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The Start Local podcast features interviews with business and nonprofit leaders from in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania.
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The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce partners with the Start Local podcast to promote trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse, growing marketplace.
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Learn more at the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce website, sccc.com.
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Hey, hey, welcome to the Start Local Podcast. I am Liam Dempsey. I am here with Erik Gudmundson.
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Hey, Erik, how are you today?
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I'm doing very well. I'm actually a little extra excited because food and music are two of my favorite topics.
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And today we're talking about music. So I'm ready.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And I think I'm ready, too. And I know I'm very excited.
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I may not be ready, but I'm very excited. Folks, today we are pleased to welcome Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo.
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Phil is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum record producer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer.
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Ashley is a chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl, the Coatesville-based record-pressing company.
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Yes, record-pressing company.
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You heard that right, folks.
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Owned by Phil.
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And for clarity, I'll just go ahead and share that Ashley is Phil's daughter-in-law.
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And while he's not with us here today in the podcast studio, we do also extend a big thanks to Drew Nicolo, Ashley's husband and Phil's son, if you keep the family tree straight there.
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Because Drew was so kind in showing us around Studio 4 Vinyl's factory floor and graciously answering all of our questions about pressing records as we were getting set up and informed for this interview.
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So thank you, Drew.
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Yes, thank you, Drew. So many questions. And with that, welcome, Phil and Ashley. Thank you for joining us today.
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Hey, man.
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Thanks for having us.
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It's my pleasure. It's great to be. And you guys are local, correct? I mean, you're in this area, right?
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Yeah, absolutely. We are 100% focused on interviewing business and nonprofit leaders in and around Chester County.
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Great. Yeah. So that's also awesome, too, because one of the main reasons we're here is because the Chester County Development Authority, we went to them through some friends and our attorney, and they were so welcoming to us in terms of setting up our move to where we are.
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We were already all already in Chester County, actually, because we were originally in Nottingham.
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But setting up our move here, our financing here, our relationship, finding our property.
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I mean, there was so much that they did to encourage us to be here.
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And now we're thrilled.
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We've been here for a year and a half and it's cool.
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So it's great to know that this has local roots.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And thank you for leading us directly into our first question.
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And it was really around just exactly that, the Chester County Economic Development Council,
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Seedcopa.
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Erik and I are familiar with that and through our work with the CCEDC.
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And so we couldn't believe it.
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Wait, there's a record company, a record-pressing company in Coatesville?
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So that leads us to the direct question, Phil and Ashley, of why southeastern Pennsylvania?
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You could have been anywhere.
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Why here?
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We love that you're here.
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Tell us about why.
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Originally, again, we started this business in, well, I guess it was 2020 is when it originally came to fruition.
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My partner, Obi O'Brien, who you can see on the Studio 4 Vinyl website, he's a dear friend of mine, one of my mentors.
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I've known him for 50 years.
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We started looking for where to put the pressing plant.
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He lived in Nottingham, which is on the outskirts there of Chester County to Lancaster.
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And I live in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, which is far from that.
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So we started looking like, where can we put this thing?
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Where is it going to be?
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And Obi found a location in Nottingham that was literally five minutes from his house and an hour and 12 from mine.
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But it really worked out.
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It was, as you know, right near, just about in Lancaster County.
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It's way on the, it was literally on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland, Route 1, where the HERS potato chip factory is about 100 yards from there.
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And we looked at it and it was like, wow, the price was good.
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Everything seemed right.
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And some of the people we wanted to use to help build the facility were in that area.
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So, okay. So we moved to Nottingham and there we go. We started there in 2021 and the rest is history. We built the company there. We started during COVID and we can get into this. This may be a question further down the line, but just to get real quick.
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We started during COVID, which is, as you can imagine, the best time to build a business that you have absolutely no idea how it goes and how it works.
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Oh, and the equipment is made in Germany.
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So, yeah, no problems with communication or travel or interface.
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Great idea.
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Okay.
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Well, we did.
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And through hell or high water, we built the place in Nottingham.
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But the COVID was, again, it was a blessing and a curse.
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It was a curse in that I had to learn how to use the equipment through WhatsApp while Erwin was in Dusseldorf, Germany, and I was here.
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But on the plus side, you couldn't move fast.
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You couldn't put in a massive mechanical factory quickly because it just couldn't happen.
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So we had to move slow. And it turned out to be one of the best things because, again, we couldn't rush into it. And this business, making records, is one of the most difficult things in the world to do.
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Let me stop you on that point, if I could, Phil, just because I have to ask, knowing its level of complexity or maybe not fully appreciating its level of complexity when you started, what inspired you and Phil to really go, or rather you and Obi to really go out and make a record-pressing plant in the first place?
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Why would you take that on?
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stupidity and complete lack of understanding of what it was to do. I mean, we were both in the
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music business. I mean, let me back, maybe just backtrack that just a tiny bit. We were both in
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the music industry for like 50 years. Again, very proud, highest world-class. Obie is Jon Bon Jovi's
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right-hand man, has been with Jon for many years, as well as other great artists. Same thing,
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roughhouse records, blah, blah, blah. And in 2017, I was with my other partner at Studio 4 Recording,
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Will Yip, who's on the cover of Mix Magazine for his new facility that I'm also part of
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in South Philly. But almost some of our clients were into all of a sudden making records, jazz,
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independent rock. And I went to Will and I said, hey, we should build a vinyl pressing facility.
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And he just looked at me and went, yeah, why don't we?
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Okay, so I started looking into it.
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And we discovered, yeah, records were on the return.
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Obi and I had, you know, but the problem is, well, who are going to be, who are your clients going to be?
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Well, we were close to the head of legacy at Universal and the music director at Disney and all these acts that it was like, well, you know what?
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The biggest problem would normally be who are you going to work for?
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Well, we have those contacts.
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So, you know, again, being very naive with the process, it was like, yeah, I mean, make
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a do a business that makes money when you sleep.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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And then as we got into it, we discovered, oh, oh, this is a pressure forged, you know,
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I mean, it is one of the most complex molded plastic or high injection molded, not even high
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injection. It's even harder to describe because making a record, a good record, is one of the
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hardest things to do. And as a matter of fact, not to get too heavy into the technical side,
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but a groove on a record is a tenth or a hundredth the size of a human hair.
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that groove has to move up to 14,000 times a second,
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which is a frequency of music.
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Well, when you get that level of detail,
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it makes making records easily the hardest
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and most complex product to make in the world.
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And we're going to get into that.
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I definitely have questions on the technical side of that
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because Erik and I geeked out a lot.
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All the big ones.
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Yeah.
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So we decided to get in with,
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we found some financing.
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We jumped in and all of a sudden it was like, oh, crap.
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We now have to figure this out.
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And, you know, God keeps sending me angels.
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I mean, great people, musicians, some of my temple students, Ashley, who came in not knowing how to do it, but ready to take their hands off and put their boxing gloves on.
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We're going to make this work because we have to, because that's what we do.
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Yeah, and that's where I want to jump in.
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So Studio 4 Vinyl is technically up and running.
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You're learning, you're starting to press things,
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and you've started to land or at least are getting close to landing
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these ever so important first contracts as you shared, Phil,
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through your industry context.
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Ashley comes in as the chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl,
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and you've been there since 2021.
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And Ashley, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
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But tell us about your day-to-day.
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What does that look like?
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What does it mean to run a record-pressing plant?
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That is so cool.
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Tell us about that.
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What keeps you busy at work?
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Everything.
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It's everything.
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Yeah.
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One of our biggest mottos here is vinyl is chaos.
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Everything you know is wrong.
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Like every day, something that worked yesterday is not going to work today.
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so most of my day-to-day is just keeping an eye on production uh timelines making sure that
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everything that should be in motion is that um if something needs to be corrected it is corrected
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thankfully i have an amazing team that uh work that works with me to make sure that everything
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is running smoothly if something is not like i know about it the moment there is a problem
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so thankfully because I have a good set of people I can focus on my customers I can answer questions
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I can manage expectations I put out fires before a lot of people even know there is a fire and
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that's really important for some of my customers who can hear well there's a problem and that
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becomes catastrophic to them even though it might might be it might be but i don't want them to know
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that not yet anyway right not yet yeah no not not anyway that's it's just like um you know i'll
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figure it out before i even have to email them that there's a problem the printer's three weeks
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behind i'll find someone else like we accidentally scratched a stamper putting it on we'll replace
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it. Something happened during the cutting process or someone pressed the vinyl in the wrong color.
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They'll never know. I'll reach out to the customer after the fact and say, hey, we pressed,
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you know, some special copies for you. Do you want them? They'll never know it was an accident. We
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did it on purpose. It's kind of like Bob Ross used to say, just happy little accidents, you know,
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Make the world go by.
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And the thing, again, real quick, you know, I'm sure we'll probably get into this, but there's probably at least 15 steps to making a record from getting the audio, cutting the lacquer, making the master, making the plating, doing test pressings.
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And then you haven't even started to make it yet.
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And then from that point, actually doing the test pressings, pressing the record, and then getting every aspects of the color of the record, the style of the record, the weight of the record.
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We haven't even talked about the jacket where 90% of the time you got to get the artwork.
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You got to put it on a template.
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You got to see who's going to do it.
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You have to set up expectations of print, blah, blah, blah.
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the interface with the printer. So now you are the middleman. You become the printer because you have
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to answer every question the printer has because the client doesn't even know what you're talking
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about. And then all that has to be on a timeline where everything has to meet at the exact same
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three-day period or you can't press the record. And your average run there, which is a customer
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order might be smaller, but we know that you can produce runs as large as 100,000 records,
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maybe even bigger. And to me, that's impressive. That's a huge number to imagine, like 100,000
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records rolling out in a truck in a series of boxes. How big is the team at Studio 4 Vinyl?
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Ashley, you mentioned your team is what makes it all work. How many roles and how many people do
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have there? It's honestly much smaller than you would think. We've got a team of, at any given
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time, about 20 people. And that's it. And when I tell you, they all work together seamlessly,
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because if they didn't, the things that we do would not happen. So our office staff is three
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to four people depending on if Drew's here and our packing team is about six people two of those
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people float into our warehouse to make sure that shipments happen and then the rest of our folks
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are in pressing and then you've got Phil and Ronnie doing the really hard stuff the lacquer
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cutting itself and dealing with the audio. So it's relatively small compared to a lot of other
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plants, but that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it here is because it feels like family. It's not
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everyone here is family, but it's what it feels like to me. Like I appreciate every person here
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and I love working with them and I would not change it for the world. And I think the music
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industry in general, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it traditionally has been most like a
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male-dominated industry. And same goes with old traditional manufacturing. But all that's really
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beginning to change. And you yourself are active in an organization called Women in Vinyl. So
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would you tell us a little bit about that, please? Yeah. So, I mean, women in vinyl is just,
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it's, they're very underrepresented. Like it's, it is anytime you go into any networking event or
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into any type of meeting, it's mostly men. You realize you are one of maybe three women in the
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room. And it's, it's really nice to be in with this organization because they make it their
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priority to make sure that women's voices are heard and not just in like the retail setting
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which is where it originally like started more women in vinyl in retail in the production side
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is very unheard of um and getting to meet other women that work at pressing plants that press
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records. When you think of record people that press records, it's mostly men. And to see a woman
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pressing a record, tooling a machine, doing something that would be typically a man's job,
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it's amazing. It's wonderful to work with them and to have our voices heard in the industry.
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It's been a wild ride.
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Well, thank you for that.
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And we will be sure to link to that organization's website over on our website on the show notes page over at starlocal.co.
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Erik asked you about the larger runs, the big 100,000, and that would be amazing.
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But if there's a new up-and-coming band tuning into our podcast and they want to press a record,
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or maybe a well-known artist, an established artist is looking to do a limited edition boutique run,
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What's the smallest run, Phil, that you and your team will put together?
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It almost, there really isn't.
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I mean, typically we say 100 only because the startup costs is where most of the cost is.
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It's like, yes, you could make five or you could make 100, but it costs the same amount.
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Because they get the lacquer cut, they get the metal work, they get the jackets, all those things.
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to amortize it out. It, it, it doesn't,
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it doesn't really make sense to do less than, than a hundred,
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but we do a lot of runs of a hundred records. It's,
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it's certainly more expensive than 500 or a thousand,
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but it's not ridiculous. It's not like 10 times more expensive.
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What we do is we really,
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we really love supporting the smaller artists.
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I would say on any given, I mean, obviously it's ebb and flow, but we do more smaller independent projects than we do larger projects.
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And as much as it's more tedious, it's a lot more paperwork, it's a lot more interaction, we prefer that because you're always doing something different.
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Yeah, it's more hectic, but it's more exciting.
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It's more fun for us because we're all creative music people.
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We're not like, yeah, let's make 100,000 more Dunkin' Yo-Yos.
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Well, that's fine.
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You know, okay.
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But even when we're doing a 50,000 or 60,000 run of the Suicide Boys,
215
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after a while you're like, yeah, we're still pressing the Coke bottle green.
216
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Yeah, okay, it's good.
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I appreciate that.
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It's paying the rent, obviously, you know, and the salaries.
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And actually on the note of salaries, we pay, I don't know, Ashley could give you the numbers,
220
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but I bet you we're at least 30 to 40% higher than most pressing facilities or manufacturing facilities.
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Yeah, making sure that our people are taken care of is really important for us.
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And especially, like I said, we feel like we're family.
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So I want to make sure that every single person here is able to have higher than a living wage.
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And it keeps people wanting to be here because you care about them.
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Well, on our tour of your record pressing plant, we saw lots of happy people.
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That's for sure.
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Everybody was very, you know, enthused about being there, happy to meet us and really excited to show us, you know, the art that they're working on, as well as the science they're working on.
228
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We learned so much about the process of manufacturing a vinyl record when we were there.
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I thought I knew a little bit about it, but I walked out knowing a lot more.
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So would you please walk us briefly through the process?
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We know you start with raw vinyl, if you will.
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But what happens between that and taking the finished record off the pressing machine?
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That's a big question, I know.
234
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I can really simplify it to a degree.
235
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The basic stages, there's probably four or five basic stages.
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Stage one is the most important.
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It's taking that audio, whatever form it is, whether it's however it originated on a waveform,
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similar to the one you're streaming on your Spotify.
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We take that and we turn it into record one.
