Economical places that press 7"s

[markjazzbassist]

gottagrooverecords.com had them do our release and was reasonable.

 

[P-oddz]

I feel the same way, but records are making a comeback. I see them in stores now, and more and more people are digging on them every year. I don't get it, but I don't have to.

Cassettes are making a bit of a comeback as well. That one really baffles me personally, but we're actually pressing some cassettes of our upcoming album and there are small and successful local labels that only press cassette.
I just need to understand that they are not for me, and they do sell... to somebody.

I really didn't understand the whole vinyl thing a few years back when a few of the guys wanted to press our first album, but we did, and since then I've started a sizable collection of my own.
There is a certain romanticism in the ritual of putting an album on that is completely absent from all other mediums, IMO. Instead of pressing play on your digital device and blue-toothing it to some speakers, or tossing discs into a pile because they are all on your hard drive anyway, you have to cherish it more. In my mind, it demands more respect to the music and the art. It's not so disposable.

 

[markjazzbassist]

Cassettes are making a bit of a comeback as well. That one really baffles me personally, but we're actually pressing some cassettes of our upcoming album and there are small and successful local labels that only press cassette.
I just need to understand that they are not for me, and they do sell... to somebody.

I really didn't understand the whole vinyl thing a few years back when a few of the guys wanted to press our first album, but we did, and since then I've started a sizable collection of my own.
There is a certain romanticism in the ritual of putting an album on that is completely absent from all other mediums, IMO. Instead of pressing play on your digital device and blue-toothing it to some speakers, or tossing discs into a pile because they are all on your hard drive anyway, you have to cherish it more. In my mind, it demands more respect to the music and the art. It's not so disposable.

also most old pressings are analog. meaning the recorded them with analog instruments, analog console, tracked to tape, mastered to tape, and used that tape to cut the master for the vinyl LP. so you get all analog. I prefer the old pressing because of this, unfettered by 1's and 0's.

 

[Son of Wobble]

also most old pressings are analog. meaning the recorded them with analog instruments, analog console, tracked to tape, mastered to tape, and used that tape to cut the master for the vinyl LP. so you get all analog. I prefer the old pressing because of this, unfettered by 1's and 0's.

....Whereas most new pressings have analog somewhere in the chain....and more often than not the master being transmitted to the lathe to cut the vinyl stamper is in digital format.

 

[spanndrew]

I don't understand why you want to use 100 year old technology at great expense when you can do the things on CD for 1/10 the cost and get the same audio quality. If you do them yourself there is not even any need to compress the files.

Vinyl is just a thing for a lot of us. My band plans on doing the same thing in the future.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

Both the makers I found use virgin black vinyl, so there's no quality difference there (one seemed to imply that the black might even be better) and the upcharge at either of them for colors was small enough that the "song-name-link" would be adequate reason to pay the very small additional amount on top of the rather large basic setup cost.

I'm personally in the "grew up with vinyl, so happy when CDs came along, have a lot of vinyl and haven't bought hardly any since the late 1980's" camp. Last one I recall was grabbing a copy of Heavy Weather which I could not find on CD to get Birdland. I was utterly delighted when affordable technology moved to the point that I, in my house, could whip out a full quality CD of original work, print the inserts, etc, etc.

I wonder if anyone does the single-sided super-thin version they used to put in magazines and cereal boxes. OTOH, you still have the mastering expense...

CDs are a digital distribution and archiving method - for the kiddies and somewhat less kiddies (other than vinyl-retro-types, of course) they have already been replaced with cloud distribution, storage and having someone's DRM take away music you bought and paid for fair and square; for other kiddies and somewhat less kiddies they have been replaced with pirated digital downloads (no extra charge for the virus loads.)

I don't "spin" CDs anymore, other than once before I park them in my storage, free in the knowledge that I'll still have them even if Apple or Sony or whoever renegotiates a contract; I read them into a computer using a lossless format to retain full quality, and play the music from there. The computer is far smaller than the stack of CDs, and the flash memory the whole library would fit on is the size of a postage stamp. The convenience factor of having it all available without having to go dig a particular unit out of its case and load it into a machine is huge. I still have records (several hundred pounds worth) and record players, but I find them more of a pain than a joy, and will get more use out of their content if I ever go through the agony of digitizing them, and all their audio defects. I might even be on the cusp of being willing to buy the rights twice to get them on CD (where possible) and spare me the agony of digitizing them. I have always thought that was a bit of a rook - if the rights to the music are supposedly the main thing you are paying for, then you should be able to show (or turn in) your copy of (whatever) on vinyl (or 8-track or cassette) and pay a small fee for the mechanical to get the same thing on CD - but that does not happen...

