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The actual process of making a vinyl record starts with an acetate— a blank aluminum plate coated with lacquer. This lacquer disc is taken into a mastering studio where prerecorded music is inscribed onto the lacquer using a record-cutting lathe. The groove formed onto the acetate is one continuous segment from the beginning of the album to the end. Usually, these are created in pairs, one for each side of the record. And most often they are created at a studio outside of Quality Record Pressings and rushed to Salina while the lacquer is fresh. Once the lacquer discs arrive at QRP, they are put through a chemical electroplating process in an area resembling a high-tech laboratory (1). Here, silver, nickel and electric currents are used to form master discs—an A side and a B side of each record (2). The masters are duplicated with the grooves in reverse texture (sticking out instead of etched in) to form “stampers,” whose grooves are scanned and verified on a monitor (3). Once verified, the stamper discs are loaded into the press (4). Parallel to this, technicians at QRP are taking small vinyl pellets and melting them into hockey-puck sized “biscuits” (5). These biscuits are fed into one of the 10 restored presses owned by QRP. Once in the press, the biscuits will be squeezed from each side by the stampers, pressing the grooves into both sides of them and forming the actual vinyl records. Paper labels are attached and excess vinyl around the edges is trimmed as the finished records are stacked outside of the machine (6). As long as things run smoothly, a new record is produced every 28 seconds. The records are examined (7), placed into the covers and sent to the company’s distribution area (8) to await shipping.
Sunflower living winter 2014
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