Double drive

by Matthew Richards, 2026

I am a visually impaired cylinder, 78rpm collector and musician from Wolverhampton, Engand, and have been collecting since I was 12 (26 years ago!). When I first started collecting I always wanted to play cylinders electronically to preserve them. Information on the internet was not as vast as it is now and this webpage The Phonograph Makers' Page, Glenn Sage tinfoil.com, and Rob Lomas Edison shop were great inspirations. They started my imagination running wild with the different concepts on how to create a cylinder player and it is now as an adult I have put this into reality.
This player started life in 2016, using a pine wooden box and the top works from an Edison Standard model A that was badly rusted, and I spray painted it black. The original holes for speed control and start and stop have been popularized with a modern toggle switch.
The concept of double drive was to play cylinders with varying tpi such as indestructible cylinders that have shrunk over the years and will skip on a conventional phonograph. This machine uses two 12V DC motors both independent of each other, both using pulse-width modulation motor controllers to keep the speed constant.
The machine uses two displays. The one on the left with the red LED display gives a readout for the feed screw rate (a range 1 to 100), 40 for 4 minute cylinders and 80 for 2 minute cylinders playing at 160rpm.
The blue LED display on the right gives a real time speed reading using a contactless tackometer (a small magnet is placed on the side of the mandrel).
The tone arm is taken from a conventional turntable. Originally when I made this machine I was using a tone arm from a cannibalized Pioneer turntable which initially worked well but was very fragile, and ended up breaking so I have now replaced it with a tonearm and base from a Numark TTX DJ turntable which works very well. The tone arm sits on a wooden base which in turn slides along left to right mounted on kitchen door runners! These contain ball bearings and the whole tone arm assembly can move freely.
The tone arm base is linear tracking and to achieve this it is pulled along via a feed screw (taken from an Edison standard A) mounted backwards and fitted on one side a pulley from an old Meccano set which allows it to be belt driven from the DC motor mounted underneath. The half nut also taken from a standard model A is mounted directly onto a solenoid - this is to engage and disengage the feed screw when playing a cylinder. The solenoid is rated for 24V and only get slightly warm during use with no ill effects. I got inspiration from this from my dads Hornby train set to change the points!
The next challenge was the head shell and cartridge. The way I have built this player means when fitting a conventional headshell the stylus is being back cued (pulled backwards through the grooves) which is not ideal. I must add to that the machine is bidirectional, and both the feed screw and mandrel can be run in reverse enabling to play cylinders backwards which when using a conventional headshall works out good. Cylinders that have certain locked grooves have proven when played backwards and reversed digitally to great effect. To play cylinders normally and conventionally I have made a custom built headshell with the cartridge (a Stanton 500) mounted the opposite way to cure this.
I'm using for a stylus a standard 3mil for 4 minute cylinders and for 2 minute I'm using a small ball bearing 6mil taken from a ball point pen - I saw on your phonograph makers page other makers have experimented with stylus made of glass and thought of trying out a ball bearing. The 6mil ball taken from the pen is super glued in place onto a spare Stanton stylus body. This has become my daily driver for 2 minute cylinders gold moulded and is holding up well. I have since ordered a custom-made two minute sapphire stylus from Expert Stylus company here in England. The ball bearing on many cylinders cuts out the surface noise on many noisy cylinders and cylinders that have been played with a damaged stylus in the past. The expert two minute stylus reveals more detail and I use this when transferring pristine cylinders and brown wax. Maybe the difference is the size of stylus, the expert is an 8mil sapphire and the ball bearing is 6mil. I have also had no ill effects when playing four minute wax amberol with the 3mil 78rpm stylus.
The signal can go into a phono pre amp, but have been using a microphone input where there is no RIAA curve and this is connected into my computer (audio interface). On the stereo file the phase is inverted on one channel and then summed to mono to pick up the sound of the vertical modulation found on cylinder records.
Suffering from visual impairment has proven a challenge but there are ways to overcome these obstacles and using powerful magnifiers I've learned new skill at soldering. I am slowly archiving my cylinder collection. You can hear the cylinder player in action on my website.

The double display and the solenoid that assures good contact between the tonearm carriage and the feedscrew.

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