BORDENTOWN, N.J. — The machines at Independent Record Pressing whirred and hissed as they stamped out a test record. The business’s owners waited anxiously for Dave Miller, the plant manager, to inspect the still-warm slab of vinyl.

“That’s flat, baby!” Mr. Miller said as he held the record, to roars of approval and relief. “That’s the way they should come off, just like that.”

Independent Record Pressing is an attempt to solve one of the riddles of today’s music industry: how to capitalise on the popularity of vinyl records when the machines that make them are decades old, and often require delicate and expensive maintenance. The six presses at this new 20,000-square-foot plant, for example, date to the 1970s.

Vinyl, which faded with the arrival of compact discs in the 1980s, is having an unexpected renaissance. Last year more than 13 million LPs were sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the highest count in 25 years, making it one of the record business’s few growth areas."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/business/media/a-vinyl-lp-frenzy-brings-record-pressing-machines-back-to-life.html

And if you want to participate in this trend I know where to to find something retro, to play them on

Marc

I've got a few hundred of them, thanks.

I have an STC tablegram, not sure of the model number though and also an Astor Super Six tablegram. Both are awaiting restoration and the more that LPs become widely available the more chance there is of me getting these two machines going again. One for home, one for work.

There are usually hundreds of LPs advertised on eBay.

I once bought a collection of some 30 or 40 of them just to get one particular album that was in the list (not available on CD). Nobody else bid, so they cost me 99 cents plus a short car trip to collect them.

I donated the rest to the local Vinnies.

Back in the early 80's, RCA was trying to sell the world videodisc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc.

Pretty much records with extremely tiny grooves, about 20 times more grooves per cm than LP records. RCA built high precision presses to stamp these out. When RCA decided to bail on this videodisc thing, the presses got scrapped, as CDs had just come out and vinyl LPs were presumed dead. Otherwise the videodisc press might have been used to press high quality LPs.

GTC's linked article mentions Michael Fremer (entertaining journalist at Stereophile magazine) who once praised RCA 'Living Stereo' LPs, prompting me to look for them when buying old records.

The article also has a picture of a steam boiler they need for vinyl pressing. Interesting as I met a man who once worked at RCA's large record factory in Indianapolis as a kind of steam fitter - he described the place as very hot working conditions with steam pipes everywhere, a kind of "Dante's Inferno"! Just looked it up and see they stamped vinyl CED videodiscs there also, and closed the facility in 1987.

he described the place as very hot working conditions with steam pipes everywhere

Fits nicely with steam radio.

QUOTE: Kylie Minogue achieved something remarkable in July, when her best-of collection Step Back in Time topped the ARIA charts in its first week of release.

It wasn't just that she chalked up a sixth number-one album courtesy of her 13th compilation. It was that she sold more copies of it on vinyl than on CD.