Video : Why Records Are Expensive (1951)

[THD]

Here is a funny clip from 1951, about why records are so "expensive".
Notice how mysterious the Vinyl Mastering men, with their Scully Lathes, were at Capitol Records in L.A(14min,7sec into the film). Hidden in a room, it seems like they had their own secret universe going on in there. This were the days of "Don't touch, only look!" LOL

Very educational, indeed!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X6IMuRICNP0#!

[jjgolden]

Nice Post!

Incredible to realize the solid infrastructure the vinyl world had back then.
They had guys and gals in so many areas of the process.
i.e. the lady manually "Correcting imperfections" in the metal mother.... and the guys at the end crash testing the different vinyl compounds and checking for how far a record would bend till it snaps.. funny stuff...
Goes to show just how much effort and resources were put into this industry to make it succeed back then.

JJG

[mossboss]

May I say that the effort is still the same as very little has changed if anything at all really
Regardless of the fact that pressing vinyl is a thankless task now days Not much has changed
We still "de-horn" mothers/masters in some cases where there is a need for a 3 step process
I have said before here that people expecting a clean cut and a clean pressing from a single or two step process are taking a 50-50 chance
I is also the new breed of cutters who promote the idea which
is wrong
Since the formulas are the same in any lacquer as well as nothing has changed in the whole chain of producing a record it often defies me why people expect to get a perfect sounding record if the crucial step of cleaning the master is removed something that was set in concrete from from back than
I often wonder when we who are involved in the industry start insisting that it is the only way so as to get a consistent result
Cheers

[emorritt]

Couple of interesting things. First, Capitol using a Presto head and not a Westrex. Also, the lacquer master shown clearly shows the spiral starting well outside the finished diameter of the record. On another thread someone claims masters are never cut that way because it weakens the stampers. Apparently not true... I've seen it done that way for decades.

[markrob]

Couple of interesting things. First, Capitol using a Presto head and not a Westrex. Also, the lacquer master shown clearly shows the spiral starting well outside the finished diameter of the record. On another thread someone claims masters are never cut that way because it weakens the stampers. Apparently not true... I've seen it done that way for decades.

Hi,

I was surprised to see the Presto (a 1D it think) as well. But maybe it makes sense. As far as I can tell, the first Westrex feedback mono head is mentioned in the Yenzer paper in 1949. So its right on the cusp of these heads making their way into studios. Perhaps they had not updated the lathe in question when this was filmed. If it was released in '51, then it might have been shot sometime in '50. They did show some 7" samples and refered to LP's in passing, so we know its after '49, but mostly they were showing 78's. Prior to the Westrex, what other heads would have been used in professional applications in the states? The Grampian seems to date to '47, but I'm not sure if they were in wide use in the US at the time of the film.

I think the Ampex tape machines were 300's is this correct?

Interesting bit of history. I hope they find the final chunk of the film.

Mark

[Steve E.]

There's some discussion on the Youtube page that this might have been shot in 1952! The Dean Martin performance is apparently identical to one he did on April 8 of that year. The Jimmy Wakely song "My heart has plenty of room for you" was also released in mid-1952.

[Steve E.]

Who is that singing "Lil Liza Jane" at 16:00? They're great!

[jjgolden]

Mossy, I agree, the Effort is there and the process of making records haven't changed much. I guess I was speaking from a broader perspective of the available resources of the industry back then.
I'd like to know who is dehorning/retouching mothers & masters in the US.
Maybe there are some, but I've never heard any mention of it in recent Years. Who is testing vinyl pressings for stress?
JJG

[mossboss]

