Pressing New Shellac

[beaumonde]

I was told by Bryan Wright (of Rivermont Records) that it's difficult-to-impossible these days not only to press quantities of records in shellac [there is no supplier], but to be cut for wider grooves (from new recordings). The few 78 issues he's done have been necessarily in vinyl, and microgroove.

New vinyl pressings of original metal parts (with wider 78 grooves) are, of course, possible, and have been widely done in recent years (e.g. Historic Masters in the UK, using pressing plants in The Netherlands I think).

[Uncle Vanya]

_l

I was told by Bryan Wright (of Rivermont Records) that it's difficult-to-impossible these days not only to press quantities of records in shellac [there is no supplier], but to be cut for wider grooves (from new recordings). The few 78 issues he's done have been necessarily in vinyl, and microgroove.

New vinyl pressings of original metal parts (with wider 78 grooves) are, of course, possible, and have been widely done in recent years (e.g. Historic Masters in the UK, using pressing plants in The Netherlands I think).

It would be little problem. The standard groove styli are no longer made, but old one may be sharpened four times, and they can be found without too much trouble. A high-quality Broadcast recording machine would be adequate, and many of those exist. If one would rather use a modern lathe, a Scully with variable pitch can be set for a uniform 110 threads to the inch. The problem is, I think, that it is simply not worth the time of the technicians and not worth the machine-time to puzzl the process out.

I have a variable-pitch Sugden lathe from the early 1960's, complete with chip vacuum and hot stylus that Patrick is itching to set up so that he can get back to recording on disc.