Teenage Engineering APC-2 Record Cutter: Cut Your Own Dubplates at Home
The Swedish company surprises again with another release out of left field. This time it’s the Teenage Engineering APC-2 record cutter, a professional-looking machine to cut your own dubplates. Any guesses on how much it will cost?
Teenage Engineering APC-2
Before everything went digital, I used to get dubplates made of my latest tracks to play in my vinyl sets. A dubplate is an acetate disc made by vinyl mastering studios to test out recordings before generating metal plates to go into production. You could get one for about $50 in the early 2000s. For vinyl DJs then, it was the only way to play out new records via a turntable.
Although dubplate culture has largely been superseded by digital audio files, there’s still something special about a dubplate. The sound quality of a vinyl master is also something really special. It’s exciting to see then that Teenage Engineering is now offering a record cutter for sale so you can make your own dubplates.
Teenage Engineering APC-2: In Collaboration with Suspense
The Teenage Engineering APC-2 is a disc cutting system. A freestanding machine, Teenage Engineering says it’s “a professional record cutter built and designed for producing original playback discs with superior sound quality in real time.”
The APC-2 was created in collaboration with Supersense, a company dedicated to the preservation of analog media. “Our shared vision is to enable access to anyone who wants their music or sound on a physical record,” says Teenage Engineering.
Teenage Engineering APC-2: The Specs
The Teenage Engineering APC-2 appears to be a complete disc-cutting machine. It features a direct drive motor with variable speed, a stereo feedback cutting head, an integrated vacuum system for swarf removal (the detritus thrown off by the cutter), temperature-controlled heating, an integrated power amplifier with feedback and RIAA encoder, and a headphone amplifier for monitoring.
While your image of a record-cutting lathe might be something old-fashioned from the 1960s, the Teenage Engineering APC-2 is very much a modern machine. As such, it features remote control over Ethernet or Wi-Fi and even DAW integration for creating locked grooves and other specialty cuts.
Teenage Engineering APC-2: “What Are They Really Selling Here?”
While the Teenage Engineering APC-2 looks pretty exciting, I still have questions. Does this cut vinyl or lacquers, or both? Apparently, people on Reddit have similar concerns.
“How nerfed is this thing going to be?” says one poster. “A lathe is not trivial to operate, cutting heads are expensive. Does it have a built-in mastering chain, how much control would a user have? Lacquers are expensive and delicate. They need to be inspected with a jeweler’s eye. Does this thing cut lacquers? Which then need to get plated to make stamps for pressing? Or does it cut some other substandard but more durable media? What are they really selling here?”
“Yes, either it is a truly viable cutting lathe and most of us would have zero use for it except overcompensating or something (but good news for mastering studios), or it is a half-assed cutting lathe and you can be certain you’ll find it in ‘audiophile’ hi-fi stores real quick,” says another.
Teenage Engineering APC-2: Pricing and Availability
The fact that there’s no price on the Teenage Engineering website makes me nervous. People on Reddit are guessing around $30K. If you’re interested, you can send them an email. It is, clearly, limited edition and likely made to order.
If you want to play around with a record cutter without paying a lot of money, TE also sells the PO-80 Record Factory Kit.
If you’d rather just hire a company to press a one-off record for you, I wrote about some here.
More Information
- Teenage Engineering APC-2 product page
- More about Teenage Engineering
- More about turntables
- Buy Teenage Engineering gear at Thomann*
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