making records circa 1980

[ljcml]

This writing was inspired by the videos on Youtube of how records are now made. For those of you who have seen these, they are pretty close to what I experienced back in the 70s where I worked at the CBS plant in Pitman NJ in the electroplating/"matrix" dept. The plant produced about 250,000 records per day. I since got a chemistry degree and I work in that industry now, but my interest in vinyl records persists. The videos may be the way records are made today, but most older record collections reflect the manufacturing practices that I participated in up to 1980. I've forgotten some details, but hopefully what I remembered will be of some interest. I also welcome any questions it may conjure up, particularly from those who work in pressing plants now (there's one in Nashville TN I'd love to visit).

The relevence of this post may be for vinyl-philes to gain insight into where the noise comes from in records, and why they are often great, usually good, and other times neither. Or from my point of view, how amazing the sound they produce is considering the technology that went into them, at least compared to today's standards. Lastly, I'm personally fascinated why people still spend thousands of dollars on playback equipment to capture their information.

Here are the youtube videos I found by simply searching "how vinyl records were made" in google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReDh9ec_rk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUGRRUecBik&feature=related

 

[Shaun]

That was very enlightening! Thanks so much for sharing.