Neumann Cutting Lathe For Sale
Geraldine Ferraiz
Conn had been mastering for vinyl, CDs and streaming for 22 years, but this was the first time he took the plunge to do his own cutting as an additional revenue stream for the Independent Mastering business he runs with recording/mixing/mastering veteran Don Cobb.
Key missing pieces, among them included a vacuum system for the platter, electronics, microscope, light, and a table, among them. Some parts needed to be recreated from machine shops, and he found other spare parts on eBay, some culled from other lathe manufacturers, such as Westrex and Neumann.
Um, really? With the resurgence in the vinyl market and the fact that most lathes were either thrown away or sold for scrap metal, it is actually quite difficult to find a descent lathe these days. And, if you can find one, you will be paying a lot more than you would have just a few years ago. I just saw a mono suitcase style lathe (ones people bought for home use) go for about 9K USD. Five years ago you be lucky to sell it for a 1/10 the price.
What???? There are at least 150 to 200 Neumann VMS70 lathes out there still running and being used. Maybe another 50 in private collections and museums. That just covers the pro Neumann end. When you start to consider all the hobbiest cutters and those using semi-pro Vinylium or Vinyl Recorder systems there has to be at least 300 to 400 people in the world still cutting.
Greece-based Agnew Analog, recently introduced the Agnew Analog Reference Instrument Type 612, a brand new disk mastering lathe, now available to order. It's the first new "from the ground up" lacquer cutting lathe to be introduced in since 1966 which is when Neumann introduced its VMS 66 (L.J. Scully began making them in the 1930s for 78rpm record manufacturing).
The Neumann VMS-82 DMM lathe introduced in 1982 (Neumann lathes and cutter head numbers refer to the year they were introduced) was the last new lathe to be introduced but since that lathe, designed to cut DMM (direct metal master discs) instead of lacquers, was a modified version of the VMS-80 introduced in 1982 and all previous Neumann lathes are updates of the original, since 1966 it is!
"The Type 612, formally unveiled at the International Disk Recording and Mastering Convention 2023 in July, is a fully engineered, innovative approach to lathe design, inspired by the long established traditions of the New England school of precision machine tool manufacturing.
The carriage slideway is machined directly onto the lathe bed (not bolted on) for maximum flatness and rigidity. It is hand-scraped to establish a bearing and represents a true reference flat plane, on which the carriage can slide. A lubrication system built into the carriage ensures adequate lubrication of the sliding surfaces for maximum smoothness of operation and long-term reliability. The entire system is self-adjusting and self-compensating for wear, eliminating the need for adjusting gibs and bearings.
Instead of a leadscrew, it uses hydraulics to advance the carriage, for quiet, trouble-free operation and long-term reliability.
This is really good news for the vinyl production chain. However, given the investment of time and knowledge mastering engineers have in their existing lathe setups this will be an uphill climb for any newcomer. I hope Agnew Analog have their product marketing and support engineering ducks in a row - they will need them. Wishing them every success!
Abbey Road's world-renowned engineers have been cutting grooves into discs since the studios first opened their doors in 1931. This record was pressed from a master cust using a precision technique known as half-speed mastering. The procedure requires the source master and the cutting lathe to run at half speed on a specially adapted Neumann VMS-80 Lathe.
This rare and specialized technique transforms difficult-to-cut high-end frequencies into relatively easy-to-cute mid-range frequencies. The result is a cut with excellent high-frequency response and very solid and stable stereo images. In short, half-speed mastering produces a master of the highest quality that enables the pressing plant to produce a superlative record.
Just a heads up, you're shopping our U.S. store. While we do ship all around the world, there are additional shipping costs associated with international orders. Feel free to stick around, or you can also shop our UK store, which has slightly different product offerings.
The cutter head suspension system was built into the carriage and featured a miniature vise clamp for holding the cutter head, which would come with a rectangular bar at the back that was designed to fit into the vise jaws. Although in the stereophonic era this would typically be an Ortofon cutter head, other cutter heads could also be fitted to a Lyrec lathe by using a suitable, custom-machined rectangular bar. However, the overhead design did not allow as much clearance and flexibility as with the Neumann and Scully lathes, since the space above the platter was limited by the presence of the overhead mechanism. As a result, massive heads such as those made by Westrex would not be able to be mounted with the correct geometry on the Lyrec suspension unit, even if a custom adapter was made.
