Vinyl Made Easy
Easy Vinyl Maker by Yuri Suzuki (image: Choreo).
If you search “otona no kagaku” on YouTube, you will find an entire sub- genre dedicated to videos of people building small-scale machines. There are mini-theremins, little drawing robots, tiny Stirling engines and film projectors, all assembled from kits made mainly out of plastic, paper and wee circuit boards. Creators and viewers comprise a small but enthusiastic community of crafty DIY-ers.
“Otona no kagaku” means “science for adults” in Japanese, and is also the name of a monthly magazine and DIY-kit series that has been produced by educational publisher Gakken since the 1970s. “I grew up with that magazine,” says the sound designer Yuri Suzuki. “I remember a lot of fascinating devices and toys – a synthesiser, a letter-press machine, a zoetrope.” Gakken’s wax-cylinder recorder – based on Thomas Edison’s 1877 patent for the phonograph – is one that stood out especially. “It wasn’t so sophisticated,” laughs Suzuki. “Almost the same quality of sound as I imagine Edison’s had.”
Enter Easy Vinyl Maker, a compact five-inch record-cutter and player designed by Suzuki and produced by Gakken. It’s a standalone piece accompanied by a special publication. While the user won’t build it themselves, Easy Vinyl Maker is meant to offer something of the pedagogical insights that the Otona no kagaku series provides. “For many people, it’s sort of magic how vinyl records work,” says Suzuki. “The act of engraving sound into a plastic disc is agreat way of showing the physics of recording.”
Easy Vinyl Maker has two stylus arms: one for cutting and another for playback. An auxiliary cable or USB can be used to connect the recorder to a digital device – a laptop, phone or tablet – through which users play the audio they wish to record. Lower the robotic cutting arm and it will incise a spiral groove of micro-modulations, or “squiggles”, which can in turn be registered and reproduced in audio form by the playback stylus. The resultant five-inch vinyl will be compatible with other record players.
“Today, we have a lot of recording devices – you can easily make a sound recording on your phone or dictaphone,” says Suzuki. “But it’s all digital.” Meanwhile, vinyl-record collecting is experiencing something of a renaissance, with Sony Music, for instance, restarting in-house vinyl production in 2017 for the first time since 1989. “I think people miss the physicality of sound,” says Suzuki.
A professional record cutter will set you back at least $10,000, according to Suzuki. Easy Vinyl Maker’s retail price of £65 is fairly inexpensive by comparison. “The interesting thing about Gakken is that it has the knowledge of how to make this kind of scientific kit quite cheaply,” explains Suzuki. When it launches, Easy Vinyl Maker will be the only affordable cutter on the market. “As an object, it’s really quite unique.”
Words Kristina Rapacki
Photographs Choreo
This article was originally published in Disegno #26. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.