How vinyl records are made

Every record starts as a master. A mastering engineer cuts the music into a lacquer-coated aluminum disc on a precision lathe, turning sound into a single spiral groove – around 1,500 feet long on each side of an LP.

The lacquer is far too soft to press records from, so it is electroplated. Coated with silver and then nickel, it yields a metal “father,” a negative image with ridges where the grooves were. From the father comes a playable “mother,” and from the mother come the “stampers” – the negative plates that actually press the records. One mother can produce several stampers, and each stamper presses only a limited number of records before it wears out.

At the pressing plant, a puck of heated vinyl compound – the “biscuit” – is placed between two stampers along with the paper labels, then squeezed in a hydraulic press under steam heat and many tons of pressure. The new disc is cooled, the excess vinyl is trimmed from the edge, and the record is inspected before it goes into its sleeve.

Every step leaves its mark on the finished record, which is why collectors care about exactly where and when a copy was made.

Learn more: What is a pressing and why does it matter? · A brief history of the vinyl LP