I visited AudioGeography’s Tyler Bisson in Bethel, Connecticut, USA, and we compared his two 1940s-era Presto 6Ns record cutters, which are separated by 2420 serial numbers.
They are not the same. So we geeked out on the differences.
Our man Kris Dorr (aka Kris D) of Washington state is one of our Presto 6N experts. He wrote me after I posted the video and expressed that he wished he could overdub a response track. I wish he would, too! Apparently we got some historical stuff right, but a few of our hunches are wrong here. As with many on this forum, we are often shooting in the dark, doing our best to recapture knowledge which is on the verge of getting lost. The nice thing about Presto 6Ns is that they can work great even if you don’t use the equipment quite in the way it was originally intended. For example, several on the forum (including Tyler and Mike Dixon/piaptk) use them to emboss, which works great even if it isn’t their original purpose.
The best introduction to the history of Presto record cutters is on Alan Graves’ terrific site:
http://www.televar.com/grshome/Presto2.html
This video debuted in this chat threat, a few months ago:
https://www.lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4671&p=28580
Tyler’s site: http://www.audiogeography.com/
Here’s Tyler doing his thing at Record Store Day, 2014:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/17/dtg-bb-record-burning-2014-04-25-bk_37_17.html