It’s an alchemical breakthrough: the transmutation of optical media to an older, analog format. According to Boing Boing, Aleks Kolkowski is using a vintage record cutter to cut grooves into CDs/DVDs such that they can be played on a record player. This physical mutilation obviously destroys the ability to keep playing the old CDs/DVDs in their original forms, but for turntable fans, this is a cool function, despite it’s limited applications.
What applications, one asks? For one, DJs who refuse to use newer forms of media will jump at the opportunity to dig out old AOL CDs that they threw in the closet back in 1998. So too will fans of steampunk phonographs jump, merely because of the novelty behind the concept. Others will release their small-label songs in hybrid forms, requiring a turntable to listen to their album’s bonus track.
Then there are those who might actually do this en masse, because gramophones don’t use electricity thanks to their hand-crank technology. This means that reusing otherwise discarded optical discs could very well become the green solution for recorded music playback. All that’s missing is an easy way to obtain a reasonably-sized record cutter, and a reputable gramophone dealer with solid restoration work.
Unfortunately, modern record cutters are quite expensive, even if restored gramophones make it to one’s local flea market. This means that to leverage hand-cranked, recorded music on the cheap, paying for the service to have a record cut onto CD is a more likely scenario than the overhead one would pay for the machine to do it at home.
Considering there’s a pretty cheap way to build a replica phonograph, we’re surprised there’s not a cheaper record cutter on the market. Maybe we just missed it though – anyone have more information?