t care about too much 😂
Does it play directly into your soul? 😅
@@Bittamin i wanna know too! 😅
why records you dont care about too much? your fingernail is alot softer than the Vinyl so it shud not wear it out, if 40 years of metal needles didnt wear my abba records out, a fingernail wont either
@@Space_Reptile The thing is, your finger also moves. And yes, the vinyl is harser than he fingernail, but these microscopic grooves ON the plate (Or rather the grooves cut into the plate) are very fragile
@@Space_Reptile A stylus has a microscopically small tip to "read" the record, and does so with a weight of usually under 5 grams. A fingernail is much thicker and has a different shape. No doubt it would damage the outer groovewalls of the record, especially since it's probably going to be more than 10 grams of downforce in order to hear anything.
As someone who has worked with both home and semi-pro level lathes for a while now, I think the biggest problem in fidelity is due to cutting cold into the plastic. Try heating the blank record under a lamp just before, or while making the cut. I've gotten much better fidelity simply pressing a groove into a sheet, or "embossing," than I ever have when trying to actually cut into plastic. Maybe something to consider as a mod for the machine?
I think if they just used a heat gun angled at a distance they could get the effect you're thinking of
when you say embossing, do you mean that the heat causes it not to cut, or are you saying separately modifying it as in dulling the cutting needle?
@@MrThegreatmc using a different needle all together. A shallow cone shape that presses into and deforms the surface rather than the sharp edge that cuts out a strip of material.
I was thinking maybe put a little extra weight on the cutting arm... tape a silver dollar or something on top of it. Might screw it up completely... or it might improve the quality of the cut.
Another thing that might help is EQ the audio as it comes out of the record.
But yeah, great ideas on the heating it up. Might want to cut them in a well heated room or temperature controlled box.
The first chord you played with the sampled instrument shocked me, turned out really cool. Great work!
Thanks! It was kind of eye-opening for me as well. And to think I could have been doing things like that for years with the old Wilcox-Gay cutter…
@@DavidHilowitzMusic Ok now you HAVE to try doing this with the Wilcox. Perhaps using a blank record from the TE record kit to record on the Wilcox and then run that through the TE to capture the sound would work?
Hi Jorb!
if you are able to get enough volume onto the needle, you can get an ok sound with ambient music. it also helps to use a small paintbrush to brush away the swarf, and it helps if the record blank is warm when you cut. we used to do them on cd singles as bonus tracks. you could play the compact-disc as a record as well as a cd, they were done on a homebrew cutter.
That sounds very cool!
g2k
Its just insane to me how a needle can make all these millions of sounds from just plastic it’s magic
I still can't comprehend it
@@eldrickejleest me neither
@@eldrickejleest that's the beauty and simplicity of analogue - it literally IS the waveform, inscribed into an object! That's one reason they used the technique for the Voyager golden records, as the method is simple enough to describe in a couple pictograms.
Analogue audio tape is basically the same, when you look at it under a magnetic tape viewer there's all these gradients from strong to nothing. Looks a bit like an analogue barcode. And that's also literally the waveform, but viewed from the top-down instead of side-on like records are. (The Edison cylinder was also cut top-down, and so also kind of looked like a long barcode!)
@@kaitlyn__L finally I'm able to comprehend! You are the first person to explain what I really wanted to know
@@Terrydober1 hey I’m glad it helped!
You reminded me to check what I said again, and I missed the word magnetic once when talking about tape. So I added that back in. (A deeper/wider groove in a needle-pickup system is exactly equivalent to a stronger magnetisation in a magnetic-pickup system!)
7:32 - The hit of nostalgia I experienced for a time I wasn't even born in, is fascinating. So many stories told, so little time to listen to them all.
this is so freaking cute how you two collaborated. thanks so much for introducing this musical tool/toy to me, for the unboxing and essay around the device, and for providing these beautiful, eclectic samples. i greatly appreciate all you two have done and look forward to more collaborative work between you two
The coolest thing in the video is how you turned out the usual expectations around the device and made it into a sound producer instead of a reproducer. Awesome job, Dave.