It was commonly accompanied by the Ortofon range of cutting electronics, which began as vacuum tube units and developed into solid-state designs. In the monophonic era, Lyrec also made their own electronics, but eventually left that up to Ortofon, still keeping it all-Danish, to be enjoyed with Anthon Berg chocolate, or perhaps croissants with Lurpak butter spread on them while they are still warm out of the oven.
This would typically be supplied by one of the Lyrec TR-range preview head tape machines (two different models were made for this application), since at the time, Studer, Telefunken, and Ampex only made preview head tape machines that were compatible with Neumann and Scully lathes, which did not use the 0.5-revolution delay time. It was much later on that Studer, Telefunken and MCI made versions of their machines that were compatible with the 0.5-revolution delay time, but that was because Neumann had decided to use this on the then newly-introduced VMS-80 disk mastering lathe, departing from the 0.5-revolution delay time of their earlier lathes. This 0.6-revolution delay time remained in use and was carried over to the VMS-82 DMM (direct metal mastering) lathe, but by that point the digital delay line had replaced most preview head tape machines in the field, and in any case Lyrec had entirely left the disk recording and mastering sector.
The choice of brass as the material for the vacuum platter on Lyrec disk recording lathes was very appropriate, if rather unusual. Most other lathes had cast aluminum platters, with some early units having cast iron platters. The platter was supported on an oil bearing and the driveshaft to the floorstanding Lyrec direct-drive motor had elaborate, sculpture-like elastomer decoupling disks, to prevent the transmission of vibration from the motor to the platter.
All in all, while not very well-known or widely used (only around 30 to 50 machines were ever made, all models counted in), Lyrec lathes were extremely sturdy machines, capable of exceptionally high performance. Some had found their way to the USSR, used in the Melodiya studios, perhaps to avoid having to buy American or German lathes. Melodiya eventually replaced these with Neumann lathes, which is probably what eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Pete Hutchinson of Electric Mastering and Electric Recording Company in London, England has painstakingly restored a rare example of these fine machines, which the companies use for their all-analog transfers of original master tapes to disk, for their extremely high-quality reissues. As others have noted in Copper and elsewhere, their attention to detail is phenomenal, even down to actually utilizing traditional letterpress printing for the artwork!
If you want to hear what a Lyrec lathe is capable of, one of the Electric Recording Company releases or an early Melodiya record (up to the late 1960s) will demonstrate what these excellent machines were capable of.
The new Vinyl Visual Mastering is an integrated system intended for the first part of vinyl manufacturing. It consists of both the specialized audio mastering process for vinyl medium and the master cutting using DMM or lacquer lathes. It is developed by a team of skilled engineers and technicians with many years of experience in physics, electronics, computer programming and vinyl manufacturing technologies.
The VVM system has been built around Neumann's cutting lathes. Their basic functionality was extended by new capabilities and some original parts were completely replaced by newly designed software algorithms. The whole cutting process is controlled by a computer, all important values and lathe status are showed on a graphical user interface and logged for later inspection, so the cutting engineer can focus on music.
The basic principle can be compared to the difference between taking photographs on film and using digital photography. Before pressing the shutter-release on a camera you usually have to set various mutually-opposing parameters (aperture, shutter-speed, sensitivity, focus, etc.). If these are set correctly the result is a nice sharp picture. Incorrect setting leads to blurred, dark or over-exposed shots. In the case of photos on film the result of the process is known for sure after the film is developed and the prints are made. The electronics of a digital camera are able to evaluate a scene according to a given setting and show the result on the display. Before the shutter-release is pressed the camera warns us that the result will probably not be good.
Our premastering specialists working in acoustically separated studios can carefully and without haste check and analyze supplied audio files, run cutting simulations several times to find out the optimal settings for every side without too many changes to the sound. Our goal is to use only those necessary corrections (level changes, EQ also with linear phase filters, compressors, limiters, EE mono-filters etc.) which will help cutting better, minimize risk of distortion and allow the best frequency response in the widest ranges of audible frequencies.
b37509886e