Copper

How Records are Made, Part Three: Quality Control
How Records are Made, Part Three: Quality Control
The telephone rings. “We have a few pallets for you, can we deliver tomorrow morning?” The next morning, an 18-ton truck with a hydraulic tail lift arrives. It is July... Read more...
How Records are Made, Part Two: Plating and Pressing
How Records are Made, Part Two: Plating and Pressing
   The disk mastering stage, discussed in detail in Part One (Issue 198) was the last stage permitting intentional changes to the sound of the final product, for aesthetic or... Read more...
How Records Are Made, Part One: Disk Mastering
How Records Are Made, Part One: Disk Mastering
As mentioned in a previous column (Issue 197), the record manufacturing process actually begins with the composition, arrangement, performance and recording, since these will greatly influence the sound of the final product.... Read more...
The Sound of Recorded Music
The Sound of Recorded Music
Different time periods in history are associated with particular architectural trends, building techniques and construction materials, different stages of technological development, as well as different styles and forms of musical... Read more...
Agnew Analog's Vacuum Tube Electrochemical Synthesizer
Agnew Analog's Vacuum Tube Electrochemical Synthesizer
 The Agnew Analog Reference Instrument Type 8001 is a unique electrochemical synthesizer, generating strange sounds through chemical reactions occurring in the built-in reactor cell. The reactions occur by passing an... Read more...
Critical Listening at Home: Audiophile High-Fidelity Sound Reproducing Systems and the Recording Industry
Critical Listening at Home: Audiophile High-Fidelity Sound Reproducing Systems and the Recording Industry
Meet George Vardis, a retired biologist with a master's degree in food technology, residing in Athens, Greece. George is a sophisticated man with many interests, including sailing, photography, motorbikes, and... Read more...
Pushing the Limits, Part Two
Pushing the Limits, Part Two
In Issue 192, J.I. Agnew began his series on the topic of signal levels, and the technical considerations in getting them recorded onto disk. The series continues here with a... Read more...
Restoring a Thorens TD160 and the Quest for Accurate Record Reproduction
Restoring a Thorens TD160 and the Quest for Accurate Record Reproduction
For some reason, the people involved with the manufacturing of vinyl records are rather stoic types. The rare occasion when they are in a talkative mood, they mostly talk about... Read more...
Pushing the Limits, Part One
Pushing the Limits, Part One
Back in Issue 122 and Issue 123, I had gone into the concept of loudness in the articles “How Loud Is a Record” and “Eight Decades of Wrong Assumptions: the... Read more...
Restoring Vintage SME Tonearms
Restoring Vintage SME Tonearms
Over the past few years, we have restored a number of SME 3009 and 3012 tonearms, covering most of their variants made over the impressively long production life span of... Read more...
Original Vinyl Pressings or Re-pressings – How Do You Choose?
Original Vinyl Pressings or Re-pressings – How Do You Choose?
Record collectors around the world will typically part with a much greater share of their hard-earned for a first pressing of an album, than for a subsequent re-pressing. But what... Read more...
Modifying a Presto 1-D Cutter Head for Better Performance
Modifying a Presto 1-D Cutter Head for Better Performance
Presto 1-D and 1-C cutter heads are frequently encountered on our lab bench for repair and restoration. Some are just regular repairs to bring them back to original spec, others... Read more...
Tales of Power in the Dark Ages
Tales of Power in the Dark Ages
Back in the 1930s, the transition from purely acoustic sound recording to electrical recording and reproduction brought with it a dependency on a source of power. The electricity grid back... Read more...
Restoring and Repairing A Rek-O-Kut Model V Record Cutting Lathe
Restoring and Repairing A Rek-O-Kut Model V Record Cutting Lathe
As with the vast majority of disk recording lathes of US manufacture, the 1956 Rek-O-Kut Model V I took upon the task of restoring was configured to spin at the... Read more...
An Audio Crime Scene Investigation
An Audio Crime Scene Investigation
Some years ago, I purchased some rather expensive pieces of professional studio equipment from a well-known shop in Europe. One of them was handcrafted and the top of the line,... Read more...
Repairing a Westrex Record Lathe Cutter Head
Repairing a Westrex Record Lathe Cutter Head
Some time ago we were asked to repair a vintage Westrex 2B feedback cutter head at Agnew Analog Reference Instruments. As with all Western Electric and Westrex products, their disk... Read more...
Precise Vinyl Record Centering for Turntables
Precise Vinyl Record Centering for Turntables
Many vinyl records are manufactured with an oversize spindle hole, and some turntables have undersized spindles. These conditions can result in pitch variation from not being able to center the... Read more...
Artificial Reverberation in the Analog World, Part Three
Artificial Reverberation in the Analog World, Part Three
What I set out to make was essentially a character piece, something that would define recordings of suitable styles of music that were done within my own facility. It was... Read more...
Artificial Reverberation in the Analog World, Part Two
Artificial Reverberation in the Analog World, Part Two
In the previous episode (Issue 181), we had a look at various types of analog-domain reverberation options for music production and recording. A couple of years back, during the “big... Read more...
Around the World In 80 Lathes, Part 30
Around the World In 80 Lathes, Part 30
Having pretty much completed our journey around the world in 80 lathes (or perhaps a bit more than 80, but anyway), today we will be visiting The Netherlands, not to... Read more...
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