CLICK TO VISIT OUR SHOP LATEST NEWS DISCOGRAPHY MEMBERS CLUB BLOG CONTACT US HOME
A Glimpse Inside The Glamourous World Of Audio Lathe Cutting
Phil Macy runs 3.45RPM Lathe Cutting, and is also the main brain behind cosmos rockers I Am Voyager 1. He has been involved in bands, labels, gig promoting and numerous underground musical circles since the late 80's, encountering varying degrees of success in that time.
"Ich habe einen Schallplattenrekorder."
I own a vinyl* lathe cutting machine.
More specifically it's a Vinylrecorder as this particular model is often known. Or as it's even more commonly known in the world of lathe cutting, it's a "Souri", being named after it's inventor Ulrich Sourisseau. It's also sometimes referred to as a "T560", but Souri explained to me that this doesn't really mean anything - he was selling a lathe to a Dutch guy one day, and the guy asked what the technical name for the machine was.
"It is just a vinylrecorder" said Souri.
"Oh no, no" said the Dutch guy, "it must have a proper technical name, like SL-1210 MKII or something like that !".
"OK, then" replied Souri, "then it is a T560." And that was that decided.
Souri is an enigmatic and sometimes controversial figure in the world of lathe cutting. He certainly rubs a lot of people up the wrong way, usually due to misunderstandings of his dry Germanic humour and/or his no-nonsense approach to sales and support. To obtain a machine from him is a tricky business, and it took me nearly a year of fielding obtuse replies, mixed messages and worryingly long silences before I was granted the chance to go to his barn in Southern Germany for a day's training and the opportunity to purchase one of his creations. Only afterwards did I realise how fortunate I'd been to have made the grade. While sat in his office at 3am after a gruelling 15hr introductory course to the world of cutting records, I was counting out the money while Souri checked his emails on a very large screen. He clicked on one from a noted industry bod who was enquiring whether they could buy a T560.
Souri read it, then turned to me.
"Is there anything you think I should do differently when I make replies ?" he asked me curiously.
Being well versed in the subject after months of often frustrating to and froing with him, I replied honestly
"Well, you could maybe now and then start off with a 'thanks for your message', or a 'thanks' at the end, something polite like that...".
He nodded and looked thoughtful for a couple of seconds. He then turned back to the screen, clicked on Reply, typed "no" then pressed send.
Souri's backstory goes something like that in the 1970's he had a job servicing jukeboxes in bars and cafes, and had the task of keeping them stocked with the latest hit chart sounds which he would have to obtain from the record company distributors. Problematically, it could take weeks to locate a stock of certain discs, by which time a flash in the pan hit may have been and gone and the clientele of the bar involved would no longer want the record that had been ordered, having moved on to the next hot tune.
So Souri devised a cunning plan. He built himself a record cutting machine on which he could produce the amount of discs required the same day as ordered, and have them delivered while the track was still fresh and riding high in the charts.
(When I say "he built himself a machine" that makes it sound like he went home one day and magically knocked up a record cutting machine in his garden shed and then hey-ho off he went. But the apparatus he concocted is an absolute marvel of engineering, and probably took him a years to perfect.)
Next thing he knew, there were people from all over the planet enquiring about how to obtain one of this machines, how much it would cost, and when they could visit Germany to pick one up. So at some point, Souri wisely decided that going into lathe cutter manufacturing was a better job prospect than risking the wrath of some major record companies copyright experts and legal teams.
The big issue with something like this is that there are just so many things that can and do go wrong, and creating a one-size-fits-all solution is no mean feat. In the twelve years I've been in the business I've seen at least four major crowdfunded attempts at getting a similar operation up and going, all of them very successful at raising capital, but none of them so hot on the crucial area of producing a finished product. The Vinylrecorder's inherent user friendliness is an underlying bit of genius in itself.
Recently, a couple of newer businesses have finally got to grips with the manifold issues of creating an "off-the-shelf" and easily serviceable machine that can be used by the previously untrained (such as myself), but most people - like him or hate him - have to agree that Herr Souri remains one of the great innovators in lathe cutting circles. He even has his own catchphrase ("cut, cut, cut !") which in itself is a classic bit of ingenious efficiency, in that it's meant to instill the idea that the only way to learn about and improve at cutting records is by continual practice.
Having recently hit the personal milestone of 50,000 records commercially cut (though it's a far higher number overall), I can testify to it being the most sound advice I've ever received in relation to the lathe business, and I find myself still learning something new about the process each week. It's a magical thing that a tiny stone passing through a channel of microscopically indented plastic can create such vividly realistic sounds, and that'll never cease to amaze me, but the actual science behind it all has instilled a fascination that I regret my physics teacher from 40 years ago never managed . I certainly understand a bit more these days about the underlying process, but I don't think I'll ever properly lose the wonderment of exactly how and why it all happens. And I wouldn't want to.
