The Record Factory cuts your own 5” vinyl at home

Teenage Engineering have announced the launch of the PO-80 Record Factory, a compact, USB-powered record cutter that lets you cut your own 5” vinyl at home and even play them back in lo-fi sound. 

Made in collaboration with Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki, the bright orange and white-coloured PO-80 comes with 5″ blank records (with sleeves) that allow four minutes or three minutes of recording time per side at 33 rpm and 45 rpm. You can also attach a 7″ record adapter (included) for playback, with built-in speakers or the option of connecting to an external speaker through the separate 3.5 mm audio output.

The Swedish company have designed the record cutter to be portable, similar to its pocket calculator-inspired Pocket Operator synth range. Find out more on the Teenage Engineering site here. The PO-80 Record Factory is priced at €149. You can also buy a carrying case and other accessories.

This nifty new product follows the innovative TurnT from Yamaha’s Design Lab, a new music device that turns your smartphone screen into a vinyl turntable. The TurnT comprises a portable speaker and a ‘stylus’ that sits on top of a smartphone screen and connects to Bluetooth in order to play selected music, while the song or album can be changed by swiping through a virtual library. 

Vinyl has been on an upward trajectory this year, overtaking PlayStation games as the UK’s second best-selling physical entertainment format, and with several new pressing plants geared towards grassroots music spring up, like Middlesbrough’s Press On Vinyl and Germany’s Matter of Fact, opening up.

Earlier this year, Glasgow was revealed to be the vinyl-collecting capital of the UK, according to a study of collecting habits by The Royal Mint.

Revisit DJ Mag’s 2021 feature on whether manufacturing delays and increasing costs might spell the end of the vinyl revival, at least for small and independent record labels, here.