Bristol, VA (October 5, 2023)—Well Made Music has added a third, rare Neumann disc-cutting lathe at its mastering studio in Bristol, VA, the city popularly known as the birthplace of country music.
Clinton J. Holley III opened Well Made Music in Cleveland, OH, in 2010. In 2021, he and his team relocated to Bristol, where they have been cutting lacquers for Grammy-Award-winning releases and independent artists alike. The studio currently operates two restored Neumann VMS-70 disc mastering lathes that have been in service since the early 1970s. One machine was sourced from New Jersey in 2009, while the other was shipped from the Netherlands in 2013.
Now, the facility has added a Neumann AM32b, initially introduced in 1957, and one of the first lathes to implement variable pitch. The feature uses a series of analog circuits to optimize groove spacing, allowing longer running sides to be cut to disc at a louder volume level.
This specific lathe traces its provenance to Cleveland Recording Company, the region’s first professional recording studio, Holley reports. That studio was established in downtown Cleveland, OH in 1946 by Frederick C. Wolf; its head technician, Ken Hamann, was inspired to seek out German-designed audio equipment.
“Cleveland Recording would go on to purchase several classic Neumann microphones, widely regarded as some of the finest microphones of all-time. During this time, Ken Hamann also oversaw the purchase of a Neumann AM32b disc cutting lathe in the late 1950s for the studio,” Holley says.
Over the years, Cleveland Recording, which hosted Grand Funk Railroad, the James Gang, Wild Cherry and others, and at which Grammy-winning engineer Michael Bishop was a disc mastering engineer for a time, changed ownership a couple of times. Hamann subsequently established SUMA Recording in the Cleveland suburb of Painesville, taking with him much of Cleveland Recording’s equipment, including the Neumann AM32b lathe.
Holley, who boasts an extensive background in mechanical repair and maintenance that began during his youth, was contacted in 2018 to decommission the AM32b lathe pending renovations at SUMA, where it sat idle until recently. In August 2023, Holley and Dave Polster, his senior mastering engineer, moved the lathe out of SUMA for the first time in over 45 years.
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The AM32b lathe is currently being restored by Holley, Polster and a stable of Neumann lathe experts. “The lathe definitely needs a lot of work, but we are up for the challenge and confident about a successful outcome,” Holley says.
