The short version: A pressed record is a copy of a copy of a copy. The cut lacquer is silvered like a mirror, grown into nickel negatives and positives in a plating bath, and the last generation, the stamper, is mounted in a press that squeezes a warm lump of PVC on the order of 100 tons for something like half a minute.6333 Many plants keep old presses running on salvaged parts, the compound and lacquer supply has hung on very few suppliers, and the 2020 fire at a California lacquer plant plus a demand surge produced waits of up to 10 months.64654666 By early 2025 typical backlogs were reported at about three months.64
How do you get from a soft lacquer to a metal stamper?#
The lacquer that leaves the cutting room is an aluminum disc coated in nitrocellulose, with the groove cut into that coating.67 It cannot be pressed from until it becomes metal, and the first step is borrowed from mirror-making: the lacquer is sprayed with a saponin mix, rinsed, sensitized with stannous chloride, rinsed again, then sprayed with a silver solution and a dextrose reducer.63 The silver makes the surface conductive so it can be electroplated, usually with nickel.63
Per Wikipedia's account, most plants start with a nickel "flash" in a slow, warm bath at about 15 amps, then move to a hot nickel bath and raise the current in steps to between 110 and 200 amps.63 Nickel sulfamate baths made all-nickel parts possible; from 1940 to 1960 a short nickel plate was backed with copper.63
What peels off the lacquer is a negative: where the record has a valley, this part has a ridge. That part is called the master, or the father; Wikipedia notes "master" as the UK term.6368 A mother, a positive with grooves like a playable record, is plated from the father in about an hour, and a stamper, another negative weighing about 145 grams, is plated from the mother in about 45 minutes.63 A new mother is polished to round off microscopic "horns" at the tops of the grooves so the vinyl flows during pressing.63 The finished stamper is chrome plated for a hard surface, center-punched (by aligning it over three pins or by watching the grooves under a microscope), trimmed, sanded on the back, and given a clamping lip at the edge.63
What do one-step, two-step and three-step mean?#
They count the generations of metal between the lacquer and the press. Per one US plant: in one-step, the first metal part off the lacquer is itself the stamper, so no more stampers can ever be made from that cut, which the plant says is generally viewed as inferior; in two-step, the first part is plated into a mother and stampers come from the mother; in three-step, the mother is plated again into an archive copy, and dozens of mothers can come from one master.69
The names are not used consistently. That plant calls the archive copy the "father," while a large Nashville plant and Yamaha use "father" for the first negative off the lacquer, which Wikipedia calls the master.69683363 The Nashville plant describes its own method as a "3-step electroplating process": lacquer, then father, then mothers, then stampers.68 If a plant quote lists steps, ask which part they mean.
Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) skips the lacquer and its plating by cutting straight into copper. DJ Mag reported in 2020 that it is said to lower surface noise, though some question its range for dance releases.47 After the 2020 lacquer fire, some plants turned to DMM, a costlier route.46 How a record is cut covers how it works.
How many records can one stamper press?#
Nobody publishes a standard, and the figures disagree. Yamaha's 2021 explainer says "one stamper for every thousand records."33 A 2025 Hypebot piece by Bobby Owsinski says a stamper "may last for as few as 2,000 records."64 One plant says its coated stampers, developed in 2017-2018 with a coatings firm, double the life of standard ones in most cases; it has pressed "a few records of over 3,000 copies" on one set, which it calls outliers, and says a late-2018 test of a 180 gram box set found copies 45 and 2,400 very similar.69 Those are the plant's own claims. A Dallas plant's FAQ warns that very large runs risk stamper wear unless new stampers are made.70
So the published figures run from Yamaha's one per thousand to Hypebot's "as few as 2,000" to one plant's outliers past 3,000.336469 Because new stampers come off the mother, a long run does not wear out the cut itself.63
What is a test pressing?#
The first few records off new stampers, made before the full order. Vinyl Moon put the usual batch at four or five in 2018; Yamaha says "a few."7133 The artist and label listen and approve, and if they hear serious problems the plant may have to start over.71 One plant says it listens to every test pressing in full before shipping, reports a 98% approval rate (its own figure), and in production listens to parts of every 25th record, with one listening room for every two presses.72 Another compares production copies against the approved test pressing.68
This is the cheapest moment to catch a problem: only a handful of copies exist.
What happens inside the press?#
PVC compound is warmed and pushed through an extruder, "squeezed like toothpaste," as a Detroit plant's staffer put it to Tape Op in 2018, into a lump called a puck or biscuit.73 The biscuit is about three times as thick as the finished record.71 A label goes on each side, the biscuit sits between the two stampers, steam heats the mold, the press closes, cold water cools it, and the ring of excess called flash is trimmed off.7371 Flash and some rejects are recycled.6871
Labels are pressed into the vinyl as the stampers close, and they are baked beforehand to get the moisture out so they do not bubble.33 One plant bakes them overnight so they adhere properly and warns that some color change will occur.74 A 2019 patent application for a "no-bake" label ties wrinkling and lifting to heat, and says keeping the label's backing free of water helps stop it sticking to the press plates.75
The numbers vary by source, and some are given in muddled units:
| Figure | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Force | "100-ton hydraulic press" | Vinyl Moon, 201871 |
| Force | "roughly 100 tons of pressure" | Yamaha, 202133 |
| Force | about 150 tons | Wikipedia, "Record press"76 |
| Melt | "around 250 degrees" (unit not given) | Nashville plant68 |
| Mold water, steamless press | 285 F | Engadget, 201877 |
| Cycle | about 30 seconds per record | Yamaha, 202133 |
| Cycle | about 40 seconds (old press); 46 seconds (newer manual presses) | The Vinyl Factory, 201678 |
The safe summary is on the order of 100 tons for about half a minute.