In any case, what format I prefer has nothing to do with the fact that what you want is stacks and stacks of wax and wax, which seems like a perfectly do-able project, while you are still this side of the grave to enjoy it. Making money at it would be a WHOLE other thing. But if the cost differential between 100 and 300 is really that small (ie, roughly $100-200 gets you 3 times as many records), might just as well - you could price them less painfully if selling them, or give away 3 times as many for very little additional money.

Black vinyl sometimes have carbon black to color as it would be encapsulated but more importantly have static dissipation qualities.
Can't speak to black vinyl of today.
I do know that when the records didn't sell they were eventually relegated to cut out and eventually tagged to be "regrind". That was why the colored vinyl was preferred as it meant no used material was used producing it.
The elastomers in vinyl take a beating IF not processed at proper temps during regrind. A certain spec is desired and the final product is adjusted with new until the spec is achieved.
Record warp was usually induced by shrink wrapping process which usually took place while warm and being called shrink wrap, it tended to bend the sleeve while the vinyl was still warm and then take a set. Loose wrap became popular but not with the stores and consumers. Meanwhile, the return rate for warpage used to exceed 25%. Have to wonder about an industry that had their profit structure built to accommodate this.
The vinyl people also offered extra thick records to keep warpage down, guess it was easier to charge more for thickness than slow down the process that created that profit center.
Thus end me channeling Cliff Claven, have a good day.

 

[Son of Wobble]

Black vinyl sometimes have carbon black to color as it would be encapsulated but more importantly have static dissipation qualities.
Can't speak to black vinyl of today.
I do know that when the records didn't sell they were eventually relegated to cut out and eventually tagged to be "regrind". That was why the colored vinyl was preferred as it meant no used material was used producing it.
The elastomers in vinyl take a beating IF not processed at proper temps during regrind. A certain spec is desired and the final product is adjusted with new until the spec is achieved.
Record warp was usually induced by shrink wrapping process which usually took place while warm and being called shrink wrap, it tended to bend the sleeve while the vinyl was still warm and then take a set. Loose wrap became popular but not with the stores and consumers. Meanwhile, the return rate for warpage used to exceed 25%. Have to wonder about an industry that had their profit structure built to accommodate this.
The vinyl people also offered extra thick records to keep warpage down, guess it was easier to charge more for thickness than slow down the process that created that profit center.
Thus end me channeling Cliff Claven, have a good day.

Boy, I almost forgot about warpage, wasn't that fun? Your mention of it reminds me of a time I was at a party with late SNL writer Nelson Lyon, who himself was good friends with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo. I forget the context, but Nelson volunteered to me that Mothersbaugh had gifted him a rare copy of Devo's first, self-pressed 45, which by this point was some thirty years old. Nelson then offered to show me the record, but as we were not at his house, I wondered how he was going to accomplish this.
"It's out in my trunk," he said.
"Your trunk? How long has it been in there?"
"Beats me. A month or two."
"Nels, I hate to tell you this, but vinyl and car trunks, well, not the best of marriages...."
Nelson looked worried as he hastened out to his car. The crestfallen expression on his face when he returned with the vinyl record, so warped that it looked like a a coffee mug in his trembling hands, was priceless.

 

[Coolhandjjl]

I don't understand why you want to use 100 year old technology at great expense when you can do the things on CD for 1/10 the cost and get the same audio quality. If you do them yourself there is not even any need to compress the files.

Where ya been dude? The vinyl comeback is HUGE! Pressing plants are running 24/7 and have a backlog. For some bands, there is a certain cache' value to having vinyl available after the show instead of CDs. If I were a venture capitalist, I'd invest in more vinyl pressing plants over Pono anyday.

 

[lavmonga]

I just used DMS out of Britain and I have to say I was really pleased with the cost, production, and delivery time considering i'm in NYC. I did a good amount of research and they were the cheapest around with the most reasonable turn around time. I recommend them highly.

Invalid Link Removed

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

....Whereas most new pressings have analog somewhere in the chain....and more often than not the master being transmitted to the lathe to cut the vinyl stamper is in digital format.

