welcome to

PHONOCUT

a new kind of music record

Phase 1

Mission

A warm invitation to join our mission

PHONOCUT is all about creating a new environment for producing high quality music records. Finally shifting manufacturing outside of industrial mass production factories to small, bespoke ATELIERS where sound can be created, captured and turned into a beautiful physical object at the exact same magic moment. Finally introducing the opportunity to create small edition sizes within minutes/hours instead of weeks/months without huge setup costs. All it takes is our beautiful APC-2 analog PHONOCUT MACHINE, our expanding range of high quality PHONOCUT BLANKS and PACKAGING ELEMENTS, the push of a few buttons, the power of your hands, your vision and creativity.

It might sound ambitious, but since our foundation in 2018, our dream has always been to give birth to all these millions of music records that never had a chance to exist based on traditional production principles.

We're NOT trying to compete with large-scale industrial pressing, injection molding and printing plants. Instead we're passionately opening up and celebrating something very different. PHONOCUT is all about “the other way”. Driven by innovation, accessibility, sustainability, craft, on demand production, quality and creative empowerment.

“Here at PHONOCUT we all feel the incredible potential of PHONOCUT to empower and inspire people all over this planet. We currently don't yet know exactly how to make the best out of this breathtaking opportunity and how to scale PHONOCUT to a global level, but our big dream is to do this together with carefully selected people who can imagine things that do not yet exist and are ready to join our network so we can make them happen together.

While radically changing the relationship people have with records, we also respectfully have to introduce the machine slowly to gain experience with the application from the ground up, and to understand how people actually want to use it. How do they envision using it? How can we best support them? How can we move beyond the limitations of the old system?

The PHONOCUT system centered around the APC-2 will continuously reveal all the needed keys to this revolution, and together we will delightfully add another level and a new kind of media to the music industry. Giving back the full power and control to the creatives, the visionaries and the artists.

PHONOCUT is our heartfelt, warm invitation to join our mission.”

Machine

A professional record cutter for original playback discs

Proudly introducing

APC-2

Analog PHONOCUT Machine

A professional record cutter built and designed to produce original playback discs with superior sound quality in real time.

Developed and built by our close friends from teenage engineering.

After many years of relentlessly searching all over the planet for the right partner, capable of finally overcoming all the 2.345 impossible challenges you face when building such a machine, we were lucky and maybe stubborn enough to finally convince the very best engineers and product designers of the universe: teenage engineering.

Without them, our PHONOCUT dream would never have succeeded as it really needs incredible superpowers and dedication to develop and build a professional high precision machine powerful, reliable and precise enough to turn our PCH-3 PHONOCUT Cutting Head and our PCA-1 PHONOCUT Cutting Amp into a fully functional, perfectly working record cutting lathe. A machine which we will build hundreds, even thousands of times over the next months, years and decades.

Our big vision is to make the APC-2 available for everyone interested to actively join our mission of passionately crafting high quality PHONOCUT records all over the globe the fastest we can. So far, only a very limited set of five machines has been built. But after intensive testing and successfully cutting the first few thousand PHONOCUT records, we will order the first larger batch of APC-2 machines, available in Q3 2027.

technical
specifications

motor

direct drive
precision-polished tungsten shaft
variable speed control
wow and flutter < 0.01% WRMS
1.5 ppm accurate reference clock

pitch motor

variable pitch control
automation directly from DAW
allows locked grooves and other specialty cuts

cutting head

stereo feedback PHONOCUT cutting head
PCH-3
diamond stylus optimized for cutting
PB-1 blanks
automated lift mechanism

vacuum system

integrated vacuum hold-down
and swarf removal

heating

temperature-controlled heating

amplifier

integrated
PCA-1 PHONOCUT Cutting Amp
with feedback and RIAA encoder

monitoring

RIAA amplifier with
headphone/line output
custom tonearm

blank disc sizes

can cut all blank sizes
from approx 4" up to 12"

network

remote control over Ethernet
or Wi-Fi

power

one 230V/120V IEC connector
for the entire system

color

black

material

powder-coated aluminium
granite

dimensions

1300 × 600 × 400 mm
51 × 23.6 × 15.7 in

weight

140 kg
308 lbs

product name

APC-2

Records

The music record of the future

PHONOCUT records are very different from traditional pressed vinyl records. The fact that we are NOT PRESSING our music records but CUTTING THEM in real time with our APC-2 opens up a whole new universe of possibilities and options compared to the last decades of traditional industrial mass production. Not only for the blank but also for the packaging / cover, as we craft each and every PHONOCUT record piece by piece in real time from just the finest materials.

We spent several years making the very best of this incredible opportunity, with the focused vision of designing and developing the music record of the future. Finally tackling the unacceptable fact that, as of today, the production of records is causing severe damage to our environment. We build a new kind of valuable and tangible music media, perfectly adjusted to the needs and demands of today and tomorrow, and based on the obvious fact that music consumption has changed dramatically over the last few years, driven by the digital revolution.

A revolution which, against all original expectations, has triggered a global comeback for many “outdated” and “obsolete” analog media, like books, instant pictures, notebooks, pens, typewriters and handicrafts.

PHONOCUT records are the perfect answer to the exploding demand for beautifully crafted, highly valuable and deeply authentic physical objects and super fan products.

PC-BLANKS: The record material revolution

We are very proud to start our blank family series with our first generation PB-1 PHONOCUT Blank, developed and produced in close collaboration with our dear partner Parley Future Materials. A clear and bold statement against all existing industry solutions out there, claiming to “solve” all the serious environmental problems of traditional record production.

The PB-1 consists of 95% unaltered recycled Ocean Plastic™ respectfully collected by Parley for the Oceans all over the planet. In order to guarantee superior sound quality, we co-developed a complex procedure to put an ultra-thin cutting layer of specially formulated virgin PET on top of the thick Ocean Plastic core.

The result is a high quality 10" transparent disc with a cutting layer (covered by a removable protection foil) on one side and a backside that we love to screenprint for the highest quality picture disc in music history (as the picture side is separated from the side holding the grooves). But even without a print on the flip side, the PB-1 looks very elegant and classy (in our humble opinion).

Our plan going forward is to constantly expand the options of our PB-Family over the next weeks and months, introducing not only all classic sizes up to 12" and double sided blanks in different color options, but also some special edition formats, like square blanks and a wide range of different material options, including classic lacquer discs alternatives.