For some reason your videos haves a very calming effect on me
Such a friendly and peaceful narrator voice
Thank you for your beautiful work!
Same here. And what a bonus to hear Mrs Dave on this one as well!
My grandmother & step-grandfather and (a few years later) my mom & dad got married in Las Vegas in the 1950’s and the chapel recorded each ceremony on a record. I still have the recordings of the ceremonies. One of my prized possessions.
that’s really cool!
@@DavidHilowitzMusic I’ve watched this video a few times. I have made up my mind to get one of these “toy” record machines. They’re sold out at the moment but I’ll keep checking back. It’s really pretty cool! I love this! Even if the sound isn’t so good.
Thanks for your video.
7:32 I hope the man who recorded this had a long and happy life, they sound so nice
Your videos are so cool! You make audio equipment and sound design look like the coolest things ever!
I agree! I’m not a sound or music person, but his videos are just so cool.
I was super curious about the TE kit, so it’s really cool to see this deep dive into the history of consumer record cutters. My neighbors had a record cutter in their bar/rumpus room, I wish we’d been allowed to play with it. Also learned a few things about how records are made that I never knew. And now I want to write a song called “Swarf” Thank you!
Gakken kits are awesome! One of my first synths was the SX-150, which I still use sometimes for beeps and blorps and fshhh.
Beautiful little video and record player. I am so glad that I came across your channel a few months back. Got me into synths!
Great to hear!
this is incredible as always David!
Best new channel I've discvovered. Love it even more by each new video I watch.
While watching this video, I couldn't stop thinking about a way to use it in sound design and then you went and did it. The sample library sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Man you are so awesome. Fascinating content and the sample packs sound great!👏
I think if you apply RIAA per-equalization to the wav file before you try to record it, it will improve the sound AND keep the needle from skipping out of the groove.
Very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to do this video and share this info David
A friend of mine had a Kingston Dub Plate cutter, which attached to the standard Technics deck and had waxy plastic disks. I think you would get a kick out of that - and could probably find the blanks easier. It sounded quite good, but he said they wore down quickly.
Was it a reggae dub cutter
great what you made in the ending finding an alternate use, this sounds so smooth and calming
A very interesting library and great to hear your wife getting in on the act, definitely need more of you both working together in the future.
this whole video is interesting, but i think the thing that grabbed my attention the most was the (i think this is what it was) norwegian teaching vinyl, the one playing basic phrases in english then norwegian. i find it especially interesting because i feel like norway is such a small part of the world, and its always special to me when i see something norwegian so far away from norway :)
The first few chords you played with the sample were so calming, I wish there was more. Really lo-fi
i agree lol!
I think your approach of sampling waves is the best use anyone could do of this machine, well done sir!
Nice vid! I find these old recordable discs and sound letters pretty interesting, since they let ordinary people record their voices and stuff before tape became available to the general public.
Actually, if you care a little less about playability, magnetic Wire Recorders had some consumer popularity between WWII and the 60s.
There are a group of people here on TH-cam who use the Gakken with blank blank cds, and a different type of needle, and found they were able to make much better reproductions of their music. You should check it out and update this video!
cool! ill check it out
I decided to come back to this video for not only for the fact that you can create homemade vinyls (though that is very cool) but for the one song you used in this.
I feel captivated by this song. Think you should turn your sample into a full song for people to listen! I don't think I've heard something like this before! So please do! I would love to hear something just like what you just made!
the song you made was so wonderful. even though it was just a sample i would love to be able to listen to the full thing one day on spotify
The record cutter synth is brilliant for lo-fi music
Jack White has his record booths and there’s also a record booth in a guitar shop in Louisville Kentucky, I’ve thought about going in there and cutting a couple songs just for my own crowd funding campaigns or something. The tabletop units like these never gave me much hope of making anything too good though. But I’ve been following Deke Dickerson getting his Scully lathes working right and that’s been interesting. It could be that in the next decade we will be able to 3D print records if the resolution keeps getting higher. Someone did that a while back but the sound quality was worse than the table top units.