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What we do is we take that sound and we get a big, basically blank record.
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And with a lathe, a machine that actually is going to automatically move across the record and cut the first groove, that's lacquer one.
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You make record one.
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You take that record.
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You send it to this great guy, Desmond in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who this is kind of cool.
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He takes that. So that's a record that you can play. It looks like a record. You spray it in silver. Okay. Then you plate it, you electro plate it in nickel. What does that mean? If you run a high voltage through a piece of metal and you dip it in a metal solution like nickel, the electrons make that metal stick to the record.
246
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So now you're spinning this thing in this liquid.
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All of a sudden, as if it was like some sort of whatever plastic, it adheres to that record.
248
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You take that record out of that bath after about two hours.
249
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Now you peel that new, it's like a skin peel.
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You peel that off the metal.
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You now have a negative of the record.
252
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So where there were grooves cut in, you now have bumps that sunk into that groove.
253
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So now you have a record that's the opposite of a record.
254
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Instead of grooves, there's bumps on it.
255
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You take that, you put that in a record on a vinyl pressing machine,
256
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one on the top for the A side, one on the bottom for the B side.
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You put a puck in there that looks like a hockey puck that you heat to 180 degrees Celsius,
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about 350 degrees, and you heat it up really fast, then you squish it with 15 tons of pressure.
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That record, that's like a waffle, and now it squeezes out over those stampers,
260
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comes out the edge, like when you put too much batter in that waffle.
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You take that now record waffle, oh, nice, out of the press, you put it on a trimmer,
262
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And you trim off all that excess.
263
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You put that in between metal plates while it's cooling and your record is done.
264
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The one step I missed, when you put that puck into the press, you have to put a label on the top lacquer, on the top stamper and the bottom stamper.
265
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The pressure of that press now presses that vinyl,
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that label into the vinyl,
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changing the molecular structure.
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So now it is part of that vinyl.
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You don't glue it on, it's never coming off.
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That comes off, again, it comes off,
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it sits in that,
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you put about five records to a cooling plate.
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It sits on that spindle for about 12 hours.
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Then you take that record,
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You put it in a sleeve.
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Now, of course, during the process, it's inspected when it's made.
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It's inspected when it's sleeved.
278
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It's often inspected again when it's jacketed.
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And then it goes from sleeving to jacketing to the shrink wrap.
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Boom.
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There's your new, who's a popular band?
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Turnstile.
283
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There's your new Turnstile record that my friend Will Yip produces.
284
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Thank you for that.
285
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That was really easy to follow.
286
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So thank you, Phil.
287
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I appreciate that.
288
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I'm an easy guy.
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I'm a dumb guy.
290
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You're humble for sure.
291
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You're very humble.
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I respect that about you.
293
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Not childish, childlike.
294
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It's an important difference.
295
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Our audience members accustomed to digital music
296
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via streaming services might be surprised to learn
297
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that vinyl records come in all sorts of colors these days.
298
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Phil, you just mentioned the Coca-Cola bottle green
299
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that the Suicide Boys are using.
300
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And as Erik and I learned on our tours, it can be a mix of almost any color.
301
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So tell us about how records have evolved beyond the traditional black.
302
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How are these new colors produced?
303
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And on these new records, do the colors produce different sounds than, say, a black record might?
304
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It does.
305
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I'll throw it to Ashley because she's really in the front office, so to speak, with clients, talking to them about colors, talking to them about what to do and how to do.
306
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And she's also involved, along with Drew and Vince, all of our staff, developing cool records.
307
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You can't see it on the radio, but that we do.
308
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So Ashley, why don't you take that?
309
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And we've been monumental in developing higher sound quality.
310
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And she can talk to you about that, too.
311
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Yeah, I mean, there's purists out there that will tell you that black records sound the best.
312
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There are purists out there that will tell you that virgin material is what sounds the best.
313
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Then you've got people that are going to tell you that black records that are half virgin and half reground material is what sounds the best.
314
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Either way, it all comes down to how it was cut.
315
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If it was cut badly, it's not going to sound great no matter what material you're using.
316
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:37,300
But we do have some colors that are going to have a lot more of a noise floor with them just inherently.
317
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Glow in the Dark Records, you're going to hear some sound.
318
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Like, there's nothing we can do about that.
319
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It's going to happen.
320
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It's just the way the material is made and how the chemical compounds in it work.
321
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Anything that has glitter in it, you're going to hear it.
322
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It's going to look really cool, but you're going to hear it.
323
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Our team works really hard with our machines and our settings to make sure that our black records, the sound, the quality that you're going to get with black records are the same with any colors that we work with.
324
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That's anything from splatters to swirls to the clear records to opaque.
325
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And I mean, depending on what you're using and how you're mixing them, that also might change the sound quality.
326
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Sometimes certain mixes of splatters, you're going to hear a little bit more noise.
327
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Sometimes certain mixes on the swirls, you're going to hear a little bit more noise because of the type of swirl that you're throwing in there.
328
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Because everything has a different chemical compound.
329
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Everything has a different melting point.
330
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Your opaques have a higher melting point than your clears.
331
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Some of your specialties need to be run at a hotter temperature to melt properly into the vinyl.
332
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And then you get into the fact that you've got different types of vinyl.
333
00:28:10,740 --> 00:28:11,700
Some have lead in it.
334
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Some don't.
335
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:18,820
And lead is not something you have to worry about in this process, by the way.
336
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:20,100
Thank you for clarifying.
337
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:21,860
That was going to be a follow-up question.
338
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:23,780
Do not lick this record at home, kids.
339
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:26,020
Don't lick it.
340
00:28:26,360 --> 00:28:26,420
Okay.
341
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:28,200
Well, you can lick it.
342
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You can chew on it even.
343
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You would have to set the vinyl on fire for it to be a problem.
344
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:41,920
And then there's other fumes that are going to be more dangerous than the lead, I think.
345
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:42,720
Don't do that.
346
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:46,080
Yeah, but it's different.
347
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:51,240
And example, we use a mix of vinyls here.
348
00:28:51,460 --> 00:29:02,820
We've got some vinyls that we prefer to use the mixes that have lead in it because they melt better when doing swirls or specific specialties.
349
00:29:03,250 --> 00:29:16,320
And then we have other ones that we prefer to use the non-lead-based vinyl materials because of how they're going to react in our machines during the press process.
350
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:22,640
It really depends on what the client wants at the very beginning when we start working out what their expectations are.
351
00:29:23,260 --> 00:29:32,420
Sometimes they'll hand you a mock-up of something and you're going to look at it and go, that is not physically possible when we're pressing the record.
352
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:34,440
But we can get as close as possible.
353
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So we'll pick and choose what's going to work the best.
354
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And the other thing I want to say, we're really proud of the fact that we've been instrumental and monumental in the improvement of colored vinyl.
355
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:58,940
Because five years ago, when we were first starting to get into this business, I was introduced to Casey Gibson, who's the largest importer of high definition of virgin vinyl.
356
00:29:58,940 --> 00:29:59,840
It's called Neotech.
357
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:04,500
He's got a plant that's two years ago, three years ago, he built in Taiwan.
358
00:30:05,300 --> 00:30:11,340
And I started, we became good friends and we became a test facility to try those different.
359
00:30:11,740 --> 00:30:15,560
And again, sometimes it's 0.01% of an additive.
360
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,860
That's the difference between a red record sounding good and sounding terrible.
361
00:30:20,740 --> 00:30:26,780
Natural vinyl, which is actually cream colored, was the worst sounding.
362
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:28,540
And it was no additives.
363
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:32,520
But now with the work we've done with Casey, it's one of the best.
364
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,100
Clear used to be terrible.
365
00:30:34,780 --> 00:30:51,040
Now you see, you know, these reissues of whoever, I mean, amazing jazz artists on clear vinyl, because we've managed to help improve that by testing different, like, how's this sound?
366
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:51,560
Oh, it's better.
367
00:30:51,700 --> 00:30:52,260
How's this sound?
368
00:30:52,260 --> 00:30:52,680
It's worse.
369
00:30:53,230 --> 00:30:56,780
And we're really proud of the fact that we've been monumental in that.
370
00:30:57,180 --> 00:31:11,860
And even in the manufacturing with Newbuilt and Viral, the two biggest manufacturers of presses, working with them and our team here have developed improvements in the equipment that we say, use it.
371
00:31:12,180 --> 00:31:14,780
I don't need to copyright it.
372
00:31:15,590 --> 00:31:20,060
But we're really proud of the fact that we're monumental in that.
373
00:31:20,460 --> 00:31:30,360
And right now, as we talked about, we may say, we're one of the few cutting facilities that do half-speed vinyl, which is a complete game changer.
374
00:31:30,850 --> 00:31:35,620
I mean, it hasn't been done regularly since 1980.
375
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:47,820
And again, through Ronnie and myself and Doug Fern and the Hazel Rigs, we've developed the first new half-speed vinyl cutting system since 1980 that Neumann made.
376
00:31:48,260 --> 00:31:50,620
And we're really excited about all these things.
377
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:55,840
And, you know, we do it because we love it, but we want to see the whole process improve.
378
00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:04,300
It's so impressive to me that there is this much innovation happening in vinyl record production in 2026.
379
00:32:05,020 --> 00:32:17,080
It's just amazing what a big market it is and how people care about that level of sound quality and also visual quality when they're taking out and truly experiencing the record.
380
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:26,580
In addition to all the variants that comes from the additives and the colors, on the tour, we saw older pressing machines and newer pressing machines.
381
00:32:26,810 --> 00:32:31,500
And they're all dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, and more.
382
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,880
So what you run there, it's not simply an assembly line.
383
00:32:35,890 --> 00:32:41,240
It required some art and some science and often reapplied science on the fly.
384
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:49,480
So how do you figure out all these ideal conditions and settings for making records between different machines that you have, different colors that you have?
385
00:32:49,900 --> 00:32:52,780
I mean, I'm just imagining there are a ton of variables.
386
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,720
And I noticed that Phil and Ashley, you both still have hair.
387
00:32:55,740 --> 00:32:57,460
You haven't pulled it all out yet.
388
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:00,340
So how do you sort through all that?
389
00:33:01,780 --> 00:33:04,780
It is, as Ashley said, we have three sayings here.
390
00:33:05,100 --> 00:33:05,960
Vinyl is chaos.
391
00:33:06,660 --> 00:33:09,580
Everything you know is wrong and everything breaks.
392
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:16,400
And I'll give you a perfect example of where it's just starting to do this.
393
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,460
Again, I was learning how to use the new built machine, which is from Germany.
394
00:33:22,140 --> 00:33:26,620
And I'm on the WhatsApp with Erwin because he couldn't come here.
395
00:33:27,220 --> 00:33:29,060
So we're going through and it's kind of working.
396
00:33:29,300 --> 00:33:31,480
And, you know, certain days it is, certain days it's not.
397
00:33:31,940 --> 00:33:33,960
And I'm like, God, the temperature is the same.
398
00:33:34,020 --> 00:33:35,120
The environment is the same.
399
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:36,180
The humidity is the same.
400
00:33:36,340 --> 00:33:37,280
The material is the same.
401
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:39,160
Yet today it's great.
402
00:33:39,460 --> 00:33:40,380
Yesterday it was horrible.
403
00:33:41,500 --> 00:33:47,060
there's doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it that I can figure out so I'm talking to Erwin
404
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,900
I said Erwin yesterday was great today it's not you know it seems to be different all the time
405
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:59,560
the conditions seem the exact same but it's not working he said uh Phil Phil uh what state is two
406
00:33:59,740 --> 00:34:06,438
states away from you and I'm thinking let's see Maryland I said West Virginia he said when someone
407
00:34:06,460 --> 00:34:12,399
opens the window in West Virginia, it'll change your settings. And that's when I went, oh,
408
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:25,100
S-H-I, you know, I was, oh, and that's when I realized it is, there are incredible parameters,
409
00:34:25,590 --> 00:34:34,060
but it is literally like flying an airplane, you know, through an approaching nor'easter.
410
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,659
You have to see things even before they occur.
411
00:34:37,370 --> 00:34:42,540
And you have to, it's, as we say, 50% science and 50% witchcraft.
412
00:34:42,790 --> 00:34:44,220
And the science isn't very good.
413
00:34:45,980 --> 00:34:57,380
So it is, that's why I've, it's really amazing that our team here has, you know, we're, again, some of us have been doing this for five years.
414
00:34:57,850 --> 00:35:01,760
And there's still days where we go, you can't believe, you know what?
415
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:12,400
I discovered that when you change the heat on chamber two instead of one to one degree, when you're using red, for some reason, the puck just wants to stay the right shape.
416
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:15,460
And it's working, hey, a third of the time.
417
00:35:15,870 --> 00:35:15,980
Okay.
418
00:35:16,700 --> 00:35:21,340
At least you have something you can go to a third of the time because it's always so different.
419
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:22,960
And it is.
420
00:35:23,010 --> 00:35:29,540
And that's what makes it such a challenging thing to do, but so rewarding.
421
00:35:29,940 --> 00:35:33,600
Because if it was easy, everyone would do it.
422
00:35:34,260 --> 00:35:43,820
And, you know, I share this enthusiasm with some other friends of mine who are unsimilarly like, yeah, well, nobody does this because it's so freaking hard, right?
423
00:35:44,540 --> 00:35:47,780
And, yeah, it's – but it is – it's fun.
424
00:35:47,990 --> 00:35:52,080
And I'm not saying we go through those crazy thunderstorms every day.
425
00:35:52,620 --> 00:35:59,840
But they do happen often enough that, you know what, we're not going to press Coke bottle green today because the machine just isn't going to do it.
426
00:36:00,300 --> 00:36:03,480
well, you know, red's pretty easy on new build too.
427
00:36:03,720 --> 00:36:03,820
Okay.
428
00:36:04,460 --> 00:36:06,220
So we pressed red on new build too
429
00:36:06,240 --> 00:36:06,980
because it's going to work.
430
00:36:07,660 --> 00:36:08,200
That's amazing.
431
00:36:08,500 --> 00:36:08,880
That's amazing.
432
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:10,100
You must have great patience
433
00:36:10,340 --> 00:36:12,620
and your team must be dedicated to learning.
