07/02/2020
A major blow to the record manufacturing industry today. Things will change for new releases....
As we all know, a record begins life as grooves cut into a blank disc - either a lacquer coated disc or a copper coated disc (DMM). With only two manufacturers of lacquer discs in the world, the larger of the two burned down today leading to a severe worldwide shortage. This same company is also one of only two commercial manufacturers of cutting stylii. This leaves the smaller manufacturer, said to be a “mom and pop business working out of their garage” as the only supplier of lacquer master discs in the whole world. Their present capacity only allows them to meet only 20% of worldwide demand.
What does this mean to the industry? When disc cutting studios deplete their stocks, lacquer master discs will be in very short supply putting a strain on some 100 lacquer disc cutting studios to remain viable. Fortunately, there are six companies that cut onto copper discs (DMM) which they make themselves so record production will continue.
What does this mean to the consumer? You can expect almost all new releases to be cut on DMM. While DMM has some technical advantages, it often lacks the high level and fat bottom end of a lacquer cut that most people prefer.
As a consequence, having your favourite disc cutting engineer cut your record now seems very unlikely. All DMM cutting studios, except two, are owned by pressing plants so to get a record out you would need to use one of these five which are all fine plants but this limits your ability to choose.
In our case, we have enough stock of lacquer discs for maybe two months and certainly enough to complete current orders. After that and until the situation is rectified, we have sufficiently good relationships with three DMM equipped plants to get your record cut and to feed your addiction for records.
