The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

blacknwhite · Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 51

Interesting article about the business of scrounging for lathe parts, making repairs, etc, as of 2003:

Also an interesting suggestion from Sean Davies, the chief technical contributor to the article - he claims he cut two lacquers from the same batch with a 15 kHz test tone on a Friday, then put one in the refridgerator over the weekend, and left one out. When he played them back on Monday, the "relaxation" of the un-cooled lacquer had made the high-frequency tone drop in volume by 2.5 dB in comparison with the cooled one - Wow. (That's apparently one major reason why Direct-Metal-Mastering on copper blanks was developed for audio discs)

Put those lacquers in the fridge...

http://www.resolutionmag.com/pdfs/KNOWHOW/VINYLA~1.PDF

- Bob

Aussie0zborn · Joined: 11 Mar 2006 Posts: 69 Location: Australia

This is a great article. Apparently Fleetwood Mac did the same thing in their heyday. They cut multiple masters at one cutting room and shipped them out all over the world in cooler bags where they were processed and pressed. It makes you wonder why they didnt just process them locally and just ship the mothers out to the "territories" for pressing.

In desperation, we once sent cut lacquers to England for processing. I think it was three or four albums - all had test pressings approved and nobody knew the difference.

jtransition · Joined: 18 Apr 2008 Posts: 6

We store all of our cut lacquers in a fridge.
Regards
Jason