Which presses are still running, and who makes new ones?#
The classic makes still at work or rebuilt include SMT, Toolex Alpha and Finebilt; a Kansas plant rebuilt one of each and calls them among the best brands ever made.79 A large Nashville plant says it runs more than 60 presses (Lened, Pheenix Alpha and SMT) making "up to 80,000 records daily," a company claim.68 For years plants kept presses alive with salvaged parts and hunted used machines in warehouses.64
New machines arrived in the 2010s. Newbilt in Germany builds semi-automatic presses based on the Finebilt design, which stopped being made in the early 1960s, and a full line was listed at about 200,000 euros (company figure, year not stated).80 Third Man Pressing in Detroit bought eight of the first ten and told Tape Op in 2018 it expected about 5,000 records a shift.73 Viryl in Toronto claimed in 2016 its automatic WarmTone could press a 140 gram record in 20 to 25 seconds (the article gives both) and that one operator could run four.78 By 2018 Viryl offered a "steamless" version that heats mold water electrically, removing the gas boiler.77 Pheenix Alpha in Sweden builds the automatic AD12, credits Toolex Alpha with developing it, and announced a manual version in March 2025.81
What is vinyl compound, and where does it come from?#
Records are pressed from a PVC compound sold as pellets. One Thai maker's process, as AnalogPlanet described it, melts PVC powder, extrudes it, chops it, cleans it (including removing metal contamination) and tests it, and the plant makes the pellets.82 Black comes from carbon black, which also strengthens the record; colored compound uses dyes and other additives.83 Panelists at Making Vinyl Europe 2024 said lead and similar additives were phased out of record PVC by 2000.66
In 2014, FACT reported that Thai Plastic & Chemicals supplied up to 90% of the PVC compound used for records, and that the last US supplier, Keysor-Century, had closed in the mid-2000s.65 By 2020, DJ Mag counted "at least a dozen" suppliers of audio-grade PVC.47
A 2016 Thermo Fisher materials blog on the vinyl revival describes PVC blends as "complex mixtures of PVC particles, fillers, lubricants, stabilizers and plasticizers."84 We found no current figure for any supplier's share of record compound.
What happened to lacquer supply after the 2020 fire?#
On February 6, 2020, fire destroyed Apollo Masters in Banning, California, the only US maker of lacquer blanks; 82 firefighters worked about three hours, nobody was hurt, and the cause is undetermined.46 Apollo made an estimated 70-85% of the world's lacquers (reported), and its loss left one known lacquer factory: MDC, a small Japanese company.46 DJ Mag reported that MDC had a fixed supply and was reportedly closed to new business, and that three outfits were developing new lacquer production.47 Some plants moved to DMM, backlogs grew, and the fire led to the founding of the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association of North America (VRMA), with about 50 member companies.46
Who makes lacquers now is not settled in our sources. Every 2020 source names MDC. A 2024 conference report in Copper names "the Japanese supplier, Public Records" as the only one left after the fire.66 We found nothing confirming that any of the new lacquer projects shipped.
In a September 2026 history post, the US plant Gotta Groove says it "continues to recommend master lacquer blanks produced by the Public Record Company in Japan," and calls those blanks "MDC's."48 That suggests the 2020 and 2024 sources name the same Japanese maker two ways; no source we read says so outright.
Why did records take so long to make in 2021?#
Demand outran capacity. In November 2021, Mixmag reported lead times of about three months to a year, with some small artists told they might wait until summer 2022, and cited Billboard's estimate of about 160 million records a year of global capacity against demand of about 400 million (reported/estimated, 2021).85 Adele's 30 was reported at more than 500,000 vinyl copies, and Ed Sheeran said she "had basically booked out all the vinyl factories."85
By May 2023 Marketplace reported most supply problems easing, with a Dallas plant that had doubled its lines running "24 hours, five days a week."86 At Making Vinyl Europe 2024, industry people said the pandemic waits of up to 10 months were over.66 In January 2025 the backlog at most plants was reported at about three months.64 Plants now quote "weeks to months," varying by season and load.70
How many plants are there, and which is the biggest?#
The Vinyl Factory counted 40 vinyl record manufacturers worldwide in 2014 (reported), with the US and Europe home to more than 80%; FACT put US plants at about 15 that year.8765 No current worldwide count turned up. FutureSource reported 110 million units pressed in 2023, from a survey that covered only about a third of known plants (estimated).66
Where else in the world are records pressed?#
GZ Media, in Lodenice near Prague, is described as the world's largest. In 2022 it told Radio Prague it pressed more than 55 million records in 2021, almost 200,000 a day around the clock, against about 300,000 a year in the mid-1990s; it runs eight plants, including sites in Canada, Memphis, Nashville and France, builds its own presses, and pressed its first record in 1951 (company figures, reported).88 New entrants reported in 2024 include a press project in Navi Mumbai, India, which pressed what the report calls the country's first record in decades, a broker's plan to press K-pop in South Korea, a plant in Glasgow, and a project in Israel halted by the conflict.66 The old presses are kept running partly by parts suppliers: one US company that has supplied the record industry since 1946 sells machinery and parts for SMT, Hamilton, Alpha-Toolex, Finebilt, Newbilt and Lenned presses, per a directory listing.89