Here I listed all infos about recording and cutting amplifiers.
If possible, I will publish pictures, datasheets and personal experience
pictures and pdfs will come soon. promised....!!!!
VINYLIUM
Based in switzerland, Vinylium is the only company in the world
producing professional equipement for cutting rooms.
All incredible good quality, but also not the cheapest. Most on a
preorder basis.
ULTRACUT Ultracut, stereo, solid state opamp based
380-450 Watts per channel
this is basically a highend version of the SAL74b rack. same
architecture but redesigned with a higend view in mind....
the poweramps are very very good. also compact design, best components
makes the Ultracut an outstanding cutting amp...
VINYLCUT
Vinylcut. stereo.solid state.approx 68Watt
per channel.
very low cost and compact cutting system. because of the ultracompact
design the signal chains are reduced to the minimum.
very good components. also a simple pitch controll, a peak meter and
stylus heating powersupply is integrated. on the latest version there
is also
meters for the cuttercurrent. smallest and best for your money...i like
how compact good cutting amps can be
MINICUT Minicut, stereo, preamp system only
high end professional preamp system. this is only a riaa encoder,mixer
and feedback amp. it needs external power amps.
NEUMANN
the german workhorses....sound is not always the best...over
engineering is mostly bad for sound. but very
reliable. the standard.
neumann made 3 main amplifier rack developements and
some versions.all pre VG1 machines used telefunken amps or other brands.
VG1 (verstärkergestell eins) stereo full
tube cutting electronics. apprx 60 watts per channel.
the tube rack. wonderfull piece of work. the VG1 contains 2 sets of
preamps,feedbackamps,poweramps and playbackamps.
the power amps used EL156 in push-pull configuration. the output is
apprx 60 Watts .
the VG-1 is a state of the art tube gear. i have never seen
a nicer manufactured amp. also VG1s are very sought after in high
end audio circles. not for cutting but for listening.
VG66 (verstärkergestell 66) solid state, discrete approx
100 Watt per channel
the VG66 was widely used.introduced 1966 it had all nice features
a good cutting amp shoud have. cutterhead protection, monitoring of
input,feedback, playback. also the rack could be used for all
cuttingheads neumann produced.
also it had a very interesting HF-limiter. actually it is not a limiter
it is a variable lowpass filter which is controlled by the cutter
current.
soundwise the VG66 cuts well, but if it is not tuned it is not a high
end machine. usefull but nothing special. the later version of the VG66
went even worse by using one of the first op-amps lm311 and such stuff.
also the signal switching was over optical modules ( a box contained a
24V light bulp and 2 LDRs). because of the ligh bulp these module dont
live very long. a constant source of problems....
also the amps are not very well designed. first transitor poweramp
designs with elkos for the outcoupling....hmmmmm. i think not highend.
SAL74(schreiber-antriebs-logik 74) solid state,mostly opamp
approx 550 Watts per channel
this rack is the most used these days. the architecture is very good
and usefull. the poweramps 2 bridged amps per channel .
all opamp based. the sal74 had also a sort of a hf-limiter called BSB74
(beschleunigungsbegrenzer = acceleration limiter) which was a forward
controlled hf limiter. technnically the bsb is very interesting (analog
delay to compensate the forward regulation time and other neumann like
technical sado-maso design...) soundwise the bsb74 is more than
questionable. my preferred setting is on "bypass"
anothe point on sal74 was the transformers in the Feedback circuit, the
input and it had 2 seperate and totally oversized powersupplies)
the power amps (LOV74 leistungs-operations-verstärker) are also a
constant source of problems, because each channel is splited to 6 cards
there is a lot of unstability and hundreds of cutterheads where roosted
by a 2 MHz oszillation of unstable poweramps.
version VG74
same as above but without monitoring unit and sometimes without BSB74.
just the core.cheaper
SAL74B
same as sal74.but some small changes. only one power supply instead of
two.transformerless. phase response and frequency response was extended.
also some of the cabling was improved. most SAL74 users made an update
to sal74b which was available from neumann.
VG74B
same as above but without monitoring unit and sometimes without BSB74.
just the core.cheaper
SAL84
same as SAL74B but for DMM cutting. there was a tracking angle
compensation unit added. which was necessary because with DMM the cut
is made with 0 degree cutting angle. for laquer there is 15-20 degree
cutting angle.
WESTREX
1700 system. stereo .transistor. all discrete approx. 100 wats per
channel
the blue westrex system is a very nice design.straight. simple.
discret. i would say very good sounding.
1500 system. stereo. tube. very nice approx 60 Watt per channel.
tube rack i use. bernie grundmann uses also 2 of them. they are nicely
made typical 60'ies american tube equipement. simple. good.
but no features. no gadgets...isn't it that what people call high end?
GO701. solid state opamps. 550 Watts
nice rack. compact and powerfull. the poweramps are very good. opamps
in original state shitty. but if tuned. one of the first choice to cut.
has also temperature protection and good monitoring. a little
minuspoint is the unballanced feedback input. front of a go701 amp
copyright 1993-2007 by flo kaufmann. if you want to use some stuff,
feel
free for non-commercial projects, but it would be nice to let me know
and
to mention the source on all publicatons.for all commercial projects
ask:
flo_at_floka.com: replace _at_ with @.
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