Colemine-Vinyl Ecosystem Video
If you haven't already seen it, check out this very informative video from our pals at Colemine Records :
STAMPERS . So after the Mother plate has been passed by Quality Control (me) . The Master is then allowed to move along in the process and become what we call a Stamper . The master is "formed" to certain specifications depending on what pressing plant were sending the product to . That Stamper is then placed in the press to smash down the "Biscuits" over and over again making many duplicates of the record . End of the journey as far as the plating portions goes !
MOTHER'S PART 2 . So I wanted to talk a bit more in depth about what my role is here at the ELECTROMASTERING LAB . As the Quality Control Technician my job is to check every Mother from beginning to end , and to visually check the plate as well . I look for Pop's , Tick's , Skip's and anything that might be not in the actual audio . I'm not really listening to the "mixdown" or the "mastering" quality of the audio but more for manufacturing issues that have changed that said source material . Couple fun facts . More than most of the time I'm not listening to the record at it's normal speed . Because of a daily work load of around 22 sides , I have a lot of plates to get through . Speeding everything up to 45 RPM or even higher is the only way to get through all of it within a day . Also I don't use a special stylus to listen to these pieces of metal . Because the wear and tear is pretty high on sticking a needle into Nickle , just use something that inexpensive and easy to replace . Pretty cool
MOTHERS ! Gonna split this one up into two small vids . So the Mother is what comes after the Master in our process . The Master is put in a tank ,and then plated with Nickle ,that's then split . Because this is now the opposite of the master , it has listenable grooves again ! Which makes the Mother really important because we can check the part for issues if needed . And we can go back to the mother and pull more master copies to make stampers from . Also Mothers are easily archived so were able to come a lot of them here at our facility in Columbus Ohio . Mothers are great !
The Master ! After the Lacquer has been made conductive and is ready , its placed in a booth where its sprayed with Silver . The lacquer is then carefully split away from the new metal plate , and you then have ...the Master ! Or sometimes called the Father . Masters are the negative form of the lacquer . Meaning that they don't have grooves , they have ridges , so you can't check them for audio issues you can only do visual inspections on them. But with the next step you can . The next video I'll be doing will be about the Mother ! A super important part of the process and our Quality Control here at Gotta Groove . Stay tuned !
Hey hey Christopher here ! So this is where is all starts , the Lacquer . Where mastered Audio from either a Digital source , or in some cases straight from Tape , gets "cut" onto an aluminum disc that is coated with a nitrocellulose lacquer layer . A lathe with a very specialized cutting head essentially vibrates the audio into a soft pliable lacquer creating the grooves . Here at the Electro Mastering Lab when a lacquer gets shipped to us we immediately process the disk , getting it ready for plating . Listening to a lacquer isn't typical advised though , as they are VERY fragile and susceptible to damage . Even a small finger print or spit from talking over a lacquer can ruin the disk . The one I'm playing here is a project I worked on , and has already been plated , so worries to be had about hurting this one ;) .
Hey hey ! Christopher here . So I'm going to be doing a series of videos about the plating process that we do here at Gotta Groove. and dive a bit deeper into our Electromastering Lab here in Columbus , Ohio . The plating process is a part of the manufacturing of vinyl that seems to be a bit lesser known , and not talked about enough . So I'm here to give you the important stuff , and show you more about what our facility does.
Stay tuned !
