Lacquer > Master > Mother > Stamper > Record

I'm working with my 31 year old, vinyl loving nephew. We have a Facetime call this Monday where we will go over the dead wax information and label information on Stanley Clarke's School Days album. We both have the same first pressing and I want to teach him some of the tricks in reading the dead wax info. I also want him to learn how a record is made because that's part of this subject. You can help me by filling in details I've forgotten.

• Steve posted a YouTube video of film from 70 years, showing the process in the subject line. It was very informative and will help make this process real to my nephew. I've searched YouTube and can't find it. In fact, I sort of remember Steve posting different videos at different times. Does anybody have a URL for one of these old "How A Record Is Made" films? A modern one would also be fine. All I can find are ones which are way too basic, skipping steps.

Here are some materials questions:

• The lacquer is an aluminum disc covered with lacquer, right?
• I remember, or at least think I do, that the master is made of nickel that has been deposited on the lacquer. After the lacquer is peeled off of the master, the nickel is often plated with chrome to strengthen and protect it. Is this correct?
• I believe the same is true for the mother, in that it's a nickel disc which was deposited on the master, and that nickel also has been chrome plated. Is this correct? If so, how do you keep the mother from sticking to the master?
• I can't remember what the stamper is made of. Please inform me.

I need help with numbers:

• You can make one master from the lacquer, right?
• You can make a few mothers from the master but the number is in the low single digits. Is this correct? What's a good number to use?
• How many stampers can you make from a mother?
• I know the number of records a stamper can press varies depending on the quality you are willing to accept. I remember a few hundred is best. What's the top number of records you can get out of a stamper and not have a drop off in quality?

Thank you for your help. I'm sure I got at least some of the above stuff totally wrong.

 

I don't have any answers here (interested in them myself!) But wanted to say good for you for sharing your hobby with a family member! I'm 34 and would love to have someone like that in my family, to talk pressing info and the process itself. Very cool of you to do this.

 

Vinyl record manufacturing - lacquer, master, mother, stamper and pressings

Hopefully this is right

 

Great info. Thanks Steve!

 

Would a stamped typically give you 50, 000 lps, Steve?

 

It seems right. Interesting how the numbers are lower than Steve's, with 2-4 mothers and 6 stampers. Since that website is trying to sell you an online home recording course, let's call theirs theoretical. We'll call Steve's real world.

If you take Steve's numbers, from one lacquer you could get 10 mothers x 10 stampers x 1,000 blanks, which would be 100,000 LPs. That's a maximum number, so 50,000 seems more realistic.

Agreed. We all appreciate the service, Steve.

 

Somehow EMI made hundreds of thousands of LPs from the same lacquer...

I think the number of stampers can be much higher than 10 (depending upon the green eye shades in accounting, of course). More like dozens.

 

Sorry if slightly off topic, but interested to track the full-life of an analogue capture from studio through the last viable lp record that can be made from one.

We all know some records sold in the tens of millions. How many times is a second generation copy of the mixdown-master tape read across for lacquer production before it starts to lose integrity? Could it be hundreds of times, before things like tape-hiss, tape-stretching, and other repeated-use, storage, and age-related deterioration are prone to set in?
Instabilities in the magnetic particle top layer develop through wear and tear, yes? Loss of lubricant in the binder, and substrate deformation , the backing film, that happens from excessive tape pack stresses, aging, and poor wind-quality result in deformation of the polyester in the substrate, and the tapes become distorted. Since a mixdown master is usually the first dub off of the original multi-tracks, and production copies of the mixdown tape are essentially third generation, how many times can the mixdown master be dubbed before its integrity declines? (presumeably the same life-expectancy as the production copies or lp cutting tapes (?)

 

Well, it also depends on the tape stock but just because one tape has gone to tape heaven (tape hell, is of course, Iron Mountain) doesn't mean a label is screwed.

 

True that. Similar the whole process with regard to quality variables. I used to implemente a procedure that reflected this. In the interest of preserving very rare and absolutely irreplaceable vinyl lp copies (in the days before digital copying),
I would set up optimal tape copying of first-playback vinyl spins. These were highest-grade cassette tapes recorded on using the best turntable/cartridge and tape-recording deck equipment available to me. That first-playback tape-capture became a master tape-copy in much the same way the studio mixdown is a fresh dub off of the brand-new multis. From this cassette master I would make playing cassette copies (now twice removed from the vinyl but still decent playback quality, at least for cruising in the car or playing on a boombox at the beach) The master cassette only ever got read across a second time if and when my playing-copy wore out. I could go through two playing copies before the master cassette would ever need to be played for a third time, meanwhile, my curated vinyl remained a stone-mint, once-played artifact - virtually identical to new condition while I've enjoyed listening to the album hundreds of times.

When I compare some high-fidelity, mint vinyl pressings from original print runs with digital remasters that have been sourced from fifty or sixty year-old tapes that have already been used enough times to lacquer > master> mother> stamper > press tens of millions of lp records, there is sometimes a noticeable difference in clarity between the way the original vinyl sounds and the way the newly transfered remaster sounds.

 

SH Spotlight - How records are made: RCA Command Performance 1942 & "Living Stereo" 1956. MUST SEE!