Sure thing They had it all to themselves The horse the jockey the racetrack the betting booth and the prize pool
Money was no object as it poured in However they had a tight control of all the steps as well as making sure that the records where able to be played in any TT with no issues
Lacquers from outside where a definite NO NO and if any of them where accepted they had to comply to their strict regime
Now days every one has his views on what is right the loud cuts the 5 minute tracks on 7" and a whole host of practices which would have been thrown out the window without a second look back than
On the subject of De horning
I am not aware of any one else doing it myself I have no doubt that some is done with "rouge" or Brasso or even Silvo if the negative is noisy with clicks and pops But if it is disclosed or not I am not aware it shouldnt matter any way as it was common practice in some plants it was part of the process regardless so it was done for every mother/father prior to a listening test of the metal work
It was certainly done at the EMI plants as well as Philips plants in the UK as well as Holland and elsewhere as I have the original procedure manuals from the 60's to the late 70's
By the way a standard Stanley knife blade is the right angle to get rid of horns after visual inspection and id of them on the metal work
In so far as pops caused by a hole on the metal work rather than a horn it was a case of soldering it up from the rear or plating a coat of copper early days
Later days it was rejected out of hand as it was cheaper for another cut and start all over than the cost of repairing it
Copper plates with a flash of chrome or later on Nickel was the norm in the 50-60's until the current sulfamate nickel bath was adopted by all and sundry due to its simplicity as well as its speed
Of course the technology was adopted from the automotive industry which did an enormous amount of plating for car components
All nickel stampers has been the industry standard for the last 40 odd years
The issue now days in my view is that with the cutting done outside of these tight controls a lot of what was strictly avoided has been thrown out the back door
People who want to put their music on a vinyl record expect a prefect result without taking into account that the crucial step of playing the mother/father and de horning de clicking it will not deliver a good result most of the time if is not carried out
How does the cutter know that he has a clean cut???? He does not have a clue He thinks he has
He does not play back the lacquer does he? No one ever does So how is it that one can expect a clean record in the absence of assurance that it was a clean cut?
He cuts the lacquer he sends it of for plating the result is unknown until there is some test pressings done
Assuming it is noisy the only way to tell is after the record is pressed
That is when the shit hits the fan the record is not up to scratch and what happens?
The finger pointing in every direction but most likely at the pressing plant who cannot do no more than reproduce what's on the metal work
Any way it is what it is with these small runs now days I understand the economic reason behind this short circuit of well established rules
However the expectation of a perfect record is still there even though the rules are flouted
Cheers

[Techie]

On a lighter note: Did anyone notice the hat being tossed onto Nipper's ear - next to a table of records labled "Dog Records - 4 cents"?

[Aussie0zborn]

Yes the dog records were very tongue-in-cheek.

Flash plating the copper master with ncikel was interesting. The agitating baths I had seen didnt rotate as these do. Shame the last 5 mins are missing as it would have been good to see the pressing.

Mossy has a point in that the disc cutter can cut a lacquer with horns and not know about it. He can play the lacquer and the horns wont bother the playback so no way to tell until the lacquer is plated and pressings are made.

De-horning the mother is always a good idea as it aids in separation of the stamper from the mother and the vinyl from the stamper.

[audadvnc]

I think the Ampex tape machines were 300's is this correct?

The two decks at 13:45 are (left to right) an Ampex 350 and a 300. I've got an Ampex 300 with 351 electronics, rescued from A&R studio in NYC; Perry Como recorded his hits on it. When I visited A&R to pick up the deck, they were using it to copy off a Billy Joel session while the performers were on break. It may have recorded "Uptown Girl"...

[Perisphere]

The Ampex at 14.18 is a 201....a 200A retrofitted with the full track head stack designed for the 300 and its oxide-in wind (the 200A being oxide-out like unto the AEG/Telefunken Magnetophon K4 it was modeled on).

[Perisphere]

And the big guy with Mel Blanc is none other than arranger Billy May.

[W.B.]

In that section with the Scully mastering, this was the first version of the variable pitch / depth lathe that had been introduced in late 1950 (and which I'm curious as to its model number, as it prefigured the later Scully 601 by five years). At Capitol that lathe first went into service, at the earliest, within the latter half of 1951, and from the outset they cut lacquers with the 32.3125 lpi "catch groove" that was sandwiched in-between the lead-out (which in those days was spaced around 2 lpi) and the concentric locked groove. The "extra" cutting at the start of that lacquer disc was an S.O.P. that Capitol maintained well into the 1970's with Scullys (even the aforementioned 601's) - I have a test acetate from 1969 which was cut in similar fashion. Incidentally, the 'D' in the lacquer number codes (i.e. '45-20088-D1') stood for the Don Lee studios in Melrose where Capitol was situated between 1949 and its 1956 move to the Tower, and was used on lacquers (the D code, that is) up to April 1963.

Meanwhile . . . if an Ampex 350 is in that film, then the film was probably made around 1953 or '54, as it was in '53 that the 350 was first introduced to the market.

[Aussie0zborn]

Great information, WB. How do you know all this?

[W.B.]

Great information, WB. How do you know all this?

First, both online and in numerous books I've seen when each Ampex recorder was introduced on the market. But looking at that section in the time frame mentioned, it looks more like a 300 class at left and a 200 class at right, which would have dovetailed with what some have said about the film being produced/released in or around 1952.

[Steve E.]

Hey! Courtesy of the Steve Hoffman forum, now the entire film is available!

http://youtu.be/CxkSRvkKF9k