3d printing sounds like a great idea if the tech gets to a resoultion on par or above these table top units. Imagine if the quality got as good as a master record.
I’m from Louisville. What’s the name of the store?
@@thefireturkeys4919 Cirillas
@@thefireturkeys4919 Guitar Emporium but I just checked and they were sold? So I don’t know if that still holds true or not.
The cutters in both are about the same.
Hey, that's funny, just bought one of these and was planning to make a video on it!
First time I cut a record with this, I was expecting my first one to come out terribly but it actually sounded pretty great. I was in awe, I couldn't believe I had actually just cut a record with a tiny kit I built hours ago.
Fascinating stuff- definately has a very lo fi sound but the idea of recording various waves then sampling the recorded results is a great one- those sounds have a lovely retro feel to them.
My grandpa had one of those Wilcox-Gay record cutters. When he died I found only a single cut record in his home, and it was a little audio postcard that my grandma and aunt had recorded for him while he was away in WW2. I recorded and cleaned up a digital copy of it for preservation and gave the record to my aunt. I don't know what other records they had recorded, but the audio quality was surprisingly good so I'm guessing they had a lot of practice cutting records for friends all over the place.
the sample library you created out of this product is exactly why i bought it. i wanted to do the exact same thing and have some fun in my sonic journey. thanks for doing this!
Thank you Dave for your lovely videos
You are very welcome
I can't get enough of your videos. Great work!!
5:10 Also important, although the video is already done and produced, is that Audacity comes with a built-in RIAA curve that you're able to apply and even invert for audio like this. If you did try it, did it sound any better than what Teenage Engineering had to offer?
Good one, i'm gonna try it.
Thank goodness, I can already tell that you guys aren’t going to go into a rant about perfect cutting from a toy rebrand. I feel like the te fan base is the most reactive and vicious, temperamental crowd. It’s so cool! Take my money every time!
Dude, huge kudos for making lemonade from those very sour lemons 😆 That was an awesome way to end and I really appreciate the free sounds, as yes indeed, they sound beautiful in their own environment and for that sound design use. I'm very much a fan of lo-fi FX and they're going to get maximum usage, so thank you for your contribution to the sound design arena and if i manage to make anything cool, i shall post it up here so you can hear your samples in action 😉👊 💚
The way the sample library you made sounds is so calming and nostalgic, I love it.
Those Wilcox-Gay machines (Also sold as Airline/Silvertone) were capable of pretty reasonable recordings. If I recall, the model I had had a cutting arm and a playback arm with different stylus types. Mine was beyond my ability to repair, so I sold it to someone who could get it going.
Its because the'res no cut depth modulation. You want your transducer/servo cutter in a V orientation. Any sound with simultaneous frequencies is going to give it a hard time. Soft edge/low slew rate vocals are going to work best for that setup. If you have a 3d printer its not hard to cad out the cutting head assembly. Repurposing voice coils in a small driver assembly can work, like the Gakken, but needle-through-coil works best imo
I'm surprised that no one has come up with an improved version of this since the yrs have flown by ..now vinyl is becoming obsolete maybe some clever person will make one hopefully to prove a point with our improved technology from over the years . I say keep vinyl alive. 🙂
thank you so much for making the sample library free, you are awesome
The idea of creating music on your own blank record is too cool.
My man still rocking the old iPhone with a real button for the home button. Keep it up champ!
Just hearing that old radio norwegian on the language record makes me really happy (i am norwegian for the record, pun intended) I have some old single records of nordic bird songs that I need to digitize but my old transcriptors turntable isnt in the best of shapes!
This is great! A very educational video on vinyl cutters. Thank you for sharing this!! 😃
Interesting dive into home recording tech!
If you've not already come across "bone music" give it a look. In the 50s music from the west was banned in the Soviet Union, and enterprising teenagers would lathe bootlegs onto used x-rays, hence bone music!