434
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,180
It's kind of, yes, it's kind of funny
435
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,660
because it's almost, it's almost,
436
00:36:20,620 --> 00:36:21,900
I know this is going to sound dumb,
437
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:23,940
but it almost helps our ADD
438
00:36:24,420 --> 00:36:26,400
because you're always ready to do something anyway.
439
00:36:26,820 --> 00:36:28,460
Drew and I, God, God love Drew.
440
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:29,400
He's my son.
441
00:36:29,620 --> 00:36:31,320
But we both have this ADD thing.
442
00:36:31,910 --> 00:36:37,740
Unless we're focused on something that has so many variables, you don't have time to get distracted.
443
00:36:38,260 --> 00:36:38,960
I love it.
444
00:36:38,990 --> 00:36:39,400
I love it.
445
00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:42,260
So I want to keep touring around your factory floor here.
446
00:36:42,420 --> 00:36:44,480
Erik and I had just an amazing time.
447
00:36:44,620 --> 00:36:47,380
He and I went out for dinner afterwards and just talked for hours.
448
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:48,100
Did you see this?
449
00:36:48,110 --> 00:36:48,680
Do you remember that?
450
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:49,420
That was so cool.
451
00:36:50,140 --> 00:36:59,020
And really, one of the things that impressed the heck out of us that amazed us was how many different types of machines you have.
452
00:36:59,140 --> 00:37:07,800
Yes, you have the manual presses and you have the newer automatic presses, but you also have like a steam boiler and a label cooker.
453
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:13,540
And we had all sorts of virgin vinyl and repurposed or recycled vinyl.
454
00:37:13,670 --> 00:37:20,960
And I think my favorite machine was the Dunkin' Donuts bagel cooker that you folks had repurposed.
455
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:25,660
So let's start with that machine and tell us about some of the other, not record pressing machines,
456
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,480
but the machines that you need that make your, that allow you to press records.
457
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:34,580
Sure. The thing you're talking about, it's a Dunkin' Donuts confection oven.
458
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:41,100
And it's like, what, it looks like you've got labels in there. And it's like, yes, you do.
459
00:37:41,610 --> 00:37:47,840
When we started this, one of the hardest things to figure out was how long do you bake the labels?
460
00:37:48,290 --> 00:37:52,460
And it's like, bake the labels? What do you mean? You gotta, why do you bake the labels?
461
00:37:53,020 --> 00:38:03,680
Well, the water content, as I said, the label goes onto the puck and then it experiences 15 bar, which is 15 tons of pressure.
462
00:38:04,180 --> 00:38:05,740
Don't ask me why. That's what you have to do.
463
00:38:06,420 --> 00:38:10,640
Well, as I said, you change the molecular structure of that label.
464
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:22,100
If the water content isn't within a half of a percent of optimum, the label, if it's too dry, it cracks and it looks like something exploded on the record.
465
00:38:22,620 --> 00:38:28,800
If it's too wet, the label separates. So half of the label is on the record and half the label is
466
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:36,960
on the stamper. So that water content has to be perfect. And sometimes that means two hours of
467
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:43,480
baking, four hours of baking, eight hours of baking, 10 hours of baking, take it out, let it cool,
468
00:38:43,820 --> 00:38:49,520
and heat it up for 20 minutes before you use it. Because every label is different. Every label,
469
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,600
until we discovered Third Man Pressing,
470
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:56,860
which I think we got a lot of great advice
471
00:38:57,260 --> 00:38:59,400
from Jack White as a pressing facility,
472
00:38:59,860 --> 00:39:01,840
as some of you may know, called Third Man.
473
00:39:02,220 --> 00:39:02,800
It's in Detroit.
474
00:39:03,620 --> 00:39:06,340
And on many ways, I won't get into the details,
475
00:39:06,580 --> 00:39:07,660
but he saved my life.
476
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,780
Jack's main pressing production engineer, Brock,
477
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,920
came to our rescue and answered so many of the questions
478
00:39:15,220 --> 00:39:16,900
that we just couldn't figure out
479
00:39:17,260 --> 00:39:19,280
because we had no one to show us how to use it.
480
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:31,980
And those guys or somebody maybe when Ashley and I were on making vinyl, one of our trips, I think, to Minneapolis, they said, look, find the same company to make all your labels.
481
00:39:32,590 --> 00:39:38,480
Then you know the paper, the ink, everything is going to be the same.
482
00:39:39,060 --> 00:39:48,560
It's not always going to be identical, but at least you're going to narrow it down to just a ridiculous number of possibilities instead of an impossible number of possibilities.
483
00:39:49,060 --> 00:39:52,000
And actually, didn't we help them develop the non-bake label, I think?
484
00:39:53,200 --> 00:40:01,420
They were working on it when we first started working with them and we were doing small run stuff.
485
00:40:01,830 --> 00:40:12,820
And in order for us to do a lot of this small run stuff, it didn't make any sense for us to order a thousand labels, which was their basic run, if I'm only pressing a hundred records.
486
00:40:13,540 --> 00:40:22,180
So we started working with them on doing the small run batches of 250 labels or 500 and their no bakes.
487
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:35,220
And when they first started working with them, they were sending all of their tests to us to test on our machines the difference between baking them for 10 minutes versus 20 minutes.
488
00:40:36,500 --> 00:40:37,860
What does it look like on the viral?
489
00:40:37,970 --> 00:40:39,600
What does it look like on the new built?
490
00:40:40,140 --> 00:40:52,600
So it was a lot of trial and error of baking, running it in the machine, having the label stick to the plate, having it crack or split.
491
00:40:54,100 --> 00:41:09,240
But yeah, we helped. We worked with them immensely and they gave us a lot of tips on like baking and for the Dunkin' Donuts label baker.
492
00:41:09,260 --> 00:41:11,880
It's really cool because when you turn it on, the Dunkin' Donuts end up.
493
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:14,760
That's the best part.
494
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:16,320
It really is.
495
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:16,980
It really is.
496
00:41:17,240 --> 00:41:19,700
So there's the big – and, you know –
497
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:20,220
Yeah.
498
00:41:20,740 --> 00:41:22,880
You bake them on the croissant setting.
499
00:41:23,240 --> 00:41:23,560
Yes.
500
00:41:24,060 --> 00:41:25,200
That seems to be –
501
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:26,040
That's the best setting.
502
00:41:26,190 --> 00:41:27,800
That seems to be the best setting.
503
00:41:28,180 --> 00:41:39,060
And, again, in terms of equipment that supports what we do, as I said, the pressing machine has to heat the puck almost instantly to 180 degrees Celsius.
504
00:41:39,740 --> 00:41:44,560
To do that, we run high-pressure steam, 150 PSI.
505
00:41:44,820 --> 00:41:51,760
It's 150 pounds per square inch, which will cut a car door in half of steam into that machine.
506
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:59,900
To do that, as Erik and Liam alluded to, you need high-pressure steam boilers.
507
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:04,980
Our boiler room has two 60-horsepower Hurst boilers.
508
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:09,160
Both of those are close to the size of a steam locomotive.
509
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:10,480
They're huge.
510
00:42:11,010 --> 00:42:21,420
And they put out massive amounts of steam into this huge cinder block room that gets to 138 degrees with a 38-foot ceiling.
511
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:26,740
I mean, it looks like you're in the boiler room of a submarine because you are.
512
00:42:27,940 --> 00:42:31,480
And that creates the consistent steam that we need.
513
00:42:32,100 --> 00:42:39,720
When the record is pressed, you need to do the exact same thing with water, 150 PSI water.
514
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:49,740
So we have, again, a water pump cooling system that's larger than a fire engine because it puts out a higher pressure than a fire engine.
515
00:42:50,420 --> 00:42:54,200
And it's this big, massive 40-horsepower motors.
516
00:42:54,860 --> 00:43:02,740
Again, it's like you're in the engine room of a battleship because basically you are.
517
00:43:03,580 --> 00:43:06,860
And that's just for heating the steam.
518
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:14,720
The pressure, the hydraulic pressure, which is not pneumatic, not compressed oil, but air,
519
00:43:15,050 --> 00:43:20,340
the machines all have parts that move automatically through pressurized air.
520
00:43:20,780 --> 00:43:31,220
So we have these 150 PSI air compressors, very similar to the ones that you'll see in your favorite automotive shop back in the 50s, except we have four of them.
521
00:43:31,900 --> 00:43:39,480
And then there's the hydraulic pressure, the oil that is used to press 115 bar.
522
00:43:39,820 --> 00:43:42,320
And those compressors also are in the room running.
523
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:50,460
So when people come to look, it's like, wow, the biggest joke I love is, wow, this looks like the Rebel Base.
524
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:53,280
And I'm like, yes, it is.
525
00:43:54,000 --> 00:44:01,640
You know, there's all this machinery that's used and then an 8,000 square foot warehouse to store jackets and materials.
526
00:44:02,140 --> 00:44:04,360
And we regrind all of our material.
527
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:06,020
We're a green facility.
528
00:44:07,060 --> 00:44:17,740
When we cool the water, we don't use air conditioning type, whatchamacallit.
529
00:44:19,740 --> 00:44:28,060
Yeah, Freon, we don't use any of that kind of things that damage the air.
530
00:44:28,270 --> 00:44:37,600
We use evaporative cooling, which is cooling towers, where you actually run the water across a fan and expose it to cooled air.
531
00:44:37,990 --> 00:44:43,260
And that's what cools it, as opposed to using Freon and refrigeration, which is better for the environment.
532
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,420
We don't use any caustic chemicals in our boilers.
533
00:44:46,870 --> 00:44:48,360
Again, they're all natural chemicals.
534
00:44:49,220 --> 00:44:51,160
They cost more and we have to use them every day.
535
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:58,760
But, you know, I want my kids and my grandchildren to be able to live here when I'm dead.
536
00:45:00,300 --> 00:45:02,300
And the same thing with, you know, electricity.
537
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:14,440
We bring in high voltage power, so we use less electricity and we can actually, you know, run our 483 phase volts, but more efficiently.
538
00:45:15,460 --> 00:45:23,220
That's all really impressive. And it's amazing how much machinery, like you just said, goes into making this traditional music.
539
00:45:23,310 --> 00:45:29,000
We have a grinder that we grind our pucks. It's bigger than a refrigerator. And it makes a lot of noise, man, let me tell you.
540
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:38,680
And you also repurpose your vinyl. You recycle the vinyl. So if a vinyl pit is not, if virgin vinyl isn't used, it can be reused for a new record, right?
541
00:45:38,700 --> 00:45:57,680
Exactly. And as Ashley indicated, sometimes we can make a better record by mixing virgin and regrind because the regrind is still pure. It's not like, oh, it's got contaminants. No, it's been compressed 15 tons, but that doesn't make it bad. That doesn't make it contaminated.
542
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:07,280
And as a matter of fact, since it's already gone through that process, as Ashley also indicated, it takes a little bit more heat, but it's more stable.
543
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,500
So you can actually make a better record that's 20% regrind.
544
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:21,120
And then we offer a cheaper, if you use what we call the EcoMix, we actually can make your records cheaper.
545
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:22,060
What were you going to say, Ashley?
546
00:46:22,100 --> 00:46:42,960
I think one of the problems or misconception with regrind or recycled vinyl material or eco, whatever you want to call it, is, you know, back in the day when vinyl was the thing, a lot of plants were just grinding the whole record.
547
00:46:43,600 --> 00:47:00,860
So, yeah, you were getting contaminants. You were getting the center label because they weren't cutting it out. They were just throwing it in the grinder and like whatever happened, happened. It was like they just were just like, I just regrind it, reuse it. Whereas every plant now, you are cutting that center label out.
548
00:47:01,460 --> 00:47:07,860
You are making sure that your vinyl is usable, that there's nothing in it.
549
00:47:07,940 --> 00:47:15,460
If you get a bucket, because the way we regrind is by a five-gallon bucket at a time.
550
00:47:16,940 --> 00:47:20,440
And if you're regrinding into that five-gallon bucket and you see,
551
00:47:21,339 --> 00:47:25,820
we missed a piece of center label because the center label was off-center,
552
00:47:26,140 --> 00:47:29,980
which happens during pressing, then that whole bucket is gone.
553
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:31,780
You're just, that's trash.
554
00:47:31,970 --> 00:47:32,960
We're not putting it in.
555
00:47:33,660 --> 00:47:40,620
And we'll just do another five-gallon bucket, and then it goes into the larger storage of reground vinyl.
556
00:47:41,100 --> 00:47:42,380
We're hole-punching the records.
557
00:47:42,430 --> 00:47:43,100
We clean them.
558
00:47:43,150 --> 00:47:46,180
We just make sure there's no contaminants, that it's really clean.
559
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:53,380
And there are times when we'll do a custom color, so the reground is really a good thing.
560
00:47:53,780 --> 00:47:56,660
Because if the client wants a repress, there it is.
561
00:47:56,700 --> 00:48:10,620
We've got 50 buckets of, well, like whatever, school bus yellow or whatever, you know, some really interesting sunset red or something that we can just use to regrind.
562
00:48:11,620 --> 00:48:18,460
Well, let's focus on the process of taking the digital files of songs and getting those sounds onto vinyl.
563
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:24,500
You have some highly specialized equipment for that, including a cutting lathe used to create the stampers.
564
00:48:24,660 --> 00:48:30,600
And so stampers you talked about earlier, they're the negative impressions of the master disc used to press their records.
565
00:48:31,130 --> 00:48:40,900
And on the tour and earlier in this interview, you explained a little bit about that process to us and how you're doing something unique and innovative there when it comes to 50% speed.
566
00:48:41,150 --> 00:48:44,220
So talk about that a little bit more, if you would.
567
00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:48,740
And what makes Studio 4 Vinyl's stamper creation process so unique?
568
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:51,120
Sure.
569
00:48:52,040 --> 00:49:03,000
We have, you know, as I said, my chief tech, he's electronic as well as mechanical, as well as a lot of stuff.
570
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,100
Ronnie, he's a genius.
571
00:49:07,420 --> 00:49:09,440
He's crazy, but he's a genius, which is great.
572
00:49:09,900 --> 00:49:10,480
So am I.
573
00:49:11,860 --> 00:49:19,200
But what we did is we, about three years ago, I got a lathe system.
574
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:30,080
Because the lathe system that I talked about, which cuts record one, they haven't been made since 1980 because there was no need for them.
575
00:49:30,530 --> 00:49:33,880
In 1982, CDs hit the market.