The first digital masters sucked and blowed major league. Many reasons but the consensus was pretty much unanimous.
The people who ran the lathes knew their machines very well. Some lathes diminished certain frequencies and amplified others because of certain design characteristics. It was for this reason that the people who mastered had a particular sonic print that they attempted to compensate while doing their job.
Digital tape came on the scene and the techs used the same frequency curves on the master lathe using the new digital tape.
The result was an alarming amount of high frequencies which is why most of the first digital recordings were off-putting and hard to listen to, plus crappy songs did not sound any better with digital, some things are universal.
We had issues recording where I worked part time. We isolated some noise and spent an incredible amount of time trying to ascertain the source.
It turned out to be some of my stupidly old and expensive tube microphones from the 40's and 50's.
There was no issue with the mics, the new digital technology captured the noise of them working. The noise was the diaphragms moving over the coil.
When we realized this one of the techs and myself suddenly and were able to pin in down it floored us.
It was our "Dorothy, we ain't in Kansas anymore".
Digital, on tape, with oxides shedding every time it's used, still makes me chortle and shudder like Dr. McCoy reminiscing about crude surgery with scalpels 100 years before him.

 

[Son of Wobble]

The first digital masters sucked and blowed major league. Many reasons but the consensus was pretty much unanimous.
The people who ran the lathes knew their machines very well. Some lathes diminished certain frequencies and amplified others because of certain design characteristics. It was for this reason that the people who mastered had a particular sonic print that they attempted to compensate while doing their job.
Digital tape came on the scene and the techs used the same frequency curves on the master lathe using the new digital tape.
The result was an alarming amount of high frequencies which is why most of the first digital recordings were off-putting and hard to listen to, plus crappy songs did not sound any better with digital, some things are universal.
We had issues recording where I worked part time. We isolated some noise and spent an incredible amount of time trying to ascertain the source.
It turned out to be some of my stupidly old and expensive tube microphones from the 40's and 50's.
There was no issue with the mics, the new digital technology captured the noise of them working. The noise was the diaphragms moving over the coil.
When we realized this one of the techs and myself suddenly and were able to pin in down it floored us.
It was our "Dorothy, we ain't in Kansas anymore".
Digital, on tape, with oxides shedding every time it's used, still makes me chortle and shudder like Dr. McCoy reminiscing about crude surgery with scalpels 100 years before him.

Great post!
And worth mentioning in regards to oxidation: like tape, CD-R also suffers from such degradation. Apparently the way the files are 'cut' into the CD-R causes fissures which oxidize over time. This was brought to my attention by an audio maven friend about a decade ago, who warned me that my archive of CD-R was not stable but would need to be periodically recopied. He himself learned the hard way when the CD-R master for his debut album would no longer play and defied being revived. Sure enough, many of my CD-Rs have developed pops and cracks over the past decade, or now don't read at all. Most annoying, and pretty much signaled the end of my ceasing to worry about archiving anyone's work but my own.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

also most old pressings are analog. meaning the recorded them with analog instruments, analog console, tracked to tape, mastered to tape, and used that tape to cut the master for the vinyl LP. so you get all analog. I prefer the old pressing because of this, unfettered by 1's and 0's.

Instead, your'e fettered by having a whopping ~55-60 dB between saturation and hiss. Digital didn't take the market away from analog because it sounds worse (except to golden ears, evidently) - the mere 16 bit CD has 96 dB signal to noise, and as a direct practical, normal human ear result I can hear more music and less reproduction system noise from a CD than from a record. The hand-waving arguments about digital being compressed fly in the face of logic, given that there's 36 dB more room between "as loud as it goes" and "dead silent" on a CD than there is on a record. An all analog production chain has a vast array of things that compress (or just lose) the signal, often in strange ways. At the height of analog technology, you might have gotten 90 dB on tape - which you still needed to compress to 60 dB if you wanted it on a record, unless you wanted parts of the record to be inaudible due to noise. And you still need to do that today...

 

[SeattleSunn]

All this talk of records got my mouth and ears watering! I just got back from one of the 20+ local record stores ... cashed in a gift certificate the In Laws got me last Xmas, and a few coins of my own on another 6 titles:

View attachment 848044

I usually do most of my record shopping at Goodwills, garage sales, annual & semi-Ann localy held record conventions, but yesterday was my birthday ... coincidence that it falls on National Record Store Day?? I think not

Very cool. If you have a record release party, you should look into having it at the Revolver in seattle on capitol hill.