Was coming here to say this. You can buy old x rays in bulk from old oddity shops. I know a few local to me if anyone is trying to experiment. Might have to try it myself now actually
it's pretty hard to come across a real x-ray record from that era, there are many fakes
@@tsuwaque it's not about coming across one of those it's about cutting one of your own. We're talking about the technique, not the actual objects
Equally inspires and dissuades one from wanting to buy one of these. Beautiful video, thanks!
With the precision of a 3D printer or CNC machine, could you use a 3D model to creat a record (even just a small one) that's playable? I imagine there's some form of math you can use to convert your audio to a string of data that can be adapted to the varying diameter of a record, at least I'd hope, it'd be awesome to send one in the mail to someone with a postcard, like just a sample of the ocean waves of a specific area, or a type of bird not native to a locale.
i saw somewhere that you can de-noise a record by spraying it with water. i'm not sure if it'll work on these smaller plastic records, but it's worth a try!
I wanted you to put a new blank vynil you got with your new setup in the old recording machine to see if it works better 😭 For now, I go to check the video you quoted
yes, they absolutely do work. they sound…pretty much the same as the old discs
@@DavidHilowitzMusic shite, so the old blanks were not THE cause of the problem, shame
Guitarist Les Paul made some of his 1940s hit records using a homemade lathe he built himself - an old Cadillac flywheel for the turntable and dentist drill belts - I think he was using 16inch blank discs at 78rpm and only recording on the outer edges for fidelity - he and Mary Ford did a number of disc to disc overdub hits before he switched to tape in early 50s - those early discs are amazing for their hifi sound quality
You need the RIAA curve when recording to the vinyl, and then you need to play the record on a turntable that plays through the "phono" side of an amplifier. That way the inverse of the filter you used during recording will be applied and bring the low frequencies back!
You never cease to amaze, Dave ❤
Old record lathes like the one you have can sound amazing! but there is an issue. The actual parts of the machine need to be restored. And not just the capacitors, The recording head it's self is the issue at fault here, the rubber in the head had become hard and is restricting movement of the needle, causing low volume, buzzing, and very poor sound. a little work by just removing the rubber should make the recordings sound really good!
Thank you for giving away such wonderful samples. You are inspiring and make this world a better place with your science and art.
This might be my history in Black Metal but I love how awful these sounds are, even compared to other records. Gives otherwise uninteresting sounds (specifically the pure tones) a heartbeat.
2:30 assembled and ready to cut a record 3:18 cool groove view 4:06 swarf from cutting needle 6:41 real record lathe
0:40 *me wanting to record a black metal album off it………
You could use Audacity to apply a reverse RIAA curve to your audio before cutting. I assume that is what the online tool is doing.
If I was smart I'd code a program that could convert an audio file into a 3D image of a record. Then one could 3D print a record.
@@CygnusOrb I’ve had this idea before
@@CygnusOrb as awesome as that’d be, I don’t think it’s possible as 3D printers aren’t able to print on that scale
@@CygnusOrb You'll need a very detailed print for this to work.
This already exists, it was on instructables, they were printing them in resin on msla printers
Goes to show you that today we have everything given to us on a silver platter. But look at how much work and devotion went into something just to make the process work! I certainly appreciate this learning experience.
I'm so lucky that I have a friend who masters for vinyl and will cut me professional white labels for about $30 a pop.
These are really cool mind you.
Edit: The samples are beautiful!
Who's your friend and are they willing to take custom orders?
Old science projects books used to give instructions for homemade phonograph players and recorders. I think they suggested smoked glass disks and sheets of hard wax for the record material. Keep in mind also that a higher record speed in the pre-microgroove (16/33 13, or 45 rpm) era normally produced a higher sound quality. When people cut their own, 78rpm was standard and the French used 90 rpm for better fidelity.
Lowkey that horrible sound "was a nice shoegaze sound"
quickly becoming my favorite channel on TH-cam.
Why????
why indeed
Seemed like a good idea at the time?
