I was browsing through the always wonderful Miniorgan.com when I stumbled across this (relatively) new addition: The Tomy Voice-Corder, a very expensive and rare toy from Japan, released in 1972 and presumably discontinued soon afterwards. It's a tiny, portable dub-plate cutter. For kids. No, there' isn't one on eBay right now... (previous coverage here)
6/18/2006
Tomy Voice-Corder home vinyl recorder
I was browsing through the always wonderful Miniorgan.com when I stumbled across this (relatively) new addition: The Tomy Voice-Corder, a very expensive and rare toy from Japan, released in 1972 and presumably discontinued soon afterwards. It's a tiny, portable dub-plate cutter. For kids. No, there' isn't one on eBay right now... (previous coverage here)
Two years ago at MusikMesse there was a fellow at at one of the little analog synth booths who brought his in. He wouldn't/couldn't use it because he had only one (or a few) of the blanks left and was looking for where to get more. It didn't look like they were any bizarre custom formulation, but nonetheless, he didn't want to use his existing stock so I didn't get to hear it in action. Dang.
ReplyDeleteV~
See, it's toys like this that make a country like Japan - for better or worse.
ReplyDeleteAre there any sound samples from this thing? Probably not. Or audio output jacks? Hmm... Perhaps this would be something for DIYers to build. Too bad there's so little info on the toy.
ReplyDeleteAhhh i want one ;_;
ReplyDeletea great (tho tiny) forum for lathe cutting weirdness is The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls
Ha! Thats very cool.
ReplyDeleteFlo Kaufmann here in Switzerland built great lo-fi-cutters, even with kids as a school project! He is also a big expert in hi-tech-vinyl cutting and builds little noise-machines.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.floka.com/lofi.html
Hell ... this thing is even older than my Neumann VMS70.
ReplyDeleteThat Musikmesse guy is from http://vinylrecorder.com/. He's doin a pretty good job, BUT his machine is not feedback controlled... that's major drawback
For the best standalone dubplate cutter check out http://www.vinylium.ch/dubcut/dubcutter.html (yeah ... it is feedback controlled)
//r.
rogo said:
ReplyDelete"For the best standalone dubplate cutter check out http://www.vinylium.ch/dubcut/dubcutter.html"
developed by Flo Kaufmann, actually ;-)
- see my other post.
This reminds me of those soviet samizdat punk recordings cut on discarded X-ray photos. Any idea how PLEASE?!
ReplyDeleteLinde,
ReplyDeletewikipedia is your friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc
Believe it or not, a friend of mine got one of these back in the early nineties at SALVATION ARMY for two bucks!!!
ReplyDeleteIt came with a bunch of already cut blue 7" flexi's. They were 90% made up of the kid who owned it recording the radio (I remember 'Satisfaction'). There was a recording of a family Thanksgiving dinner, too.
The recording function was broken (not 'busted' but something inside) but there was no way to open the damn thing up, so we couldn't fix it!!