VINYL . BOOZE . FOOD

Great sounding band. vinyl will be a nice touch.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

Great post!
And worth mentioning in regards to oxidation: like tape, CD-R also suffers from such degradation. Apparently the way the files are 'cut' into the CD-R causes fissures which oxidize over time. This was brought to my attention by an audio maven friend about a decade ago, who warned me that my archive of CD-R was not stable but would need to be periodically recopied. He himself learned the hard way when the CD-R master for his debut album would no longer play and defied being revived. Sure enough, many of my CD-Rs have developed pops and cracks over the past decade, or now don't read at all. Most annoying, and pretty much signaled the end of my ceasing to worry about archiving anyone's work but my own.

Love your pic by the way..........

I used to get a big charge out of the ridiculously expensive Nakamichi tape decks that were optional in some of the high end German cars. They did one thing exactly the same as the cheaper, I mean inexpensive, cassette players.
They all sucked when the car was cold. Tapes could come from inside but the big $$$ decks still had motors and mechanisms greased for life, that did not respond well to being cold.

Spending $3-5K and yet this problem was not addressed, there's some forward thinking! Guess it probably made worse by the advent of the CD......aaaawwwww that's too bad.

Meanwhile.......I've a '59 Mercedes Ponton that had a reel to reel tape recorder/player in it, it was an option offered, I believe Grundig made it. Straddles the driveshaft hump in the back seat, guess you had to give the passengers something to do.

 

[Slough Feg Bass]

I use Pirates Press for my vinyl production.
They are nice people to work with and do a good job. Similar pricing as other places, about ~$1500 USD for 500 units.
People don't buy too many CD's anymore, but I can sell plenty of vinyl.

 

[SeattleSunn]

Love your pic by the way..........

I used to get a big charge out of the ridiculously expensive Nakamichi tape decks that were optional in some of the high end German cars. They did one thing exactly the same as the cheaper, I mean inexpensive, cassette players.
They all sucked when the car was cold. Tapes could come from inside but the big $$$ decks still had motors and mechanisms greased for life, that did not respond well to being cold.

Spending $3-5K and yet this problem was not addressed, there's some forward thinking! Guess it probably made worse by the advent of the CD......aaaawwwww that's too bad.

Meanwhile.......I've a '59 Mercedes Ponton that had a reel to reel tape recorder/player in it, it was an option offered, I believe Grundig made it. Straddles the driveshaft hump in the back seat, guess you had to give the passengers something to do.

The Highway Hi-Fi Phonograph…The Music You Want Wherever You Go

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

The Highway Hi-Fi Phonograph…The Music You Want Wherever You Go

Seen one of these in our club, a huge Chrysler Imperial, now your article explains why he had so few records, they were 16 2/3 RPM?!?!?! Remember that speed, as a kid as it was being phased out, records for the blind, I believe. It was handy for slowing down records for learning solos, then I went to tape.
Seem to remember the owner said it skipped less if he had the stylus weight higher, he was the original owner, sometimes he used a nickel taped to it.
Yeppp, can just about see the needle lathing the vinyl off in tiny microscopic threads.
Good old days.......

 

[T_Bone_TL]

My local vinyl aficionado has recently gotten into 78's... I saw the 16-2/3s in that ad and knew why I'd never seen one of those.

 

[Son of Wobble]

The Highway Hi-Fi Phonograph…The Music You Want Wherever You Go

Great stuff... Love the gloved hand in the ad.

16 2/3 RPM must have sounded pretty rough. Also, seems a little dangerous to drive and spin.
I should think one would have be better off with a guest DJ, such as pictured below:

 

[catcauphonic]

Cassettes are making a bit of a comeback as well. That one really baffles me personally, but we're actually pressing some cassettes of our upcoming album and there are small and successful local labels that only press cassette.
I just need to understand that they are not for me, and they do sell... to somebody.

I really didn't understand the whole vinyl thing a few years back when a few of the guys wanted to press our first album, but we did, and since then I've started a sizable collection of my own.
There is a certain romanticism in the ritual of putting an album on that is completely absent from all other mediums, IMO. Instead of pressing play on your digital device and blue-toothing it to some speakers, or tossing discs into a pile because they are all on your hard drive anyway, you have to cherish it more. In my mind, it demands more respect to the music and the art. It's not so disposable.

Now you get it I do see a lot of cassettes being sold these past few years, but I see it as a temporary novelty. Other than being able to record the ultimate mix tape for your friends, the medium is far inferior to the record ... even worse than the CD in my mind. But like you said, 'somebody will buy them' at the shows!

Very cool. If you have a record release party, you should look into having it at the Revolver in seattle on capitol hill.

VINYL . BOOZE . FOOD

Great sounding band. vinyl will be a nice touch.

Thanks SeattleSunn!

& I <3 Revolver Is Vi still spinning Sunday brunch?