576
00:49:34,470 --> 00:49:40,920
By 1984, most people were buying CDs and certainly not records.
577
00:49:41,700 --> 00:49:57,680
So the last lathe system that was actually developed and designed by the Neumann Company, a great, wonderful company in Germany, the last lathe that was produced was made in 1980.
578
00:49:58,450 --> 00:50:01,840
Because by 82, you didn't need a new one.
579
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:04,640
And by 84, you didn't need them at all.
580
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:23,400
So that process of cutting lacquers even has gone by the wayside because the great guys that did it back then, Bob Ludwig, George Marino, Ted Jensen, etc., they stopped cutting records and they don't cut them anymore.
581
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:28,420
So that art got lost.
582
00:50:29,610 --> 00:50:31,960
Now, fortunately, I've been doing this for 50 years.
583
00:50:32,060 --> 00:50:39,160
So the first, oh, over a third of my career, I was making records for vinyl, watching those
584
00:50:39,260 --> 00:50:42,240
guys cut records, understanding the limitations of it.
585
00:50:42,980 --> 00:50:47,740
Because what you're doing is you're taking the sound, the audio, and you're putting it
586
00:50:47,940 --> 00:50:51,380
onto a piece of plastic, bumps on a piece of plastic.
587
00:50:52,060 --> 00:50:53,920
Now explain to me how that's going to work.
588
00:50:54,460 --> 00:51:02,020
Well, even the most intelligent geniuses in the world kind of look at you and go, I don't
589
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:07,980
know why it works, but somehow it does. How, when you're taking this sound and you're putting it on
590
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:11,960
to this little, it's really, you're scratching it into the records, what you're doing. You're
591
00:51:12,140 --> 00:51:19,040
taking the sound and instead of putting the sound into a speaker, as we know, you don't have to be
592
00:51:19,620 --> 00:51:25,900
too technical, but as you know, somehow the sound gets amplified and it makes the speaker move or
593
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:32,080
the element in your earphone move, and that makes sound. Well, you take that same mechanical
594
00:51:32,380 --> 00:51:37,620
transfer and you put it onto a little needle, and that's what scratches the record. It's
595
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:43,100
orthophonic, which means the sound is moving the needle. So that's what makes that little
596
00:51:43,250 --> 00:51:50,839
needle move and bumps on plastic. The thing that makes it even more difficult, and I'm going to
597
00:51:50,860 --> 00:51:56,540
get a little technical for a minute here, but bear with me. What people don't realize when you play
598
00:51:56,570 --> 00:52:04,100
a record, it's an encoding decoding process. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well,
599
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:10,280
when you are listening to a record, when a record is cut back in the late thirties,
600
00:52:10,820 --> 00:52:15,820
records sounded terrible. And the long playing record was just being developed.
601
00:52:16,240 --> 00:52:25,520
But when they put the needle on that groove and they played it, it was like it sounded like when you're playing an old cylinder or a 78.
602
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:27,580
That didn't even be so dramatic.
603
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:32,220
But all that noise was like, oh, my God, that's the needle rubbing in the groove.
604
00:52:32,460 --> 00:52:32,920
That's terrible.
605
00:52:32,980 --> 00:52:33,920
What are we going to do?
606
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:36,440
Wait, let's try this.
607
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:44,280
Now that they had, you know, tube technology, electronic technology, if we increase the high end dramatically.
608
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:55,440
I mean, I am talking, if you looked at a meter and you went from the lowest it could be to the loudest and did that four times,
609
00:52:56,080 --> 00:53:04,900
if we increase the high end incredibly, like in technology, 40 dB, which is like, that's impossible.
610
00:53:04,940 --> 00:53:06,840
You can't even make that much of a change.
611
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:12,280
But if we add that much high end when we cut the record, then we take it away.
612
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,960
When we play it back, all that goes away
613
00:53:17,350 --> 00:53:18,680
because you're taking all that noise
614
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:20,060
and you're bringing it below.
615
00:53:20,300 --> 00:53:21,560
I'm looking at, I'm using my hands,
616
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:22,180
but you can't see me.
617
00:53:22,820 --> 00:53:25,120
You bring that noise below the noise floor.
618
00:53:25,450 --> 00:53:26,820
So now it, oh, wow.
619
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:29,500
The high end is nice and there's no noise.
620
00:53:30,260 --> 00:53:33,700
So they developed this thing called the RIAA curve
621
00:53:34,110 --> 00:53:35,300
in the late 40s.
622
00:53:35,610 --> 00:53:36,480
I mean, late 30s.
623
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:40,880
I think RCA was the first long playing record to use it.
624
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:46,380
But by doing that, wow, records now sounded high fidelity.
625
00:53:47,170 --> 00:53:48,500
Now, here's the problem.
626
00:53:49,030 --> 00:54:01,060
When you record that sound onto the record, you have to encode it with that RIAA curve of that 20 to 40 dB high end.
627
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:08,860
What people don't realize when you play back a record, your phono cartridge into either
628
00:54:09,380 --> 00:54:15,200
your Bluetooth device or your receiver or your amplifier or whatever has to go through
629
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:16,800
a phono preamp.
630
00:54:17,500 --> 00:54:21,480
It's like if you're doing it old school, yes, you got to take the record, plug it into a
631
00:54:21,620 --> 00:54:27,240
phono preamp, and then plug it into your amplifier or your old receiver with a phono setting.
632
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,780
that setting is doing the reduction of all that high end.
633
00:54:32,070 --> 00:54:33,200
So you could play it back.
634
00:54:33,410 --> 00:54:36,120
If you play a record without going through a phono preamp,
635
00:54:36,410 --> 00:54:38,900
it sounds, you hear all that high end, it's terrible.
636
00:54:38,970 --> 00:54:40,900
You hear the noise, it's terrible.
637
00:54:41,190 --> 00:54:43,960
But every record from the late 40s
638
00:54:44,340 --> 00:54:49,340
right through your newest Taylor Swift record
639
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:51,760
has that RIAA curve on it.
640
00:54:52,130 --> 00:54:56,039
So it makes cutting record one almost impossible
641
00:54:56,060 --> 00:54:59,900
because now the high end, the cymbals, the sibilance on the vocal,
642
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:05,040
that is now being amplified by almost 30, 40 times.
643
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,040
So trying to cut that is what's so difficult.
644
00:55:09,340 --> 00:55:14,980
That's what makes cutting record one such a difficult process
645
00:55:15,860 --> 00:55:21,220
is because it's kind of like painting with your eyes closed.
646
00:55:21,490 --> 00:55:25,180
Oh, and by the way, when you're putting blue on, it's going to turn to red.
647
00:55:25,900 --> 00:55:43,080
Okay. That's pretty hard. And it's a process. And Ronnie and I have been doing it for three years. But again, leaving my huge ego at the door, I pride myself at being a Grammy Award winning multi-platinum engineer producer mixer that we're doing it.
648
00:55:43,140 --> 00:55:49,360
And then in the last two and a half years have developed the half speed mastering.
649
00:55:49,660 --> 00:55:52,280
And I'll make this quick because I know we've been on this for a minute.
650
00:55:53,460 --> 00:56:03,280
What you do is if you're spinning the record at 33 and a third, you slow it down to 16 and a half, whatever that is.
651
00:56:03,330 --> 00:56:05,400
You slow it down half as fast.
652
00:56:06,110 --> 00:56:11,900
You take the audio and you slow it down also half as fast.
653
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:15,740
So now it's going real slow.
654
00:56:18,340 --> 00:56:21,900
And it sounds, I don't even know if you could hear this.
655
00:56:22,720 --> 00:56:23,700
Anyway, nevermind.
656
00:56:23,770 --> 00:56:27,920
I was going to play it, but it slows it down 50%.
657
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:35,420
But what that does, that little stylus that's now moving as fast as 14,000 times a second,
658
00:56:35,860 --> 00:56:40,360
well, those highest frequencies are now down to 7,000 times.
659
00:56:40,940 --> 00:56:46,680
And the mid-range, which is 2,000, ooh, is now down to 1,000.
660
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:50,120
So what's happening, it's pure physics.
661
00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:53,800
It can move slower, so it's going to have more detail.
662
00:56:54,580 --> 00:56:58,320
It's going to have more space and time to cut that sound.
663
00:56:59,060 --> 00:57:04,080
And in that process, and again, you could ask Doug Fern or some other genius,
664
00:57:05,120 --> 00:57:09,480
and even they're like, I don't know why, but you get like 2 dB more volume,
665
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:13,800
which is the logarithmic, that's a lot for the same space.
666
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:17,420
So we've pioneered in it.
667
00:57:17,710 --> 00:57:23,020
And now right now, if you Google AI, who can do half-speed mastering?
668
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:28,600
It's only Abbey Road, the Beatles studio in London, Mobile Fidelity,
669
00:57:29,090 --> 00:57:33,600
one of the most world-renowned high-specialty cutting facilities in Boston,
670
00:57:34,180 --> 00:57:37,480
and Studio 4 Vinyl in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
671
00:57:38,150 --> 00:57:39,180
And we're very proud of that.
672
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:50,300
And rightly so. Thank you for walking us through that. I know it was a longer technical answer, but even I was able to follow it, Phil. So you did a good job on that. Thank you.
673
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:52,360
It's like geeks listening to this podcast.
674
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:57,060
When you cut a lacquer, it does change the sound.
675
00:57:57,500 --> 00:58:00,080
And when you're dealing with modern recorded sounds,
676
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:01,820
I won't get into a lot of detail,
677
00:58:02,460 --> 00:58:06,020
but modern digital recording has a lot of square waves.
678
00:58:06,460 --> 00:58:10,840
It's a distortion that a sine wave or a record doesn't want to play.
679
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:12,840
So you have to figure out a way,
680
00:58:12,900 --> 00:58:19,579
how can I imitate this gain elevated square wave
681
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:21,820
that's only a possible in digital
682
00:58:22,660 --> 00:58:24,660
and translate it to an analog sound.
683
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:27,860
And we've been working on that right now.
684
00:58:27,860 --> 00:58:30,720
I just got the latest update from our engineer.
685
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:34,740
Luckily it said, okay, we're getting there.
686
00:58:35,540 --> 00:58:37,380
Okay, that's what you want to hear.
687
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:43,500
But the thing is, you have to listen to it.
688
00:58:43,750 --> 00:58:46,060
And that's where we play, you know,
689
00:58:46,730 --> 00:58:47,780
every time we cut records,
690
00:58:48,060 --> 00:58:52,360
our engineers listen to every single start of the day,
691
00:58:52,670 --> 00:58:53,400
every hundred records.
692
00:58:54,500 --> 00:58:55,840
But most importantly,
693
00:58:56,170 --> 00:58:59,260
when we're sending out test pressings and when we're cutting lacquers,
694
00:59:00,119 --> 00:59:06,720
we have to be intent on what's the artist's intention.
695
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,260
And when you said about what type of record player it will play on,
696
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:15,080
what that means is that there's a wide variety of record players.
697
00:59:15,340 --> 00:59:17,120
There's a thing that's called the Crosley,
698
00:59:17,700 --> 00:59:25,040
which is the John's bargain basement, as my mom would say, of simple, it's battery operated. It's
699
00:59:25,140 --> 00:59:31,140
got, it's basically an arm with a needle on it. You put it on the record, it pushes down and it'll
700
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:39,760
play that record pretty well. But if you want to get more volume onto the record, which means you
701
00:59:39,820 --> 00:59:45,539
want that groove to move a little bit faster and a little hotter, well, that crappy stylus is just
702
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:52,000
going to pop out. So it's going to skip. If you have too much low end on the record, again,
703
00:59:52,630 --> 00:59:57,140
low end is what moves the groove the most, which makes the grooves possibly touch.
704
00:59:57,780 --> 01:00:04,020
If a groove touches, it's going to push that stylus of the Crosley out. Now, if you have
705
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:10,859
a decent turntable, it doesn't have to be a million dollar, but a decent U-turn or a Technics
706
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:17,460
with an Audio Technica cartridge or, you know, $120 Best Buy, even turntable.
707
01:00:18,300 --> 01:00:19,800
Most of those things will play.
708
01:00:20,260 --> 01:00:25,760
But we have artists, understandably, sometimes in the metal world,
709
01:00:26,300 --> 01:00:32,560
where they're like, no, our, yeah, it played, yes, it's played great on all of our turntables.
710
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:37,280
Yeah, but we played it on a Crosley that wasn't working well and it skipped.
711
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:39,680
Can you get it so it plays on that?
712
01:00:40,500 --> 01:00:46,200
Sure we can. I got to bring the level down to DB. Okay. We would wrap, and that's their choice.
713
01:00:46,790 --> 01:00:53,460
We would rather bring the level down and it not skip than have it be louder and have the client
714
01:00:53,900 --> 01:01:00,580
complain. And, and, um, there was a vinyl me please. And there's a, a couple of, uh, uh,
715
01:01:00,900 --> 01:01:06,540
subscription based companies that had an issue because different clients would be like,
716
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:11,400
this doesn't sound good or this sounds good, but it skips.
717
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:13,980
So they had to find that lane.
718
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:16,220
And there was a one point where I heard they said, well,
719
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:19,560
just tape a quarter to that, to the, like the old school days,
720
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:23,080
just tape a quarter onto the tone arm and see if it plays,
721
01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:26,000
if it doesn't tape another quarter.
722
01:01:26,620 --> 01:01:29,340
And if it still doesn't tape another third.
723
01:01:31,740 --> 01:01:35,460
So, so that's why, yeah, we're, we're, we're,
724
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:38,920
Because, and even informationally,
725
01:01:39,420 --> 01:01:41,180
many of the people who are making records
726
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:42,460
never owned one.
727
01:01:43,320 --> 01:01:45,660
Kit, my son's 41 years old.
728
01:01:46,500 --> 01:01:48,120
He didn't know where records were
729
01:01:48,180 --> 01:01:49,220
until he came to the soul.
730
01:01:49,260 --> 01:01:50,480
And, you know, again,
731
01:01:51,340 --> 01:01:53,540
so many of our clients never owned a record,
732
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:54,540
never bought a record.
733
01:01:54,860 --> 01:01:56,080
Well, you know, why would you?
734
01:01:57,000 --> 01:01:58,520
And now we have walked them through,
735
01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:00,920
oh, did you set up the tone arm?
736
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:02,220
And it's just a blank.
