Notice ! ! ! This is a bit of a rant, but worth reading, I think.
Ok. So - Quality. There are more and more people lathe-cutting out there these days. My only objective is to cut and package with as high quality as is possible given the tools available, and to do so at a reasonable price. that doesn’t mean I’ll always be the very cheapest (mono cuts on plexiglass will always be cheaper), but given the hand-work that goes into these records, they will be a very good value.
back to quality - I mean quality sound, and quality packaging. They will look good, and sound good. Very good. My jackets have a white border, and no printing on the spine. Just the way it is. but the prints are beautiful and colors will be extremely accurate. That includes black, dark blue, etc. Cheap, thin, cut/folded jackets printed on an office printer will not look or feel like mine.
How to get high quality sound on vinyl. perhaps most importantly, your friendly vinyl cutter must have a quality monitoring environment. This means being able to listen to the source material, and compare it accurately to the record that’s being cut. To do this, one needs a room designed for listening/monitoring, a few different pairs of high quality speakers (including subwoofers - vinyl can go LOW!!), and a quality signal processing chain. My control room was designed from the ground up to be as accurate as possible. What I hear is what you get. During setup for your record(s), I test cut each track, and compare back and forth between the source that you send me and the record as it’s being played. On studio monitors. on headphones. on small bookshelf speakers. and on large free-standing speakers in a larger room. Once I get it as good as I can get it, I begin cutting. then, while cutting your records, I monitor each record and continue comparing each record as it’s cutting. on all sets of speakers and headphones. it’s a very busy thing. I’m very tired at the end of the day. if you are shopping around for vinyl cutting service, and you see pictures/videos of some guy/gal sitting in a little tiny space listening on little tiny speakers, playing back on little tiny playback equipment, it’s very hard to get an accurate sonic picture of what’s actually happening….to…your…record. I don’t care what kind of cutting machine is being used, or if the cutterhead is a feedback, feed-forward, flashback hooohaaw whatever. you need a high quality audio chain and monitoring environment to do it right. go troll around on my instagram feed, website, youtube channel, etc. This is not a guy-living-with-his-mom-in-the-basement-doing-cool-shit operation.
Now, all this doesn’t mean i don’t fuck things up on occasion. I do. weird things can happen - this is a VErrrrry manual process. But, it’s pretty rare, and I absolutely fix anything that I foul up, at no charge.
Lately I’ve been cutting quite a few replacements for projects done elsewhere. If you are concerned about quality, get a sample done prior to ordering a larger number with your vendor. I will cut a single sample with full artwork at my standard single price for you. If you don’t like it for any reason, I’ll refund all of your money, including shipping. if you do like it and want to order more, I’ll prorate the amount paid for the single copy into the larger order. Be careful ! ! !
Notice ! ! ! Please do not request vinyl cutting for material that you do not have rights to, or permission to reproduce. No mixtapes ! !
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If you'd like to order, please send an email to jon@austinsignal.com . You'll receive a dropbox invitation to access a folder that we will provide. Please put all artwork and audio in that folder. We will also send a paypal invoice for payment. Thanks!!!
