Retro > Vinyl Records

Vinyl Records

NOTE: RUSH ORDERS FOR 100 COPIES OR MORE MAY BE POSSIBLE! ASK IF YOU’RE INTERESTED!

If you’d like vinyl records, there are two ways to go about it. One is to have them ‘lathe-cut’, which refers to cutting records individually on a vinyl cutting lathe. We’ve done literally thousands of lathe-cuts. It’s a great approach if you want a small number of copies - say, less than 25. The other way is to have records pressed, which involves more steps; cutting a lacquer master, plating (which produces stampers), and pressing at a pressing plant.

These days we’re doing master lacquers for pressing primarily, and very few lathe-cutting jobs. The good news is that our minimum quantity for pressing is only 25 copies. Occasionally for special projects we will entertain doing lathe-cuts - there are some options available such as picture disks, custom/individual audio on each record etc. that can best be done by cutting records individually. Please contact us if you have a project like this.

After 8 years and thousands of cuts, sometimes running 2 or 3 lathes at a time, I’ve ceased doing lathe-cuts for all practical purposes.  Doing that stuff and listening to the same record 8 or 10 hours a day at my advanced age can make a person (me) insane. I will occasionally entertain doing a run of picture disks (no more that 20) or specialty stuff like individual custom audio, individual artwork, etc.  I’ll cost ya, though.  And I will really have to summon the courage, and be in the mood.  But they’ll be awesome if I do it.

I get correspondence from potential clients, asking about mastering, audio quality, bass frequencies, etc.  Some comments:

Masters – it’s very likely that the digital masters you have can be reproduced just fine on vinyl.  If you can get a master that doesn’t have final peak limiting on it, with no other changes, that’s what I’d prefer.  48k/24bit are great.  Don’t need anything higher, and good 44.1k/16bit masters are fine too. Don’t touch the low end, don’t touch the high end.  Don’t fool with the mid/side stuff.  I’ll deal with it.  If I find something really nasty I’ll let you know.  And, to you I-read-it-on-Reddit engineers, please don’t send mids-only and sides-only files to me (you know who you are).

For right now, I’m only doing 12” vinyl.  The plants that I use don’t have molds for 10”.  If you would like 7”, I can provide a quote, but generally for at least 200 copies.  Even at 100 copies, 7” are just too expensive to produce.  I used to post pricing on this page, but it tends to change occasionally, so please email me for pricing and artwork guidelines. jon@austinsignal.com