737
01:02:02,940 --> 01:02:03,160
What?
738
01:02:03,900 --> 01:02:05,420
No, when you're playing the record,
739
01:02:05,940 --> 01:02:07,260
Can you adjust the turn on?
740
01:02:07,740 --> 01:02:08,540
I think so.
741
01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:10,260
Well, did you set it up?
742
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:11,080
What's that?
743
01:02:11,740 --> 01:02:14,540
Okay, go to a friend who has a turntable that works
744
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:17,500
and talk to one of my guys about setting your turntable up.
745
01:02:18,860 --> 01:02:22,940
The level of attention to detail that you have
746
01:02:23,140 --> 01:02:26,340
about creating these pieces of art for our ears
747
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:28,660
is utterly incredible to me.
748
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,440
And we're just scratching the surface, no pun intended,
749
01:02:33,020 --> 01:02:35,820
about the different aspects of it.
750
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:47,440
And it's just fascinating. I think that gives all of our listeners a little bit more of an impression of what really goes into making records these days and why records have a reputation for sounding better than other medium.
751
01:02:48,020 --> 01:02:53,520
I mean, personally, for me, I despise hearing like swishy cymbals and swishy high end sounds and things like that.
752
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:59,080
You don't hear that on records for many of the reasons, some of which Phil just described.
753
01:02:59,160 --> 01:03:06,420
But I want to go to one other aspect of enjoying a record, and that is the packaging.
754
01:03:07,420 --> 01:03:18,860
One of the most fulfilling parts of experiencing a record is holding the large album artwork in your hands and removing the sleeve and checking out the jacket and seeing what's going on inside that package you just bought.
755
01:03:19,460 --> 01:03:25,620
So you have humans in Coatesville making sure everything is just right for the person who will buy that record.
756
01:03:25,860 --> 01:03:31,400
Tell us a little bit about how that process works and why you don't have a robot doing it.
757
01:03:31,890 --> 01:03:34,160
Actually, that's your world. Why don't you take that?
758
01:03:35,700 --> 01:03:43,480
So they do make machines that will auto sleeve your records.
759
01:03:45,380 --> 01:03:49,960
It's not something that we ever want here.
760
01:03:50,020 --> 01:03:57,000
We do have people here looking at every single record because we feel like that is extremely important.
761
01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:04,560
A lot of places will have the robot that, you know, just leaves the record, takes it off the spindle, puts it in a sleeve.
762
01:04:05,300 --> 01:04:18,120
But unless you've had someone look at both sides, check to make sure there's not a scratch or that your center label is not off center or that there's even a center label there.
763
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:32,900
During the pressing process, on a manual machine, yes, you're going to have someone that looks at both sides and sees, okay, there's a center label on both sides and there's no major issues and every 100 records they're going to listen.
764
01:04:33,260 --> 01:04:44,960
But the importance of my packaging folks, my quality control, is they look at every single record to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks.
765
01:04:45,680 --> 01:04:52,160
That the matrix number that is carved around the center label in the dead wax is correct.
766
01:04:52,210 --> 01:04:55,420
That the A side is the A side and the B side is the B side.
767
01:04:55,900 --> 01:05:06,640
that the center label matches, that it's not off center, that there isn't some minute scratch that someone missed because they're processing, you know, 3000 records a day.
768
01:05:08,940 --> 01:05:17,800
It's a little tedious, but I mean, these people get to sit here all day, look at really cool art and they get to listen to music.
769
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:25,200
And a lot of times they put whatever record they're working on, they put it on the turntable in the packing room.
770
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:26,660
and they listen to it while they're working.
771
01:05:29,140 --> 01:05:30,740
But that's extremely important
772
01:05:30,900 --> 01:05:34,040
because you want to make sure that when your customer,
773
01:05:34,540 --> 01:05:36,240
that final person pulls it out,
774
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,180
that it is a full, complete package.
775
01:05:39,580 --> 01:05:40,760
It looks good.
776
01:05:40,860 --> 01:05:41,840
It sounds good.
777
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:45,320
You know, that everything's put together
778
01:05:45,420 --> 01:05:47,400
to the specs that your client wants.
779
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:49,880
If they want a custom inner sleeve,
780
01:05:50,380 --> 01:05:52,240
they're getting their custom inner sleeve
781
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:55,760
or they're getting their polylined black inner sleeve.
782
01:05:57,420 --> 01:06:02,840
That if the sticker needs to be in a certain spot on the jacket,
783
01:06:03,140 --> 01:06:07,540
that it is in that spot and then it's not randomly in the middle of the jacket,
784
01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:08,980
which I've seen.
785
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,320
I've taken some pictures in retail stores where I'm like,
786
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:16,220
oh, who put this sticker on this?
787
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:16,760
Oh, yeah.
788
01:06:17,620 --> 01:06:19,340
Actually, it'll be like in a Target or something.
789
01:06:19,820 --> 01:06:25,420
And here's like Diana Ross and the Supremes and the stickers on Diana Ross's face.
790
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:29,100
You're like, yeah, quality control.
791
01:06:29,680 --> 01:06:35,880
And we're just like, this is just like, I got to show you, this is just wrong.
792
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:40,580
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of automation in the packing.
793
01:06:41,040 --> 01:06:44,040
There's the machine that will sleeve the record for you.
794
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:48,940
There is the machine that'll put that sleeve record into a jacket.
795
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:56,480
it um there's the machine that will uh you know auto shrink wrap it and put the sticker on at the
796
01:06:56,580 --> 01:07:02,320
end now we do have an automatic shrink wrap tunnel here that has increased our speed we used to do a
797
01:07:02,460 --> 01:07:08,600
manual l bar but i can tell you as someone who has worked on the floor um after eight hours of
798
01:07:08,960 --> 01:07:15,260
manually shrink wrapping records your arm and your shoulder starts hurting and you're like man i'm
799
01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:22,260
getting too old for this. You get a shrink arm. It's like, ooh, bad. So we love the music and we
800
01:07:22,540 --> 01:07:27,780
enjoy so many of the bands that you've worked with at your record pressing plant. And when we were at
801
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:32,760
Studio 4 Vinyl, some of the folks working on the floor are, to be quite candid with our audience
802
01:07:32,940 --> 01:07:38,720
here, celebrities in the music world. And Phil, dare I say, you're no exception to that. Many of your
803
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:44,600
customers are extremely well-known chart-topping artists. And we were originally going to come for
804
01:07:44,620 --> 01:07:49,480
a tour earlier in this year, but you had one of those chart-topping artists out and you
805
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:52,100
were doing all sorts of secret stuff for their promotion.
806
01:07:52,250 --> 01:07:53,400
And that's just so neat to us.
807
01:07:53,960 --> 01:07:56,200
So Ashley, you're doing the day-to-day.
808
01:07:56,380 --> 01:07:57,480
You're dealing with the customers.
809
01:07:57,630 --> 01:08:03,020
And I'm expecting the customers are the managers or the artists themselves or any number of
810
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:03,260
things.
811
01:08:03,420 --> 01:08:07,840
So what's it like to interact with all these famous music people or famous people in the
812
01:08:07,950 --> 01:08:10,380
music world, not including your father-in-law?
813
01:08:10,460 --> 01:08:13,300
You don't have to talk about working him with like on a podcast.
814
01:08:13,700 --> 01:08:14,900
We'll let you answer that separately.
815
01:08:17,380 --> 01:08:32,259
So, I mean, I think it's definitely safe to say that you can still get starstruck, no matter how many times you have interfaced with someone who is just high up there in the celebrity world.
816
01:08:33,420 --> 01:08:34,620
It's just it's going to happen.
817
01:08:35,100 --> 01:08:44,480
I mean, eventually during the process, it just gets to this point where you're like, you know, we're just working on a record here.
818
01:08:44,700 --> 01:08:49,600
I've got things that I need to do and handle and I'm just going to have to that's going to have to wait.
819
01:08:54,940 --> 01:09:01,000
it's, it's, it's wild sometimes, like the, the people that I've, I've met, um,
820
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:09,480
and really it, it varies from, sometimes I'm working directly with the artist, um, which is
821
01:09:11,719 --> 01:09:19,580
sometimes great, sometimes a little, you're having to set expectations, but no one wants to tell you
822
01:09:19,620 --> 01:09:25,500
too. I'm sorry, we can't do yellow vinyl with blue splatter and not have any green come out.
823
01:09:25,650 --> 01:09:34,900
Like, who wants to tell you too? No, you can't have that. I had to. But I mean, it's...
824
01:09:37,580 --> 01:09:42,339
So let me jump in with a follow-up question to that. Okay, so you had to tell you too, no.
825
01:09:43,380 --> 01:09:47,859
Sorry, physics doesn't work like that. Chemistry does not allow that. This is us not being mean.
826
01:09:48,020 --> 01:09:49,960
This is just chemistry setting the rules.
827
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:59,780
Can I ask you, would you be willing to share what's an artist or a musician who you met who was one of your music idols either now or growing up?
828
01:09:59,830 --> 01:10:03,460
And it was like, oh, my gosh, you folks are here or you're here.
829
01:10:04,400 --> 01:10:12,960
So, yeah, I met Ice-T a couple of years ago now, and that was like top tier for me.
830
01:10:14,220 --> 01:10:15,480
And he didn't come here.
831
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:21,040
I went to his house to pick up signed record jackets.
832
01:10:22,020 --> 01:10:26,000
And I got to meet Ice-T and his dog on the same day.
833
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:29,300
So that was just the best day ever for me.
834
01:10:29,820 --> 01:10:33,240
We all are, but Ashley is a massive dog person, by the way.
835
01:10:34,240 --> 01:10:34,420
Yeah.
836
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:38,180
But yeah, that was great.
837
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:39,400
I got to meet him.
838
01:10:39,420 --> 01:10:40,400
I got to talk to him.
839
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:41,580
I got a picture with him.
840
01:10:42,100 --> 01:10:50,340
I was trying so hard to not be a crazy fan, but I was just looking for the best day ever.
841
01:10:50,960 --> 01:11:02,920
Well, no interview with Phil Nicolo would be complete without asking at least one question about your storied career as record producer, mixer, mastering engineer, and many more titles that we could bestow on you.
842
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:10,420
So for our audience edification, Phil has worked with Grammy-winning artists and artists from practically every genre.
843
01:11:10,940 --> 01:11:13,620
John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Cypress Hill,
844
01:11:13,860 --> 01:11:15,960
Lauryn Hill, The Hooters, Amy Grant, Anthrax,
845
01:11:16,120 --> 01:11:17,000
just to name a few.
846
01:11:18,620 --> 01:11:20,560
Of all your work with so many talented
847
01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:21,860
and successful artists,
848
01:11:22,120 --> 01:11:24,300
kind of like Liam just asked Ashley,
849
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:28,820
what album or work was especially meaningful to you
850
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:29,660
and why?
851
01:11:32,100 --> 01:11:32,280
Wow.
852
01:11:33,280 --> 01:11:34,140
I would say,
853
01:11:35,680 --> 01:11:38,880
and I keep coming back to the same artist,
854
01:11:39,260 --> 01:11:41,340
which is, and he's become a dear friend of mine.
855
01:11:41,460 --> 01:11:42,220
He's a blues artist.
856
01:11:42,460 --> 01:11:44,500
Some of your audience will know.
857
01:11:44,500 --> 01:11:45,500
His name is Taj Mahal.
858
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:48,040
He's 81 years old.
859
01:11:49,300 --> 01:11:52,600
One of the greatest performing blues artists,
860
01:11:52,940 --> 01:11:56,080
but he's a force of nature.
861
01:11:57,340 --> 01:12:03,000
I had the pleasure of working with him 36 years ago in 1990
862
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:06,360
with a record that I did with producer Skip Drinkwater
863
01:12:06,900 --> 01:12:07,760
called Like Never Before.
864
01:12:08,740 --> 01:12:11,860
And that was my first time to meet and to work with Taj.
865
01:12:12,700 --> 01:12:17,200
And to this day, he is, I mean, I speak to him every few months.
866
01:12:17,800 --> 01:12:20,060
He's out on tour right now, I think, with Kebmo.
867
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:30,860
But it was just, it was life-changing in terms of his passion, his intelligence, his creativity,
868
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:40,500
his humanity, his just having a grasp on life and reality to a point that it totally blew my mind.
869
01:12:40,730 --> 01:12:45,720
And because, again, for those of you who don't know Taj Mahal, he's respected by just about
870
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:53,140
anybody in the industry. And in 1990, we had some acquaintances who came, not acquaintances,
871
01:12:53,380 --> 01:12:59,440
but people who came to play on the record like, oh, I don't know, Hall and Oates, Ringo Starr,
872
01:12:59,740 --> 01:13:07,620
the Pointer Sisters, Little Feet. It was just like, okay. Every time I turned around,
873
01:13:07,730 --> 01:13:15,520
we were doing a song, Dr. John. I mean, it was just amazing. And in every case,
874
01:13:15,970 --> 01:13:20,460
he was less the celebrity, but he was acting like, look, I'm just doing my thing.
875
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:28,800
And to this day, and I'll just give you an example. About two years ago,
876
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:33,100
He played the New Orleans Jazz Fest.
877
01:13:34,080 --> 01:13:36,400
And I hadn't done a live record with him in a while.
878
01:13:36,470 --> 01:13:38,240
I said, hey, Taj, why don't we record the show?
879
01:13:38,760 --> 01:13:40,660
He was like, yeah, he goes, Nicolo.
880
01:13:41,260 --> 01:13:41,820
Yeah, Nicolo.
881
01:13:42,100 --> 01:13:44,160
We always talk in Italian because he loves Italian.
882
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:45,460
He said, ma si.
883
01:13:46,080 --> 01:13:46,340
Okay.
884
01:13:47,320 --> 01:13:49,960
So I went down to record him and I got there.
885
01:13:50,200 --> 01:13:52,640
We had to do a rehearsal at 9 o'clock in the morning.
886
01:13:53,780 --> 01:13:55,780
And I went to his hotel, 8 o'clock.
887
01:13:55,820 --> 01:14:02,980
he's in the lobby with the band already animated vibrant he's 81 years old we get into the van to
888
01:14:02,980 --> 01:14:08,280
go over to the venue to to do a nine o'clock sound check he gets in the van and he goes he
889
01:14:08,280 --> 01:14:14,980
goes to the driver brother put on 9 to 3.5 i gotta hear and all of a sudden this is an like a an old
890
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:24,360
like funk r&b station and this song by maze comes on before frankie beverly was the lead singer
891
01:14:24,380 --> 01:14:26,020
Most of you don't even know what that means.
