What you see in front of you is a Rek-O-Kut Challenger, manufactured in New York around 1951. It’s a lathe, a disc-cutting machine that records sound directly onto a vinyl disc. Just like in a professional studio of the era, only packed into a suitcase.

Rek-O-Kut was founded in New York and produced some of the most widely used turntables and recording devices of the golden age of vinyl. The name comes from “Record” and “Cut”: cutting the disc. The Challenger model was designed for professional use but also for enthusiasts, being one of the few portable devices that allowed anyone to produce a record at home.

At Music Gallery, this machine works. For a small fee, you can cut your own vinyl record with a song of your choice. You pick the song, you watch it being engraved onto the disc, and you leave with a unique object, cut on a machine with over 70 years of history.

Is it piracy? Maybe. But it’s the kind of piracy we encourage.