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I was browsing around a record shop a few days ago, and rapidly came to the conclusion that there was in inverse relationship between the price of new music on vinyl and its quality. Most new titles are pushing €30 – records that you know will likely be discounted at some stage by 50% or more. I left empty handed – for €20 there were a few titles such as Green Day, Field Music and Bombay Bicycle Club that may have tempted me, but not last week.

I arrived home to discover that the factory that produces most of the lacquers for vinyl production in the world, Apollo-Transco, had burned to the ground. Lacquers are the first step in traditional record manufacturing – the mastering engineer literally cuts the music from tape (or other source) onto a disc covered in soft plastic (lacquer) over an aluminium base plate. It then is sent to another location to be electroplated – to produce the first “father” from which the “mother” stampers are made. Theoretically, limitless numbers of mothers can be made from a single father. In the one-step process (as popularised by Mobile Fidelity), the mother is made directly from the acetate – something that suddenly feels very wasteful indeed.

Strangely, despite the big upsurge in the production of vinyl records worldwide, the increase in the number of pressing plants and the high profile of “Record Store Day” etc. a situation was allowed to exist, despite ongoing concerns, whereby only two lacquer manufacturers existed in the world, Apollo-Transco in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Moreover, it appears that Apollo-Transco made most of the lacquer cutting needles in the world.

It appears that, once current lacquer stocks are depleted, vinyl production will be curtailed severely. That is bad news for young bands, who make a little profit from vinyl, older bands  – whose reissues on vinyl must be a financial god-send, for the music industry and, importantly for the people who work in the pressing plants. I have often wondered why so many 1960s and 1970s LPs have been reissued, cut freshly from digital sources. Might the music industry start looking for old metalware in their vaults and factories and repress from the original “fathers?” If there was any decency in the music industry, the small supply of new lacquers would be reserved for new music that has never been released on vinyl. Unfortunately, it is more likely to be used for the 40^th anniversary edition of “Breakfast in America,” “The Long Run” or the 200^th reissue of the Beatles Albums.

Now I’m feeling guilty that I did not buy the new Field Music album.

~ by Pat Neligan on February 12, 2020.

Posted in Retromania, Vinyl
Tags: acetates, Apollo-Transco, Lacquer factory burned down, Lacquers