892
01:14:26,410 --> 01:14:29,120
He goes, oh, this is before Frank and Beverly was on Mays.
893
01:14:29,400 --> 01:14:30,320
Listen to this, brother.
894
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:31,200
This guy's amazing.
895
01:14:31,580 --> 01:14:42,900
And we're listening to this music, and he's freaking out over this song that was pushing his buttons because every minute of his life, music is in his veins.
896
01:14:43,880 --> 01:14:47,520
And I'm like, holy, this guy's 81 years old, and it's 830.
897
01:14:47,680 --> 01:14:52,360
We're on our way to do a rehearsal at Jazz Fest, and he's that pumped.
898
01:14:52,880 --> 01:14:57,180
And that man, it just, you know, and then at the, at the, at the, at the jazz fest,
899
01:14:57,560 --> 01:15:00,060
Oh, a friend of mine's going to come. It's Ricky Lee Jones.
900
01:15:00,960 --> 01:15:05,240
I'm sitting in the, in the, in the, you know, in the dressing room and this nice woman comes in.
901
01:15:05,300 --> 01:15:10,000
And I got to say, I'm sorry. I didn't recognize her, but he goes, Oh, Ricky, you got to meet my friend.
902
01:15:10,140 --> 01:15:14,660
It's still this Ricky Lee Jones. And I'm like, Oh, you're, Oh, you're, Oh, you're Ricky Lee Jones.
903
01:15:16,080 --> 01:15:20,240
It's that kind of, and then we recorded the performance. It was off the hook.
904
01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:27,920
He's still, at any rate, and he, and honestly, I could have used Lauryn Hill, Billy Joel, Yoko Ono.
905
01:15:28,220 --> 01:15:35,920
There's a bunch of people who have, who have impressed me in my life to be like, okay, music does pulse in your veins.
906
01:15:38,380 --> 01:15:39,040
Thank you for that.
907
01:15:39,240 --> 01:15:41,160
I really enjoyed hearing that story.
908
01:15:41,300 --> 01:15:47,120
I, I'm a fan of Taj Mahal and I'm even more so now after that story that was really enduring.
909
01:15:47,720 --> 01:15:50,920
So now it's my turn to kind of nerd out on you.
910
01:15:51,420 --> 01:15:56,660
One of my absolute favorite albums of all time is Saturation by Urge Overkill.
911
01:15:56,780 --> 01:15:57,540
I listened to that.
912
01:15:57,540 --> 01:15:58,200
You talked about it yesterday.
913
01:15:59,060 --> 01:16:01,520
Once a month at least, if not, right?
914
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:04,100
And I just absolutely love it.
915
01:16:04,100 --> 01:16:09,700
And for our audience, I'll share that Phil was involved in the making of that album, the success that it was.
916
01:16:09,700 --> 01:16:13,460
And it was a hugely successful album for Urge Overkill.
917
01:16:13,740 --> 01:16:16,540
And they celebrate its 25th anniversary and so on.
918
01:16:16,620 --> 01:16:17,680
It's just that kind of album.
919
01:16:18,260 --> 01:16:21,000
And I have so many questions for you, Phil.
920
01:16:21,200 --> 01:16:23,680
But Erik is limiting me to just one.
921
01:16:24,060 --> 01:16:24,900
So here it comes.
922
01:16:25,620 --> 01:16:29,840
So in advance of the show, I was listening to some different interviews that you've given over the years.
923
01:16:30,100 --> 01:16:40,160
And in a number of these interviews, you shared that, and correct me if I get this wrong, that your production style is to enable the musical artists to be themselves, to let them do what they do best.
924
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:44,340
And then you will push or guide them only when you think they needed it.
925
01:16:45,020 --> 01:16:46,240
And so my question is this.
926
01:16:46,500 --> 01:16:51,240
When making Saturation, where did you push or guide George Overkill?
927
01:16:51,610 --> 01:16:53,580
And how can we hear that influence on the album?
928
01:16:54,860 --> 01:16:55,240
Okay.
929
01:16:56,240 --> 01:16:57,160
I'll tell you.
930
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:05,120
They were very unique in that they, you know, most acts,
931
01:17:06,050 --> 01:17:10,060
they know who they want to be and they focus and that's all they want to do.
932
01:17:10,800 --> 01:17:16,000
But they were like, and I take this with a grain of salt.
933
01:17:16,420 --> 01:17:22,020
They were almost bored of, yeah, we're urged to overkill, but can we be somebody else for a minute?
934
01:17:22,900 --> 01:17:24,240
And can we focus more?
935
01:17:24,910 --> 01:17:37,560
And so in a way, what I did was, myself and my twin brother, Joe, we kind of let them kind of do what they do, but then reel it in and focus it in.
936
01:17:38,100 --> 01:17:47,940
And I'll tell you the one thing, and if you listen to it and think about it, again, because they were just lazy musicians, okay?
937
01:17:49,420 --> 01:17:52,960
Geffen, Mio Vukovic of Geffen bought them an eight-channel.
938
01:17:52,970 --> 01:17:54,480
At the time, it was an eight-channel.
939
01:17:54,610 --> 01:17:56,700
It was $693, $92, $93.
940
01:17:57,300 --> 01:18:01,020
An eight-channel TAC recording machine, a console, some microphones.
941
01:18:01,580 --> 01:18:08,260
I mean, whatever, maybe $10,000 worth of stuff, which was decent, you know, that you could make demos with.
942
01:18:08,300 --> 01:18:09,240
And he sent it to them.
943
01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:14,620
They had an engineer friend, and they said, yeah, we'll set it up and we'll start making some demos.
944
01:18:15,480 --> 01:18:17,180
A month passed, two months passed.
945
01:18:18,180 --> 01:18:23,900
All Mio's getting is a cassette with a couple songs on it that sounded like it was one mic in the room.
946
01:18:24,500 --> 01:18:28,800
So Mio said, Phil, can you go to Chicago and hang with these guys and help them write demos?
947
01:18:29,440 --> 01:18:30,820
Because I don't know what they're doing with the equipment.
948
01:18:31,280 --> 01:18:32,040
Well, I got there.
949
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:34,340
The equipment was all piled up in the corner.
950
01:18:34,620 --> 01:18:35,260
It's still in the box.
951
01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:38,580
So I unpacked it.
952
01:18:39,400 --> 01:18:41,220
And we started setting it up.
953
01:18:41,520 --> 01:18:46,560
And I'm thinking of records that felt like the energy they were talking about.
954
01:18:46,980 --> 01:18:50,000
That was kind of rampant rock, but pop.
955
01:18:50,700 --> 01:18:56,180
And in my mind, one of my favorite records of all time is Todd Rundgren, Something Anything.
956
01:18:57,000 --> 01:18:58,360
So many great songs.
957
01:18:58,540 --> 01:18:59,980
There's a song on that.
958
01:19:00,380 --> 01:19:02,840
It's couldn't I tell you the way I feel?
959
01:19:03,340 --> 01:19:03,800
Couldn't not.
960
01:19:03,940 --> 01:19:04,960
And it rocks.
961
01:19:05,540 --> 01:19:08,660
But his voice is intense, but it's a pop song.
962
01:19:09,300 --> 01:19:15,060
So I played that song for the guys and they went, that's the template.
963
01:19:15,880 --> 01:19:16,100
Yeah.
964
01:19:16,580 --> 01:19:16,640
Okay.
965
01:19:17,400 --> 01:19:20,320
Like pop, but that is rock.
966
01:19:20,400 --> 01:19:23,940
That doesn't always have to go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, tag.
967
01:19:24,860 --> 01:19:27,420
Something that's edgy and rock.
968
01:19:28,100 --> 01:19:30,420
And that's what we used as the template.
969
01:19:31,070 --> 01:19:38,880
And we went into the basement and we started and we cut five, six demos that became rhythm tracks.
970
01:19:39,470 --> 01:19:44,020
But again, no real lyrics, like a third of the songs.
971
01:19:44,050 --> 01:19:44,920
And I'm not kidding.
972
01:19:45,190 --> 01:19:46,500
We would do a rhythm track.
973
01:19:46,850 --> 01:19:50,840
And on the take sheet, for no reason, I would write Crack Babies.
974
01:19:51,980 --> 01:19:53,460
And that became the title.
975
01:19:53,620 --> 01:19:54,300
Crack Babies.
976
01:19:54,940 --> 01:19:55,140
Okay.
977
01:19:55,780 --> 01:19:56,780
Positive Bleeding.
978
01:19:57,070 --> 01:19:57,860
There was no lyrics.
979
01:19:58,020 --> 01:19:59,700
I just thought, what's good?
980
01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:01,140
Positive bleeding.
981
01:20:02,180 --> 01:20:07,000
All of a sudden the song generated out of planting the seed of the title,
982
01:20:07,620 --> 01:20:09,320
which many great songwriters tell me,
983
01:20:09,680 --> 01:20:11,800
some of the greatest songwriters I've ever worked with,
984
01:20:11,920 --> 01:20:14,140
they say, I write the song title first,
985
01:20:14,480 --> 01:20:15,720
and then I write the song around that.
986
01:20:16,640 --> 01:20:16,880
Okay.
987
01:20:18,440 --> 01:20:20,300
So there's a little tidbit.
988
01:20:20,740 --> 01:20:24,420
One of the funnest, greatest records Joey and I have ever done to this day.
989
01:20:24,900 --> 01:20:25,680
I have more people.
990
01:20:26,080 --> 01:20:27,000
Dave Grohl.
991
01:20:28,320 --> 01:20:29,580
I mean, so many artists.
992
01:20:30,700 --> 01:20:31,140
Butcher Brothers.
993
01:20:31,780 --> 01:20:32,260
Saturation.
994
01:20:32,540 --> 01:20:33,000
Oh, my God.
995
01:20:33,140 --> 01:20:34,320
That's one of my favorite records.
996
01:20:35,100 --> 01:20:36,740
You know, it's not a household name,
997
01:20:37,300 --> 01:20:40,480
but it's gotten me more work than almost any record I've done
998
01:20:41,060 --> 01:20:42,520
just because there's something about it.
999
01:20:42,520 --> 01:20:45,040
You put it on and it captures your attention.
1000
01:20:46,140 --> 01:20:48,240
Well, thank you, sir, for the work that you did do
1001
01:20:48,520 --> 01:20:52,780
because you've given me hours and hours and hours and hours.
1002
01:20:52,780 --> 01:20:53,060
Oh, thank you.
1003
01:20:53,200 --> 01:20:54,840
Over decades of listening pleasure.
1004
01:20:54,980 --> 01:20:55,760
So thank you, sir.
1005
01:20:56,080 --> 01:20:57,240
As they say, you're too kind.
1006
01:20:58,940 --> 01:21:03,640
Well, as our interview time here winds to a close, I have to ask you this question.
1007
01:21:04,140 --> 01:21:08,060
Tell us about a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.
1008
01:21:08,070 --> 01:21:13,280
And Ashley, Phil, feel welcome to answer whichever one of you has a thought on it or if you both do.
1009
01:21:13,780 --> 01:21:18,140
There's a pizza place right up the street here called Jack's.
1010
01:21:18,720 --> 01:21:27,000
And that is like our go-to place anytime that we need to have just, it's a bad day.
1011
01:21:27,220 --> 01:21:30,640
And my staff are just like, man, today is not going great.
1012
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:31,720
Everything is breaking.
1013
01:21:32,780 --> 01:21:35,880
It's like, it's pizza today and we're going.
1014
01:21:36,340 --> 01:21:38,140
And they never fails.
1015
01:21:38,440 --> 01:21:41,980
Like we call them, we like, we're not ordering one or two pizzas.
1016
01:21:42,400 --> 01:21:48,760
We're ordering like five to 10, depending on the day and how long we're going to be here.
1017
01:21:48,940 --> 01:21:51,300
And they're just like, we'll take care of you.
1018
01:21:51,660 --> 01:21:51,760
Yeah.
1019
01:21:52,540 --> 01:21:56,960
And honestly, right down the street toward us is the Double D Diner.
1020
01:21:57,500 --> 01:21:58,180
Same routine.
1021
01:21:58,420 --> 01:21:59,020
It's a diner.
1022
01:21:59,260 --> 01:21:59,740
It's great.
1023
01:21:59,880 --> 01:22:00,720
It's like a diner.
1024
01:22:01,040 --> 01:22:05,240
There's old pictures of Coatesville that are so faded they were taken in 1931.
1025
01:22:06,000 --> 01:22:06,660
It doesn't matter.
1026
01:22:07,160 --> 01:22:11,180
You know, it's just a fun place that the owners there are just like, they're courteous enough.
1027
01:22:11,540 --> 01:22:11,800
You know?
1028
01:22:11,880 --> 01:22:15,340
So it's a great place to do that.
1029
01:22:15,780 --> 01:22:19,540
And again, the development, the Coatesville, all the development of people.
1030
01:22:19,620 --> 01:22:27,340
I mean, all the things that we have had through Seed Copia and the Coates, not Coatesville, Chester County.
1031
01:22:27,340 --> 01:22:28,660
Chester County Economic Development Council.
1032
01:22:28,860 --> 01:22:28,960
Economic Development.
1033
01:22:30,860 --> 01:22:31,220
Amazing.
1034
01:22:31,320 --> 01:22:35,100
I mean, they probably deserve the biggest shout out because they're so good.
1035
01:22:35,540 --> 01:22:39,100
I mean, if you're a small business in Chester County, talk to them.
1036
01:22:39,260 --> 01:22:40,740
I recently lost my accountant.
1037
01:22:41,240 --> 01:22:46,360
started looking. I called them and they were like, oh, they gave me four leads. The second one,
1038
01:22:46,380 --> 01:22:50,880
they're not, she's now my accountant. And this was like in March. Okay. This was the worst time
1039
01:22:51,280 --> 01:22:55,500
to call for an accountant. So I would say those people definitely.
