Ever wondered how records are made? Come on a voyage to the land of vinyl as CNET News.com's Daniel Terdiman visits United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tennessee.
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One stop was United Record Pressing, one of just three companies in the United States that still make a meaningful number of vinyl LPs. Surprisingly in this digital era, records are on the upswing. This is largely because the emergence of MP3s has led some audiophiles to conclude that vinyl offers a more pleasurable home-listening experience.
Pictured is what is known as a stamper, the fourth step in the process of making an LP. The process begins with the original recording, which is used to make the master recording, which unlike a record, has ridges instead of grooves. Then, the master is used to make the "mother," a metal version of the record that can actually be played. The stamper is made from the mother, and it too has ridges. All vinyl records are made by pressing the stamper down onto hot vinyl.
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This display piece at United Record Pressing in Nashville demonstrates the steps to finishing a record. The process starts with the original recording — in this case a tape — and then proceeds through the master, which has ridges rather than grooves, and is lacquer-sprayed with silver. The master is used to make the mother, which is a playable metal version of the record. That in turn is used to make the stamper, which also has ridges and which is used to press all the LPs.
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This is a record-pressing machine, as seen from the front. Hot vinyl is fed into it and pressed between two plates and the stamper. Then, out comes a record.
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United Record Pressing makes 7-inch and 12-inch records in several colours. Here, a red 12-inch LP is being pressed. The excess hot vinyl will be cut off and will fall into a bin below. The record will slide out and fall onto a stack of others on a pin.
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Most records are black, but United Record Pressing uses several colours, including blue. This is a bin of the raw vinyl pellets used to make records.
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Around the United Record Pressing plant in Nashville, one finds bin after bin full of vinyl pellets.
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On a wall at United Record Pressing is a display showing all the albums being pressed that week. During reporter Daniel Terdiman's visit, the sign showed that the company — if the list was up to date — was working on albums by artists including Kid Rock, Bob Dylan, and R. Kelly.
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Before labels can be pressed onto a record, they must first be baked in an oven to remove any moisture. Moisture could cause the labels to bubble up after being pressed onto the record. Here, stacks of labels get baked.
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A stack of labels on the back of a record-pressing machine. The labels are being grabbed one by one by the machine and pressed onto new records.
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For each LP United Record Pressing works on, the facility keeps a folder with a sample of everything involved, including the stamper, liner notes, a label, a jacket and, in the case of this Elvis Costello album, the coupon for a digital download of all the tracks.
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The United Record Pressing library has thousands of folders holding all the materials for each album. These represent every record the company has ever worked on, including the Beatles' first American release.
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After a quick inspection, a United Record Pressing worker puts each record in a sleeve to make sure it looks ready to go.
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This machine shrink-wraps each record after it has been put into its sleeve and then placed inside its jacket. The complete package is then fed onto a conveyor belt that carries it through the shrink-wrapping machine.
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These finished records have gone through every step of the process, including being shrink-wrapped.
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United Record Pressing works on lots of records, such as singles, that require special labels. These are stacks of such labels that are ready in case they're needed.
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These are rolls of "parental advisory" labels that are applied to records containing explicit content.
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