Our record lathe is basically a turntable which has been fitted with a Vinylrecorder setup from Germany. This setup allows us to take a blank plastic disc and play your music into the machine as the blank record turns and is cut into by a stereo cutter head. The end result is a record which is almost indistinguishable from a normal record you’d find anywhere else. However, there are a few differences.

A commercial record, such as our professional releases that we pay to have manufactured, have very little background noise when they are brand new and sound almost as flawless as their digital master. Those records are cut on a far more expensive machine and the process is more expensive as well. However, our record lathe allows us to provide about 80-90% of that audio fidelity. They basically sound like a VG-VG+ record. The real strength of this method though, is that it allows us to cut orders as small as one single copy of a record. Something that would be basically impossible through typical manufacturing.

Is a custom vinyl record right for you?

That depends on a few things:
1. Do you need more than say, 20 copies? If so I would possibly advise you to choose someone else, the one exception being, is it ok if we just do 5 at a time? I try to rotate customers every 5 records or so. This allows everyone to get their orders in a timely fashion rather than forcing them to wait until I do 50 copies of another customer’s record. Once the rotation comes back to you I’d cut you another 5 and so on.
2. Will you actually play it? If you are just looking to make a record so that you can check it off your bucket list that’s fine but records should be played! Often! I really wouldn’t bother doing this unless you are a huge vinyl enthusiast, collector, musician with customers waiting, or DJ needing one or two copies of something you made.
3. Do you own the rights to the music you want to make a record of? I’m not trying to get in trouble.
4. Are you able to render things easily from your DAW? If I told you a certain format, like WAV you should be able to export your music in that or any other format I need, as well as send me stems if need be. I don’t usually need particular things done, but rarely this does happen.
5. Has your music already been mastered? Sometimes this can be a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. It all depends on how much compression and effects were applied to the master. Sometimes those things can really hurt a song’s ability to sound its best on vinyl. I usually advise people to send me finished but basically unmastered songs, then go master them however you want for the digital copies you might sell or use. But I will take the unmastered versions and give them all as minimal of compression and EQ or whatever else it needs in order to fit into grooves.

Labels/Artwork: We also have a printer which can print adhesive labels. They are fairly basic and the ink seems a little faded usually, but overall they usually turn out looking decent. The three options for a label are Plain white, Basic tracklist, or you can supply your own artwork and as long as it is either a circle or a square it will work well with the templates I use. I am not a graphic designer, so anything above a very basic label, I will have to charge you like $40 for. It is a major time waster for me.

We offer 3 main configurations you can order. 12″ small center hole, 7″ small center hole, and 7″ big center hole (like the type you need a “45 adapter” for). We can cut all of these in either 33 1/3 or 45 rpm. So here is a helpful table:

	Max suggested length per side	Setup cost per project	cost per copy
12″ 33 RPM	18 min/side	$20 one time	$20 each
12″ 45 RPM	10 min/side	$20 one time	$20 each
7″ small center hole 33 RPM	8 min/side	$10 one time	$10 each
7″ small center hole 45 RPM	6 min/side	$10 one time	$10 each
7″ large center hole 33 RPM	6 min/side	$10 one time	$10 each
7″ large center hole 45 RPM	4-5 min/side	$10 one time	$10 each

A note about audio requirements.

There are a great many people out there on the internet handing out advice about how to master your music for vinyl. Please feel free to mostly disregard these. I’ve had people ask me how many LUFS to set their stuff to, or what frequencies they need to cut out to make it able to go on vinyl. Most of these are nothing more than guidelines of varying usefulness. The truth is that each and every song for the most part will have unique characteristics that require different adjustments, which will only be apparent once I try to cut them. As a very general rule, if your recording sounds good already, I can usually make it sound about that good on vinyl. If your master is too quiet I can EASILY boost it. I can easily EQ it. I can easily compress or limit or whatever is actually needed to achieve the best sound possible. However, if your song has already been mastered and it is recorded too hot or with too much compression, or there is a problematic stereo phase issue, or problems with distortion of any kind, those problems will only be magnified usually. The most common thing I run into is over-compressed dance music. This sounds fine on your computer usually, but when you try to cut them on vinyl the kick drum is weak because I usually have to reduce everything’s volume in order to make it fit on the record and even then it doesn’t sound as good as if it were the original premaster copy of the same song.

In summary, if you are going to make a custom record with me it is best if:

1. Leave me plenty of headroom. Something like 2-5db is fine. As long as the meters never come close to clipping and the loudest part of the song is about -2 to -5 db then I will have some room for adjustment to be able to make it the perfect volume for my specific needs, without any risk of it clipping.
2. Don’t worry about master EQ. Get your song sounding the way you want it to sound. EQ each instrument the way you want it, but then feel free to leave the master EQ alone because I will always filter the lowest and highest reaches of the frequency band as your music goes into the lathe to be cut, and your song should sound almost exactly the same, but without that step there might have been an unknown bass rumble or too hot of a high hat in one area and those can both cause a skip or other defects which make playback impossible.
3. Don’t overuse “mastering” plugins or compression. These tend to destroy the audio’s natural dynamics which are super important to cutting good records.
4. Try not to hit the maximum recording time. I know it’s an expensive hobby so you want to cram as many tracks on there as you can to get your money’s worth, but keep in mind that your audio quality will suffer at the higher play times. This is because I am forced to make the grooves really close to each other, which reduces the amount of volume I can have, and also tends to affect how much bass I can have. So if I think you have tried to fit too many songs on one side we might have to change their order or remove one sometimes.
5. Be responsive! Sometimes I only have one night a week I can devote to cutting, so if I am about to cut your music but I notice there is something I need or need to ask you, if you don’t respond sometimes I cannot continue. Like if I need to doublecheck the spelling of something before I print out the labels for instance.
6. Organize your files please! Have one folder with the name of your record “Bob’s Record” then inside that folder have the album art if you have any, then have two more folders. Side A, and Side B. inside those folders have the songs that go on each side and have them properly labeled like “A1 – Bob’s Song, A2 – Bob’s other song” then I always will know what order to put them in and on which side.
7. Remixes are fine, but stay away from asking me to cut bootlegs of things that already exist on vinyl. For instance if you realized there is a Beatles album that costs $5000 but you think you could get me to cut you one so you can sell it or whatever, I’m going to probably get upset with you for wasting my time.
8. Be patient. Like I said I only have one or two nights a week usually where I can cut anything, so when I have a few orders to fill before yours it can be as long as a month or two before I can get to yours.

If you have any other questions please see the contact page and send us a message. We look forward to working on your project! Hope to hear from you soon!