Did Vinyl Pressing Plants Etch Runouts?

From what I've heard only one or two sets of Lacquers were cut from the recording and sent off for electroplating. It doesn't seem economical to cut a new Lacquer for each Stamper so that leaves the Mold or Mother as the only remaining positive that can be etched to indicate the number of reproductions. But again this is a metal plate so who, how, and where did these additional reference numbers get added to the runout?

As the Lacquer is the only soft vinyl and first in the process it must be etched so it can be identified with minimum information otherwise they would have to scratch numbers out.

Take RCA for example. A Lacquer would probably have been etched with only the numbers - L2RY 1055 then sent off for electroplating, a process that results in the destruction of the Lacquer.

From this negative Master a positive Mold or Mother is created (assuming pressing more than a few hundred discs) but this Mold is also metal making etching a more difficult process. Looking at a RCA record runout, the additional "- 3S" (L2RY 1055 - 3S) appears identical to the previous numbers in size and font as well as placement. Who did this and where? Did the plating plant etch each Mold for the projected number of discs requested?

If several sets of Stampers are created from each Mold or Mother then how can "3S" relate to the Stamper? You can't have different Stamper numbers from the same Mother and no one would bother trying to etch a Stamper with a different number because the Stamper is a negative and to do it would require etching reversed codes from the backside.

Early RCA runout codes were stamped so maybe the plating plant could use a punch for the metal Mold but what about other Companies who used codes that look hand written? How did someone hand etch each metal Mold with the exact same handwriting as the original Lacquer?

 

Short answer Yes and the machine name is called a pantograph.

After searching the internet I came across gzvinyl.com which provided detailed information on the entire manufacturing process. GZ Media stands for Gramofonove zavody (Gramophone record factory) and was founded in 1948, a Czech company.

GZ Media does everything from Mastering to Pressing, in fact they opened a Pressing Plant in Canada in 2017. On their web page, Manufacturing is separated into four areas - Mastering, Metal Work, Pressing, and Printing.

Within Metal Work they describe etching Mother plates or positive Molds for both Lacquer formed Masters as well as DMM cut copper plates. The machine used appears to be something like the Deckel GK21. There are very high definition pictures of the process on the web page.

Did Specialty Records Corp and Allied Record use a pantograph? The answer to this question depends if those pressing plants were only sent Master plates from the Record Companies. I would suspect SRC had a lot of pressing to manage, lots of deadlines to meet and it would seem they needed the flexibility to manufacture as many Stampers necessary to fulfill an order rather than having the Record Company ship a specific number.

For example, if SRC had 100 Pressing Machines but only 25 working on an order they could produce a bunch of Stampers and ramp up the other 75 machines to get that order out of the way for something larger that came in.

 

THANK YOU. I've been wondering this forever and couldn't seem to construct an internet search that would come up with an answer. Why I didn't just post it here I don't know.

So, assuming a 3 step process, the lacquer is made, then electroplated and a father created and electroplated again to create the mother (where the runout markings, either etching or stamping, is done), which is in turn used to make the stamper.
Since one father can produce 10 mothers, one mother can produce 10 stampers, and one stamper can produce about 1000 records, then approximately 10,000 records would be able to have the exact same set of markings, it sounds like.

What about when something is crossed out? Is it just that someone "mistyped"?
What does it mean when there's stamping and etching on the same record?

 

Welcome, I would suspect crossed out codes are the result of an original release Master plate (negative) brought back into production some years later as a re-release. They must have done this from the backside to prevent an embossed surface that would play old Harry with the stylus. After this they could etch new codes in the Mothers. As far as stamping and etching I've heard some shops used both, not sure if the Label did the stamping and the pressing plants did the etching or vice versa. After learning about the process I've gained a lot of respect for those talented folks working on the pantograph, an art in itself.

 

Interesting, much respect for sure. I've often wondered if they had any inkling that years later people would obsess over every little odd character in the runout to discern its meaning.

 

The most prominent (but not only) example of each stamper having a unique stamper identifier are the Beatles UK Parlophone LPs.

 

You can make a lot more than 10 stampers from a single mother. And I said above, there are records where each stamper had a unique identifier. So your calculation of 10,000 records being able to have the same markings is both moot and incorrect.

Thus, depending upon how many records a company chooses to press from the various parts, it can be as little as a few hundred or so with a unique identifier to as many as a few hundred thousand if the only etching/identifier used is for the metal part/lacquer.

When something is crossed out, it’s usually because someone made a mistake, a different legal entity is pressing LPs from the old metal part/mother/stamper, or the same entity is now using a different catalog number for that LP and is pressing up a new batch from the old parts for the new catalog number (often because of pricing changes - which helped identify returns).

What do etchings and stamping on the same record mean? It simply means somebody/some facility used etchings and somebody/some facility used stamping for whatever info it was they wished to memorialize in the end product.

 

Gotcha, I've seen those rough numbers floating around on different sites, but that's good to know. I've also wondered about catalog numbers changing (like "In the Court of the Crimson King" going from SD 8245 to SD 19155) so that's interesting as well.
So I guess what you said explains why sometimes you'll see A sides that have fairly different markings from B sides, if they ended up using mothers or stampers that were made at slightly different times?

 

Or quite different times. It all depends upon when parts break or wear out, etc. Tons of variables.

Particularly in the old mass market vinyl days, it was just manufacturing. It wasn’t nearly as linear as collectors like to think or romanticize it was.