Try warming the plastic disc before recording is actually working like already is mentioned in the comments. Also try to record through a mixer (your phone is not loud enough) so you can control the gain input signal.
You can use a (adjustable for your track) RIAA filter before recording
David, your videos are some of the most interesting videos on TH-cam.
I have grown fed up of installing endless plugins and held off on Decent Sampler for a while. Usually the faffing required to load banks into a sampler is a turn off. I took the plunge today and downloaded DS, its amazing! I had no idea you could download sounds from the UI within the plugin, that's a complete game changer for time efficiency and staying in flow. I'm sure you have in the past, but a new video quickly outlining decent sampler's ease of instillation/downloading new sounds etc. would surely bring in some people who are holding off from downloading. Just a thought! This is the sound that tipped me over the edge and made me download DS, really glad I did. Thank you.
I ordered one of these from Japan a while back when I first heard about them. I also have a little Numark PT01 I find playing back the recordings from the Numark sounds a little less noisy and usable than the playback from the Gakken. Some stuff that won’t play back on the Gakken will play back on the Numark. I also 3D printed some adapters to allow me to use the Gakken to record onto old CDRs & DVDRs. I have loads of blank CDRs from when they were the medium.
Love your videos! I feel like I check almost every day to see if you've posted a new one. You are a master!
Knowing of the limitations of the device, at first when watching this video I thought to myself: Why would anyone actually want to buy and use this? By the end of the video it made sense, you demonstrated a really cool, creative way to make good use of it, kudos!
i subscribed because of how beautiful the production of your videos are. amazing work man. super educational informative and interesting
wow! what the heck! i had just discovered this a few days ago and just now you post a review! anyway, super cool to see how well (or not well) this works and i really love the sound of that sample library
The Gakken toy record maker is a lot of fun,and with the proper adjustments and a few mods,it can cut half decent records.Using lubricants as liquid turtle wax,helps a lot with the sound quality.
Damn, I brought the same kit and built it three years ago. I couldn’t get it to work and google translate was weird at the time, and I gave up eventually. Finally there is a better guild on TH-cam and it’s time to revive the little fun toy.
Really love the different style intro this time with your wife being in the video too!
Seeing someone play songs from an iPhone 4 warms my heart.
I have seen in a youtube video that before cutting you should spray a thin film of furniture polish on the surface of the blank record which reduces the surface noise and makes the stylus to cut the groves on the surface.
Before playing you need to wash off the furniture polish.
I’m gonna get one. Laughable sound quality has it’s place. Your decent library sounds fantastic
I got some immediate Stardew Valley snug comfortable vibes as soon as I heard the sound come out of that sample pack you made. that’s amazing
you can cut the bass out with any audio software a good cartridge should playback the bass, and that EQ curve is for magnetic cartridges not ceramic.
Nice! I love that. Reminds me of the cool stuff that Alessandro Cortini does with old tascam tape recorders.
I wonder if running a stereo compressor before the cutter input would help. I know for sure that a LOT of popular records were cut with some form of compression, and getting the level towards the peak of what the hardware can handle is essential to reducing the noise. A big record lathe has a heavier arm, so it can cut a deeper groove, which in turn can handle a "bigger" sound to get a better signal to noise ratio. Oh, and the medium being cut can also make a HUGE difference. You could try heating and pressing sealing wax into a flat plate then cutting it to a circle for a medium that would take a better groove. That's essentially what the original Edison wax cylinders were made from.
Oh my. This video just made my inner child so very happy. Thank you
This video made me appreciate Vinyls even more.
Thanks for trying these for the rest of us (not that I wanted one, my vinyl collection is large enough). Thanks also for the information about manufacturing and sound engineerings these vinyls. Great
Wow man! This library rocks. Thanks for the mail!
3:13 My son got one of those "Eyeclops" for his birthday. Pretty good for looking at scratched grooves.
5:55 this _is_ amazing in a lofi kind of way
You don't make music.
You make dreams.
great work.