(*The discs I cut are not strictly speaking "vinyl", it's actually a material called PETG, but has anyone noticed ? Does anyone really care ? Too paraphrase badly, if it looks like a duck, feels like a duck, and sounds like a duck...it's vinyl !)
3.45RPM inhouse label Gardener's Delight has a new 7" by The Decadent Dayze (featuring Emma from Sairie) released in March, in an edition of 53 copies only. See The DD's bandcamp page for ordering details.
click here to check/listen/buy
click here to visit Phil's 345rpm website
"It is just a vinylrecorder" said Souri.
"Oh no, no" said the Dutch guy, "it must have a proper technical name, like SL-1210 MKII or something like that !".
"OK, then" replied Souri, "then it is a T560." And that was that decided.
Souri is an enigmatic and sometimes controversial figure in the world of lathe cutting. He certainly rubs a lot of people up the wrong way, usually due to misunderstandings of his dry Germanic humour and/or his no-nonsense approach to sales and support. To obtain a machine from him is a tricky business, and it took me nearly a year of fielding obtuse replies, mixed messages and worryingly long silences before I was granted the chance to go to his barn in Southern Germany for a day's training and the opportunity to purchase one of his creations. Only afterwards did I realise how fortunate I'd been to have made the grade. While sat in his office at 3am after a gruelling 15hr introductory course to the world of cutting records, I was counting out the money while Souri checked his emails on a very large screen. He clicked on one from a noted industry bod who was enquiring whether they could buy a T560.Souri read it, then turned to me.
"Is there anything you think I should do differently when I make replies ?" he asked me curiously.
Being well versed in the subject after months of often frustrating to and froing with him, I replied honestly
"Well, you could maybe now and then start off with a 'thanks for your message', or a 'thanks' at the end, something polite like that...".
He nodded and looked thoughtful for a couple of seconds. He then turned back to the screen, clicked on Reply, typed "no" then pressed send.
Souri's backstory goes something like that in the 1970's he had a job servicing jukeboxes in bars and cafes, and had the task of keeping them stocked with the latest hit chart sounds which he would have to obtain from the record company distributors. Problematically, it could take weeks to locate a stock of certain discs, by which time a flash in the pan hit may have been and gone and the clientele of the bar involved would no longer want the record that had been ordered, having moved on to the next hot tune.
So Souri devised a cunning plan. He built himself a record cutting machine on which he could produce the amount of discs required the same day as ordered, and have them delivered while the track was still fresh and riding high in the charts. (When I say "he built himself a machine" that makes it sound like he went home one day and magically knocked up a record cutting machine in his garden shed and then hey-ho off he went. But the apparatus he concocted is an absolute marvel of engineering, and probably took him a years to perfect.)
Next thing he knew, there were people from all over the planet enquiring about how to obtain one of this machines, how much it would cost, and when they could visit Germany to pick one up. So at some point, Souri wisely decided that going into lathe cutter manufacturing was a better job prospect than risking the wrath of some major record companies copyright experts and legal teams.
The big issue with something like this is that there are just so many things that can and do go wrong, and creating a one-size-fits-all solution is no mean feat. In the twelve years I've been in the business I've seen at least four major crowdfunded attempts at getting a similar operation up and going, all of them very successful at raising capital, but none of them so hot on the crucial area of producing a finished product. The Vinylrecorder's inherent user friendliness is an underlying bit of genius in itself.
Recently, a couple of newer businesses have finally got to grips with the manifold issues of creating an "off-the-shelf" and easily serviceable machine that can be used by the previously untrained (such as myself), but most people - like him or hate him - have to agree that Herr Souri remains one of the great innovators in lathe cutting circles. He even has his own catchphrase ("cut, cut, cut !") which in itself is a classic bit of ingenious efficiency, in that it's meant to instill the idea that the only way to learn about and improve at cutting records is by continual practice.
Having recently hit the personal milestone of 50,000 records commercially cut (though it's a far higher number overall), I can testify to it being the most sound advice I've ever received in relation to the lathe business, and I find myself still learning something new about the process each week. It's a magical thing that a tiny stone passing through a channel of microscopically indented plastic can create such vividly realistic sounds, and that'll never cease to amaze me, but the actual science behind it all has instilled a fascination that I regret my physics teacher from 40 years ago never managed . I certainly understand a bit more these days about the underlying process, but I don't think I'll ever properly lose the wonderment of exactly how and why it all happens. And I wouldn't want to.
(*The discs I cut are not strictly speaking "vinyl", it's actually a material called PETG, but has anyone noticed ? Does anyone really care ? Too paraphrase badly, if it looks like a duck, feels like a duck, and sounds like a duck...it's vinyl !)
3.45RPM inhouse label Gardener's Delight has a new 7" by The Decadent Dayze (featuring Emma from Sairie) released in March, in an edition of 53 copies only. See The DD's bandcamp page for ordering details.
click here to check/listen/buy
click here to visit Phil's 345rpm website
All copyrights reserved 2026
www.fruitsdemerrecords.com
www.fruitsdemerrecords.com