1040
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:03,420
So we have heard so much about what a wonderful place it is to work. Aside from the fact that you
1041
01:23:03,580 --> 01:23:07,720
are making records and there's music everywhere, that alone is cool, but that you have such a
1042
01:23:08,380 --> 01:23:13,160
a fantastic business culture, and it's a great place to work, and it sounds very fun as well,
1043
01:23:14,080 --> 01:23:16,580
really makes us ask the question, are you hiring?
1044
01:23:18,300 --> 01:23:31,040
Not right now. We had people come with us from Nottingham. We did have about three positions
1045
01:23:31,300 --> 01:23:35,700
open up when we moved into the building, closer to four. One of them is part-time,
1046
01:23:36,280 --> 01:23:42,920
And I actually, we found three people that live literally two minutes down the road.
1047
01:23:43,640 --> 01:23:44,440
They can walk here.
1048
01:23:45,200 --> 01:23:50,300
But we will be most likely hiring into the beginning of next year while we're expanding.
1049
01:23:50,340 --> 01:23:59,220
And as a matter of fact, I will say, I tell you, we're not, but we are looking for people who are interested in being pressing engineers.
1050
01:24:00,120 --> 01:24:22,880
So if you have an interest, if you're mechanically oriented, you understand thermodynamics to a degree, even if you don't, if you want to come and spend two or three hours a day here and learn a skill that you could get hired for, because that's the real shortcoming we have, is you can't hire a pressing engineer because they don't exist.
1051
01:24:23,370 --> 01:24:28,640
And even if you've done it in another facility, it's like, no, that's not the kind of blimp that we drive.
1052
01:24:29,820 --> 01:24:37,880
So if anyone is interested in possibly a career, in being a pressing engineer, it's an apprentice.
1053
01:24:38,280 --> 01:24:42,120
You're not going to get paid, but you're going to learn a valuable skill.
1054
01:24:42,820 --> 01:24:45,960
And if you get good enough, I'll hire you.
1055
01:24:46,420 --> 01:25:00,740
So, you know, it's in that regard, we're always looking for people who are interested in learning a very unusual talent and could become very valuable to us.
1056
01:25:00,770 --> 01:25:07,960
Because that's our shortcoming right now is we need more because unfortunately our workflow is high or low.
1057
01:25:08,260 --> 01:25:10,840
So it's great to have a couple of people.
1058
01:25:11,260 --> 01:25:15,300
This isn't their full-time gig, but hey, I could use 20 hours over the weekend.
1059
01:25:15,780 --> 01:25:15,960
Sure.
1060
01:25:16,020 --> 01:25:18,500
that is qualified to do that.
1061
01:25:18,820 --> 01:25:21,280
So I would say that's the only caveat,
1062
01:25:21,960 --> 01:25:23,580
not caveat, but we're always looking
1063
01:25:23,820 --> 01:25:25,600
for someone in that world.
1064
01:25:26,220 --> 01:25:28,320
And if folks are interested in that,
1065
01:25:28,460 --> 01:25:29,060
hit the website.
1066
01:25:29,400 --> 01:25:31,460
Is there an email address or a contact form
1067
01:25:31,640 --> 01:25:33,440
that you'd like them to get in touch with?
1068
01:25:33,440 --> 01:25:34,320
Is there a preferred way?
1069
01:25:35,660 --> 01:25:37,480
Yeah, just if you're interested,
1070
01:25:38,320 --> 01:25:39,940
send us your resume
1071
01:25:41,240 --> 01:25:43,280
or just a quick inquiry email
1072
01:25:43,560 --> 01:25:45,840
to our info at studio4vinyl.com.
1073
01:25:45,960 --> 01:26:08,960
Yeah, and it's the number four. Studio, the number four vinyl. And my recording studio is Studio, the number four recording, if you want to see that. And that's also very active. I'm there not as much, but Ron DeSivestro is there running it all the time. Longest running, 45 years, July 8th, but the longest running world-class studio in Philly.
1074
01:26:09,440 --> 01:26:11,040
and then Will Yip's new extension,
1075
01:26:11,360 --> 01:26:11,740
which is Studio,
1076
01:26:12,340 --> 01:26:12,600
which is,
1077
01:26:14,100 --> 01:26:14,720
what is it?
1078
01:26:15,300 --> 01:26:15,580
Mirror?
1079
01:26:16,520 --> 01:26:17,380
I forgot his facility,
1080
01:26:17,500 --> 01:26:18,260
but it's in South Philly.
1081
01:26:19,080 --> 01:26:20,040
We'll be sure to put links
1082
01:26:20,180 --> 01:26:21,640
to all of those locations
1083
01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:23,440
and websites on our website too
1084
01:26:23,620 --> 01:26:24,460
for easy reference
1085
01:26:24,520 --> 01:26:25,000
for our listeners
1086
01:26:25,260 --> 01:26:27,260
at startlocal.co.
1087
01:26:27,920 --> 01:26:29,800
One final question for you both.
1088
01:26:30,040 --> 01:26:31,420
How can the community support
1089
01:26:31,700 --> 01:26:32,480
Studio 4 Vinyl?
1090
01:26:33,740 --> 01:26:34,240
Make records.
1091
01:26:36,720 --> 01:26:37,280
Very good.
1092
01:26:38,560 --> 01:26:43,240
Yeah, I honestly spread the word, spread the word word of mouth. I'm sorry to me to cut you off, actually.
1093
01:26:44,870 --> 01:26:49,040
Spread the word word of mouth is how we get most and our most and our best clients.
1094
01:26:50,380 --> 01:26:54,620
Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those things where a lot of people will go, well, I can get this cheaper.
1095
01:26:56,200 --> 01:27:01,440
Yeah, somewhere else. And it's like, that's all right. I understand. Yes, you could.
1096
01:27:02,240 --> 01:27:16,260
But if you're coming here, you're not only supporting the local area, the local people here, you're getting a quality that we like to stand behind.
1097
01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:22,360
When you call here, you're getting a real person and you're talking to someone about your project and you're troubleshooting.
1098
01:27:23,280 --> 01:27:28,740
A lot of other places, you have to go through a phone system before you finally get someone,
1099
01:27:28,960 --> 01:27:32,580
and that someone might not know exactly what you're talking about with your project.
1100
01:27:35,219 --> 01:27:43,040
And every record that gets pressed here locally comes with a tour of the plant and a meet and greet with one of the office dogs.
1101
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:45,460
Very impressive.
1102
01:27:46,100 --> 01:27:48,320
Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo of Studio 4 Vinyl.
1103
01:27:48,380 --> 01:27:55,260
Aside from your website and the email address you gave, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about you in Studio 4 Vinyl?
1104
01:27:55,780 --> 01:28:02,740
Or if musicians are interested in chatting about you to press their records, what's the best way to make that happen?
1105
01:28:04,660 --> 01:28:13,940
Anyone that's interested in making a record, we've got a direct sales email that will go to all of our production managers.
1106
01:28:15,300 --> 01:28:19,200
That's sales at studio4, the number four, vinyl.com.
1107
01:28:21,780 --> 01:28:26,060
Anyone that has any specific questions may, by all means, reach out to me directly.
1108
01:28:26,820 --> 01:28:32,500
I'd be happy to talk to anyone about the process, give a tour, go over it.
1109
01:28:33,500 --> 01:28:34,780
Just send me an email.
1110
01:28:35,480 --> 01:28:35,560
Yeah.
1111
01:28:35,760 --> 01:28:42,820
So at the Studio 4 Vinyl, if you want to contact me about production, mixing, mastering, any of that stuff,
1112
01:28:43,300 --> 01:28:47,780
The Studio 4 vinyl one is the one that someone will pay attention to the most.
1113
01:28:48,150 --> 01:28:49,840
So you could hit me there.
1114
01:28:50,340 --> 01:28:54,660
Ashley and Phil, thank you so much for joining us today and for the tour a few weeks ago.
1115
01:28:54,840 --> 01:29:02,420
It's just been an absolute pleasure going through a little bit of local music history and future as well.
1116
01:29:02,580 --> 01:29:03,840
Thank you both so much for your time.
1117
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:04,780
And to Drew as well.
1118
01:29:05,200 --> 01:29:06,760
You folks have been very kind and welcoming.
1119
01:29:06,890 --> 01:29:07,180
Thank you.
1120
01:29:07,640 --> 01:29:08,000
Thank you.
1121
01:29:08,140 --> 01:29:14,180
You guys are really, again, as we like to say, price is subject to clients' attitude.
1122
01:29:15,060 --> 01:29:19,620
So you guys are great people, really, like your excitement, you know, your love of music.
1123
01:29:20,140 --> 01:29:20,940
That's why we do it.
1124
01:29:21,040 --> 01:29:21,980
So you're very welcome.
1125
01:29:22,140 --> 01:29:23,280
It's definitely our pleasure.
1126
01:29:23,940 --> 01:29:25,820
And hey, let's do it again sometime.
1127
01:29:26,740 --> 01:29:28,340
Well, thank you very much to the three of you.
1128
01:29:28,380 --> 01:29:34,280
I would love to take you up on an encore tour someday and see what the latest you have going on there in your world.
1129
01:29:34,400 --> 01:29:39,460
What's the latest thing that made you order lots of pizzas or pull more hair out or whatever the case might be?
1130
01:29:40,320 --> 01:29:42,140
Thank you also to my co-host, Liam Debsy.
1131
01:29:42,500 --> 01:29:43,480
I'm Erik Gudmundson.
1132
01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:46,360
The Start Local podcast is published every two weeks.
1133
01:29:46,620 --> 01:29:53,100
We invite you to subscribe to Start Local using your favorite podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Start Local podcast.
1134
01:29:53,720 --> 01:30:01,140
You can visit the Start Local website at startlocal.co for show notes, including links mentioned on the show and summaries of past episodes.
1135
01:30:01,640 --> 01:30:12,700
There's also a newsletter subscription option on the startlocal.co site so you can receive announcements about our show and the occasional free networking events to meet your hosts, our guests, and other listeners.
1136
01:30:13,100 --> 01:30:14,500
We hope you join us for the next episode.
1137
01:30:15,160 --> 01:30:15,660
Thank you for listening.
00:00:01,960 --> 00:00:08,540
The Start Local podcast features interviews with business and nonprofit leaders from in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania.
2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:22,300
The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce partners with the Start Local podcast to promote trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse, growing marketplace.
3
00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:29,320
Learn more at the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce website, sccc.com.
4
00:00:30,460 --> 00:00:34,920
Hey, hey, welcome to the Start Local Podcast. I am Liam Dempsey. I am here with Erik Gudmundson.
5
00:00:35,220 --> 00:00:35,960
Hey, Erik, how are you today?
6
00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:42,380
I'm doing very well. I'm actually a little extra excited because food and music are two of my favorite topics.
7
00:00:42,670 --> 00:00:46,080
And today we're talking about music. So I'm ready.
8
00:00:46,500 --> 00:00:50,940
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And I think I'm ready, too. And I know I'm very excited.
9
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I may not be ready, but I'm very excited. Folks, today we are pleased to welcome Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo.
10
00:00:56,400 --> 00:01:02,100
Phil is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum record producer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer.
11
00:01:02,840 --> 00:01:09,040
Ashley is a chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl, the Coatesville-based record-pressing company.
12
00:01:09,540 --> 00:01:11,580
Yes, record-pressing company.
13
00:01:11,690 --> 00:01:12,560
You heard that right, folks.
14
00:01:13,100 --> 00:01:13,580
Owned by Phil.
15
00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:17,580
And for clarity, I'll just go ahead and share that Ashley is Phil's daughter-in-law.
16
00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:28,840
And while he's not with us here today in the podcast studio, we do also extend a big thanks to Drew Nicolo, Ashley's husband and Phil's son, if you keep the family tree straight there.
17
00:01:28,940 --> 00:01:39,740
Because Drew was so kind in showing us around Studio 4 Vinyl's factory floor and graciously answering all of our questions about pressing records as we were getting set up and informed for this interview.
18
00:01:39,790 --> 00:01:40,400
So thank you, Drew.
19
00:01:40,980 --> 00:01:46,280
Yes, thank you, Drew. So many questions. And with that, welcome, Phil and Ashley. Thank you for joining us today.
20
00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:47,240
Hey, man.
21
00:01:47,300 --> 00:01:47,880
Thanks for having us.
22
00:01:48,120 --> 00:01:55,580
It's my pleasure. It's great to be. And you guys are local, correct? I mean, you're in this area, right?
23
00:01:56,240 --> 00:02:01,880
Yeah, absolutely. We are 100% focused on interviewing business and nonprofit leaders in and around Chester County.
24
00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:20,960
Great. Yeah. So that's also awesome, too, because one of the main reasons we're here is because the Chester County Development Authority, we went to them through some friends and our attorney, and they were so welcoming to us in terms of setting up our move to where we are.
25
00:02:21,020 --> 00:02:24,780
We were already all already in Chester County, actually, because we were originally in Nottingham.
26
00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:31,100
But setting up our move here, our financing here, our relationship, finding our property.
27
00:02:31,220 --> 00:02:34,780
I mean, there was so much that they did to encourage us to be here.
28
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And now we're thrilled.
29
00:02:35,940 --> 00:02:38,040
We've been here for a year and a half and it's cool.
30
00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:42,120
So it's great to know that this has local roots.
31
00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:43,400
Yeah, absolutely.
32
00:02:43,640 --> 00:02:46,500
And thank you for leading us directly into our first question.
33
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:52,440
And it was really around just exactly that, the Chester County Economic Development Council,
34
00:02:52,740 --> 00:02:53,020
Seedcopa.
35
00:02:54,060 --> 00:02:58,540
Erik and I are familiar with that and through our work with the CCEDC.
36
00:02:58,580 --> 00:03:00,000
And so we couldn't believe it.
37
00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:03,460
Wait, there's a record company, a record-pressing company in Coatesville?
38
00:03:03,900 --> 00:03:09,040
So that leads us to the direct question, Phil and Ashley, of why southeastern Pennsylvania?
39
00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:10,080
You could have been anywhere.
40
00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:11,060
Why here?
41
00:03:11,320 --> 00:03:12,080
We love that you're here.
42
00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:13,340
Tell us about why.
43
00:03:14,660 --> 00:03:27,520
Originally, again, we started this business in, well, I guess it was 2020 is when it originally came to fruition.
44
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My partner, Obi O'Brien, who you can see on the Studio 4 Vinyl website, he's a dear friend of mine, one of my mentors.
45
00:03:36,100 --> 00:03:37,340
I've known him for 50 years.
