"The Tough Realities Behind Vinyl's Comeback", article extract:
"...Slusarz began looking around for equipment but couldn’t find any. He’d just about given up, but as a last-ditch effort he emailed four pressing plants to see if they had anything for sale. Two didn’t respond. One wasn’t selling. But the fourth — Sun Plastics in Newark, New Jersey—was looking to get out of the business; in fact, the plant had to be out of its space in two months. Slusarz flew to Jersey, made an offer, and in March of 2009 the equipment was loaded onto four flatbed trucks to make the precarious journey to Ohio. (One press was dropped and damaged en route.)
Five years in, vinyl manufacturing is still full of surprises. Gotta Groove operates six presses and is currently restoring another that came from Cleveland’s famed Boddie Recording Company. Though the plant cranks out between 4,000 and 5,000 records a day, there’s no secret formula or process that ensures a perfect record every time. The same settings on the same machines don’t produce the same results as the day before, or even the hour before. Something as simple as a paper label can cause all sorts of problems—the paper has to be baked for about 24 hours to remove any moisture, which can gum up the process.
In Gotta Groove’s listening room, 33-year-old Tim Thornton drops the needle in several spots on a record to check for inconsistencies, then visually inspects for off-center labels, chipped edges, and color impurities, which is particularly challenging on the current batch of white vinyl he’s working on. Thornton repeats this process every 20 minutes for one pressing..."
More here:
http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9 ... -comeback/
