Needle-drop Handbook - new 3rd edition

The Needle-drop Handbook is about reformatting the signals from analogue records as digital files (needle-drops).

To do this, you need first-class hardware.

Where the rock meets the record, analogue discs are ultimately a precision mechanical medium and demand precision mechanisms to replay them.

The first five chapters of the Needle-drop Handbook are devoted to the mechanical issues of playing records: the mechanics of constant-speed; of tracking and tracing distortion and how to minimise their effects; and of cartridge tracking and groove geometry.

From acetate to dead-wax

The procedure and the equipment to cut the master acetates is covered in chapter six of the Needle-drop Handbook as well are the subsequent electroforming and compression-moulding processes required to produce commercial records. Only an understanding of how records are made, alerts us to the problems which arise in maufacture and to the extra information which is encoded in the dead-wax.

The care of records – when playing them and storing them - is covered in chapter seven along with information of the care and maintenance of the replay stylus.

The signal sent to the cutter-chisel when cutting a record is equalised, whereby the bass is cut and the treble boosted. The equalisation of modern records is described in chapter eight of the Needle-drop Handbook and the equalisation of pre-stereo records has a chapter all to itself in chapter ten.

.....although the Needle-drop Handbook is concerned with digital reformatting to preserve the essence of audio recordings divorced from their physical carrier, it is a text as relevant to the audiophile vinylista as it is to the archivist.

In the last chapter (fifteen), we look at contemporary work on extracting information from records using optical techniques, work especially valuable when records have become so damaged they will no longer play with a mechanical stylus.

Before we get there, we will also stop-off to look at more unusual forms of records which may interest the collector: shellac discs; quadraphonic discs; cylinder records; soundtrack discs for early “talking-pictures”; radio transcription discs; and novelty records. We also devote a chapter (thirteen) to looking at popular upgrades and tweaks to turntables and ancillary equipment to see if they work or not.

So, although the Needle-drop Handbook is concerned with digital reformatting to preserve the essence of audio recordings divorced from their physical carrier, it is a text as relevant to the audiophile vinylista as it is to the archivist.

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Buy the PDF version of the Needle-drop Handbook here.

The 850 page pdf ebook Needle-drop Handbook 3rd edition only costs £4.99. Simply click the PayPal button and you will receive a email with instructions how to download your copy.

Or try a sample of the Needle-drop Handbook.

❝A complete guide to the history, theory and technology of recording phonograph records for archivists, collectors and vinylistas❞

Only £4.99
or FREE with Stereo Lab*

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