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pressing plants melting down old vinyl?
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:28 am
by setspeed
i heard something about pressing plants melting down old records to make new ones. do they accept records?
lets just say i had several thousand (identical) old 12"s knocking around, would i be able to take them somewhere useful?
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:16 am
by wat
yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:20 am
by wibblewobble
Wat wrote:yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
I hope that is some sort of sick joke!
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:23 am
by hanuman
Wat wrote:yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
Can I borrow them first. I know someone who does clay pigeon shooting...

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:24 am
by wat
wibblewobble wrote:Wat wrote:yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
I hope that is some sort of sick joke!
Why? I mean.. I'd probably get some money for it from the pressing plant if they're seeking some old vinyl..
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:44 am
by thinking
I think they can be recycled - the vinyl gets ground up into pellets and added to the fresh raw material that's melted & fed into the press - up to a max of about 10% or something??
so when you see 'Virgin Vinyl' on a new 12" (e.g. most new Ninja releases) it means the record has no recycled material in it - some people think this guarantees a better sound.
Could be wrong though!!
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:48 am
by nellon
Wat wrote:yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
Been there, they only gave a few quid.
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:43 pm
by dubloke
wibblewobble wrote:Wat wrote:yeah same here.. i'm thinking about melting my DMZ collection
I hope that is some sort of sick joke!
nah, he's being deadly serious
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:50 pm
by Shift Recordings
ThinKing wrote:I think they can be recycled - the vinyl gets ground up into pellets and added to the fresh raw material that's melted & fed into the press - up to a max of about 10% or something??
so when you see 'Virgin Vinyl' on a new 12" (e.g. most new Ninja releases) it means the record has no recycled material in it - some people think this guarantees a better sound.
Could be wrong though!!
this.
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:02 pm
by notch
Maybe you figured out the reason for all the bad pressings lately

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:12 pm
by swomp
I'm not an expert, but I've heard that good quality vinyl should have recycled vinyl in it...
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:42 pm
by kate_
ThinKing wrote:I think they can be recycled - the vinyl gets ground up into pellets and added to the fresh raw material that's melted & fed into the press - up to a max of about 10% or something??
Sorta like remixing. Well, definitely remixing. Do you think the technician doing this tells chicks he does remixes and produces records? I would.
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 6:14 pm
by bassbeyondreason
This is apparently the reason why a lot of old Jamaican and Turkish records are incredibly rare/valuable.
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 6:29 pm
by jolly wailer
the dude stamping records at the plant is a waaay bigger pimp than the man producing em..
that is, unless a woman is doing it

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:02 pm
by Whistla
yeh i'd like to know if theres any place taking what setspeed says, a few thousand vinyls.
the amount of money you get for em aint too important, as long as its summin. Its more a matter of generating space!
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:39 pm
by danny bwoy
i know by chance that
Rand Muzik over here in Germany do this. a mate of mine used to work there and told me they bought shitloads of unsold stock from east-european warehouses - weird old russian black sabbath pressings and such.
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:39 am
by dubout
swamp wrote:I'm not an expert, but I've heard that good quality vinyl should have recycled vinyl in it...
I heard that too. On the other hand, like ThinKing says, Ninja Tune wouldn't advertise it on their sleeves. Does someone know?
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:14 am
by saxe
obviously the purists say virgin vinyl is the only thing to use:
http://www.vinylrevinyl.com/2008/08/27/ ... gin-vinyl/
i spoke to a guy from rand muzik who told me you can recycle vinyl 4-5 times before the molecules get too broke to use them again.
there´s different qualities in recycled AND virgin vinyl though. depends on purity (impurities come from the amount of stone dust in the vinyl, raises the floor noise of the record and thereby lowers the signal-to-noise-ratio of the record).
remember all the bad philips pressings back in the early 80s? was probably due to the oil crisis.
you can sort of "judge" the quality of a pressing by holding a record against the light in a certain angle. ig you see a rainbow of colours on the surface the pressing (in fact, the qualitiy of the edge of the groove - groove meaning those narrow channels on the record)is not so good indeed.
compare a 180g ninja to some average 120g pressing - you´ll see the difference.
imo, and the rand muzik guy agreed, vinyl quality nowadays is much worse than it was back in the days.
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:25 am
by seckle
bassbeyondreason wrote:This is apparently the reason why a lot of old Jamaican and Turkish records are incredibly rare/valuable.
this exactly. some of the 7" reggae tunes from the late 70's and early 80's, have versions that don't have metal work or stampers or anything left of the original material. unique recordings! no masters left, only 7's.
this is also the reason that all the big record companies, after the success of Marley, sent their A&R people into kingston to try and buy up all the old 2 track master reels for all these recordings. Island records holds an enormous reggae archive of classics, especially the time when ska and reggae were mixing it up together.
coxsone sound or tuff gong fro example, would do a run of 7"s, try and sell them, and the tunes that didn't sell out, would be taken back from the stores and melted to make the next release of 7"s. this has created the 7" collecting craze of the last few years via ebay. I'm bidding against all sorts of bidders from europe to Japan on some of the old 7"s. it's fierce competition sometimes. especially for studio one/trojan/coxsone/clinch/love or any of the other labels.
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:30 am
by seckle
here's the best documentary about jamaican 7" vinyl. you can see them pour recycled vinyl pellets into the machine at one point. at 3mins in..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0-ZfTtJA7I