Although most of you are still thinking about your Christmas and early 2015 schedule, it is wise to start planning your Record Store Day – RSD2015 release for 2015. For those of you not planning on releasing a record for RSD2015 you should bare in mind that manufacturing times during this period become longer. Record Store Day 2015 will take place on April 18th and finished product will need to be with your distributor ideally last week in March. To ensure…
Here at Well Tempered we work with the three best pressing plants in Europe to ensure that your records are pressed to schedule and cost, and also of optimum quality. The standard turnaround time from all three suppliers is seven weeks from receipt of lacquers – this is industry standard. We hear that a lot of artists and labels elsewhere are getting frustrated with production times of up to twelve weeks. This should not be the case, there is simply…
For many new record labels starting out there are three main choices for vinyl manufacturing. A label may wish to handle the manufacturing themselves, or they may wish to use a broker such as Well Tempered. Though for most records labels the most attractive option is a P&D (press & distribution) deal offered by their distribution partner. There are a few distributors still offering P&D deals, though it may be required that they manufacture a few releases themselves first, and the sales generated be…
In the run up to Christmas the pressing plants will get very busy with orders from the major record labels with their Beatles reissues and Metallica box sets. It is important to plan your release schedule properly and make sure your December releases don’t end up materialising in 2015. At Well Tempered we work towards our standard production time of seven weeks from receipt of lacquers, with your test pressings being delivered three weeks into that seven week cycle….
Dear All, I’ve been contacted by many labels this week asking about the ownership of metalwork now that ST Holdings has announced it’s closure at the end of the month. The following is a extract from an email that many of you will have received recently from ST Holdings. “Metalwork & Paper Parts All metalwork is owned by yourselves. To claim control of the metalwork please contact the relevant pressing plant direct. Contact me to get the relevant pressing plant…
DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) became popular during the 80’s but was soon less favourable as more cutting engineers went back to lacquer. It was co-developed by Neumann and Teldec, and instead of engraving the groove into a soft metal lacquer-coated aluminum disc, a DMM lathe engraves the audio signal directly onto a hard metal copper-plated master disc. The difference between a DMM cut and a lacquer cut is that the DMM is more precise, with sharper transients and better image “edge…