The industry continues to rely heavily on restored vintage lathes, such as the Neumann VMS70 and VMS80, while the pool of technical expertise needed to maintain them keeps shrinking. Building a new cutting lathe has never been easy. many have tried and failed. Companies like Neumann spent decades refining the cutting head. That knowledge is partly lost and partly held by a very small number of specialists.
Swiss inventor Flo Kaufmann is one of the few experts capable of repeatedly building cutting heads that match or even surpass the historic originals. His DIALBA cutting heads, used also in SUPERSENSE’s MASTERCUT machines, demonstrated this ability, though each one remains highly time-consuming to produce and production is limited. Recreating a new cutting head from scratch is a massive undertaking, with uncertain results.
The APC–2 custom tonearm
The APC–2 project is a collaboration with our friends at SUPERSENSE. It is designed to produce original playback discs with superior sound quality in real time. It is more affordable than industry-standard machines, easier to use, and suited to serial production.
The machine includes a vacuum suction system that holds the record in place while cutting, a custom-designed tonearm for playback, and Wi-Fi-based configuration. It also has a built-in amplifier, power supply, and vacuum pump. all in one system.
The first APC–2, on display at supersense in Vienna
But what makes the APC–2 interesting isn’t only how it works. It’s what it makes possible. Traditionally, cutting a record meant entering a closed system that required access, approval, a record label, and resources. For a long time, the machine itself acted as a gatekeeper. we hope the APC–2 can begin to remove that barrier. In that sense, the APC–2 modernizes record cutting and changes who gets to do it, and how.
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