46
00:03:38,460 --> 00:03:41,460
We started looking for where to put the pressing plant.
47
00:03:41,860 --> 00:03:46,980
He lived in Nottingham, which is on the outskirts there of Chester County to Lancaster.
48
00:03:47,470 --> 00:03:51,480
And I live in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, which is far from that.
49
00:03:52,140 --> 00:03:54,960
So we started looking like, where can we put this thing?
50
00:03:55,010 --> 00:03:55,880
Where is it going to be?
51
00:03:56,440 --> 00:04:04,880
And Obi found a location in Nottingham that was literally five minutes from his house and an hour and 12 from mine.
52
00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:07,480
But it really worked out.
53
00:04:07,540 --> 00:04:12,120
It was, as you know, right near, just about in Lancaster County.
54
00:04:13,220 --> 00:04:22,820
It's way on the, it was literally on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland, Route 1, where the HERS potato chip factory is about 100 yards from there.
55
00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:26,700
And we looked at it and it was like, wow, the price was good.
56
00:04:27,060 --> 00:04:28,080
Everything seemed right.
57
00:04:28,820 --> 00:04:34,820
And some of the people we wanted to use to help build the facility were in that area.
58
00:04:34,920 --> 00:05:00,520
So, okay. So we moved to Nottingham and there we go. We started there in 2021 and the rest is history. We built the company there. We started during COVID and we can get into this. This may be a question further down the line, but just to get real quick.
59
00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:11,060
We started during COVID, which is, as you can imagine, the best time to build a business that you have absolutely no idea how it goes and how it works.
60
00:05:11,470 --> 00:05:13,980
Oh, and the equipment is made in Germany.
61
00:05:14,650 --> 00:05:18,260
So, yeah, no problems with communication or travel or interface.
62
00:05:19,080 --> 00:05:19,740
Great idea.
63
00:05:20,660 --> 00:05:20,880
Okay.
64
00:05:21,780 --> 00:05:22,540
Well, we did.
65
00:05:22,980 --> 00:05:28,080
And through hell or high water, we built the place in Nottingham.
66
00:05:28,440 --> 00:05:31,760
But the COVID was, again, it was a blessing and a curse.
67
00:05:32,440 --> 00:05:41,740
It was a curse in that I had to learn how to use the equipment through WhatsApp while Erwin was in Dusseldorf, Germany, and I was here.
68
00:05:42,300 --> 00:05:45,000
But on the plus side, you couldn't move fast.
69
00:05:45,480 --> 00:05:54,120
You couldn't put in a massive mechanical factory quickly because it just couldn't happen.
70
00:05:54,220 --> 00:06:08,660
So we had to move slow. And it turned out to be one of the best things because, again, we couldn't rush into it. And this business, making records, is one of the most difficult things in the world to do.
71
00:06:09,200 --> 00:06:29,380
Let me stop you on that point, if I could, Phil, just because I have to ask, knowing its level of complexity or maybe not fully appreciating its level of complexity when you started, what inspired you and Phil to really go, or rather you and Obi to really go out and make a record-pressing plant in the first place?
72
00:06:29,640 --> 00:06:31,000
Why would you take that on?
73
00:06:32,260 --> 00:06:41,240
stupidity and complete lack of understanding of what it was to do. I mean, we were both in the
74
00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:45,620
music business. I mean, let me back, maybe just backtrack that just a tiny bit. We were both in
75
00:06:45,620 --> 00:06:52,400
the music industry for like 50 years. Again, very proud, highest world-class. Obie is Jon Bon Jovi's
76
00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:57,860
right-hand man, has been with Jon for many years, as well as other great artists. Same thing,
77
00:06:58,020 --> 00:07:05,980
roughhouse records, blah, blah, blah. And in 2017, I was with my other partner at Studio 4 Recording,
78
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:11,400
Will Yip, who's on the cover of Mix Magazine for his new facility that I'm also part of
79
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:18,620
in South Philly. But almost some of our clients were into all of a sudden making records, jazz,
80
00:07:19,160 --> 00:07:24,940
independent rock. And I went to Will and I said, hey, we should build a vinyl pressing facility.
81
00:07:25,120 --> 00:07:28,360
And he just looked at me and went, yeah, why don't we?
82
00:07:29,300 --> 00:07:30,820
Okay, so I started looking into it.
83
00:07:31,600 --> 00:07:34,600
And we discovered, yeah, records were on the return.
84
00:07:35,400 --> 00:07:42,160
Obi and I had, you know, but the problem is, well, who are going to be, who are your clients going to be?
85
00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:52,420
Well, we were close to the head of legacy at Universal and the music director at Disney and all these acts that it was like, well, you know what?
86
00:07:52,520 --> 00:07:57,240
The biggest problem would normally be who are you going to work for?
87
00:07:57,640 --> 00:07:59,120
Well, we have those contacts.
88
00:07:59,900 --> 00:08:06,640
So, you know, again, being very naive with the process, it was like, yeah, I mean, make
89
00:08:06,740 --> 00:08:08,920
a do a business that makes money when you sleep.
90
00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:09,980
Yeah.
91
00:08:10,060 --> 00:08:10,240
Okay.
92
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:19,640
And then as we got into it, we discovered, oh, oh, this is a pressure forged, you know,
93
00:08:21,260 --> 00:08:28,260
I mean, it is one of the most complex molded plastic or high injection molded, not even high
94
00:08:28,400 --> 00:08:33,580
injection. It's even harder to describe because making a record, a good record, is one of the
95
00:08:33,789 --> 00:08:39,240
hardest things to do. And as a matter of fact, not to get too heavy into the technical side,
96
00:08:39,820 --> 00:08:43,719
but a groove on a record is a tenth or a hundredth the size of a human hair.
97
00:08:44,140 --> 00:08:48,600
that groove has to move up to 14,000 times a second,
98
00:08:49,220 --> 00:08:50,500
which is a frequency of music.
99
00:08:51,320 --> 00:08:54,060
Well, when you get that level of detail,
100
00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:58,500
it makes making records easily the hardest
101
00:08:58,640 --> 00:09:02,340
and most complex product to make in the world.
102
00:09:03,160 --> 00:09:04,320
And we're going to get into that.
103
00:09:04,340 --> 00:09:07,100
I definitely have questions on the technical side of that
104
00:09:07,260 --> 00:09:08,600
because Erik and I geeked out a lot.
105
00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:09,100
All the big ones.
106
00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:09,320
Yeah.
107
00:09:09,680 --> 00:09:11,220
So we decided to get in with,
108
00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:12,520
we found some financing.
109
00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:17,480
We jumped in and all of a sudden it was like, oh, crap.
110
00:09:18,300 --> 00:09:19,860
We now have to figure this out.
111
00:09:20,360 --> 00:09:22,040
And, you know, God keeps sending me angels.
112
00:09:22,390 --> 00:09:36,400
I mean, great people, musicians, some of my temple students, Ashley, who came in not knowing how to do it, but ready to take their hands off and put their boxing gloves on.
113
00:09:36,670 --> 00:09:41,320
We're going to make this work because we have to, because that's what we do.
114
00:09:42,060 --> 00:09:44,000
Yeah, and that's where I want to jump in.
115
00:09:44,220 --> 00:09:46,860
So Studio 4 Vinyl is technically up and running.
116
00:09:46,980 --> 00:09:48,740
You're learning, you're starting to press things,
117
00:09:49,320 --> 00:09:51,800
and you've started to land or at least are getting close to landing
118
00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:54,580
these ever so important first contracts as you shared, Phil,
119
00:09:55,220 --> 00:09:56,460
through your industry context.
120
00:09:57,020 --> 00:10:00,340
Ashley comes in as the chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl,
121
00:10:00,840 --> 00:10:02,260
and you've been there since 2021.
122
00:10:02,580 --> 00:10:04,500
And Ashley, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
123
00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:07,160
But tell us about your day-to-day.
124
00:10:07,240 --> 00:10:08,060
What does that look like?
125
00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:11,120
What does it mean to run a record-pressing plant?
126
00:10:11,260 --> 00:10:11,860
That is so cool.
127
00:10:12,020 --> 00:10:12,620
Tell us about that.
128
00:10:12,620 --> 00:10:13,460
What keeps you busy at work?
129
00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:15,100
Everything.
130
00:10:15,760 --> 00:10:16,440
It's everything.
131
00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:17,020
Yeah.
132
00:10:17,980 --> 00:10:21,100
One of our biggest mottos here is vinyl is chaos.
133
00:10:22,120 --> 00:10:23,380
Everything you know is wrong.
134
00:10:24,860 --> 00:10:29,060
Like every day, something that worked yesterday is not going to work today.
135
00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:38,180
so most of my day-to-day is just keeping an eye on production uh timelines making sure that
136
00:10:38,620 --> 00:10:44,900
everything that should be in motion is that um if something needs to be corrected it is corrected
137
00:10:45,640 --> 00:10:51,180
thankfully i have an amazing team that uh work that works with me to make sure that everything
138
00:10:51,210 --> 00:10:57,739
is running smoothly if something is not like i know about it the moment there is a problem
139
00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:08,020
so thankfully because I have a good set of people I can focus on my customers I can answer questions
140
00:11:08,220 --> 00:11:16,160
I can manage expectations I put out fires before a lot of people even know there is a fire and
141
00:11:16,160 --> 00:11:24,079
that's really important for some of my customers who can hear well there's a problem and that
142
00:11:24,100 --> 00:11:31,360
becomes catastrophic to them even though it might might be it might be but i don't want them to know
143
00:11:31,460 --> 00:11:38,460
that not yet anyway right not yet yeah no not not anyway that's it's just like um you know i'll
144
00:11:38,580 --> 00:11:42,820
figure it out before i even have to email them that there's a problem the printer's three weeks
145
00:11:42,980 --> 00:11:49,979
behind i'll find someone else like we accidentally scratched a stamper putting it on we'll replace
146
00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:56,580
it. Something happened during the cutting process or someone pressed the vinyl in the wrong color.
147
00:11:58,060 --> 00:12:03,500
They'll never know. I'll reach out to the customer after the fact and say, hey, we pressed,
148
00:12:04,140 --> 00:12:10,980
you know, some special copies for you. Do you want them? They'll never know it was an accident. We
149
00:12:10,980 --> 00:12:15,380
did it on purpose. It's kind of like Bob Ross used to say, just happy little accidents, you know,
150
00:12:15,580 --> 00:12:16,880
Make the world go by.
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And the thing, again, real quick, you know, I'm sure we'll probably get into this, but there's probably at least 15 steps to making a record from getting the audio, cutting the lacquer, making the master, making the plating, doing test pressings.
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And then you haven't even started to make it yet.
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And then from that point, actually doing the test pressings, pressing the record, and then getting every aspects of the color of the record, the style of the record, the weight of the record.
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We haven't even talked about the jacket where 90% of the time you got to get the artwork.
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You got to put it on a template.
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You got to see who's going to do it.
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You have to set up expectations of print, blah, blah, blah.
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the interface with the printer. So now you are the middleman. You become the printer because you have
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to answer every question the printer has because the client doesn't even know what you're talking
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about. And then all that has to be on a timeline where everything has to meet at the exact same
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three-day period or you can't press the record. And your average run there, which is a customer
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order might be smaller, but we know that you can produce runs as large as 100,000 records,
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maybe even bigger. And to me, that's impressive. That's a huge number to imagine, like 100,000
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records rolling out in a truck in a series of boxes. How big is the team at Studio 4 Vinyl?
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Ashley, you mentioned your team is what makes it all work. How many roles and how many people do
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have there? It's honestly much smaller than you would think. We've got a team of, at any given
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time, about 20 people. And that's it. And when I tell you, they all work together seamlessly,
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because if they didn't, the things that we do would not happen. So our office staff is three
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to four people depending on if Drew's here and our packing team is about six people two of those
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people float into our warehouse to make sure that shipments happen and then the rest of our folks
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are in pressing and then you've got Phil and Ronnie doing the really hard stuff the lacquer
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cutting itself and dealing with the audio. So it's relatively small compared to a lot of other
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plants, but that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it here is because it feels like family. It's not
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everyone here is family, but it's what it feels like to me. Like I appreciate every person here
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and I love working with them and I would not change it for the world. And I think the music
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industry in general, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it traditionally has been most like a
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male-dominated industry. And same goes with old traditional manufacturing. But all that's really
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beginning to change. And you yourself are active in an organization called Women in Vinyl. So
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would you tell us a little bit about that, please? Yeah. So, I mean, women in vinyl is just,
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it's, they're very underrepresented. Like it's, it is anytime you go into any networking event or
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into any type of meeting, it's mostly men. You realize you are one of maybe three women in the
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room. And it's, it's really nice to be in with this organization because they make it their
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priority to make sure that women's voices are heard and not just in like the retail setting
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which is where it originally like started more women in vinyl in retail in the production side
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is very unheard of um and getting to meet other women that work at pressing plants that press
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records. When you think of record people that press records, it's mostly men. And to see a woman
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pressing a record, tooling a machine, doing something that would be typically a man's job,
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it's amazing. It's wonderful to work with them and to have our voices heard in the industry.
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It's been a wild ride.
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Well, thank you for that.
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And we will be sure to link to that organization's website over on our website on the show notes page over at starlocal.co.
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Erik asked you about the larger runs, the big 100,000, and that would be amazing.
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But if there's a new up-and-coming band tuning into our podcast and they want to press a record,
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or maybe a well-known artist, an established artist is looking to do a limited edition boutique run,
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What's the smallest run, Phil, that you and your team will put together?
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It almost, there really isn't.
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I mean, typically we say 100 only because the startup costs is where most of the cost is.
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It's like, yes, you could make five or you could make 100, but it costs the same amount.
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Because they get the lacquer cut, they get the metal work, they get the jackets, all those things.
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to amortize it out. It, it, it doesn't,
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it doesn't really make sense to do less than, than a hundred,
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but we do a lot of runs of a hundred records. It's,
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it's certainly more expensive than 500 or a thousand,
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but it's not ridiculous. It's not like 10 times more expensive.
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What we do is we really,
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we really love supporting the smaller artists.
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I would say on any given, I mean, obviously it's ebb and flow, but we do more smaller independent projects than we do larger projects.
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And as much as it's more tedious, it's a lot more paperwork, it's a lot more interaction, we prefer that because you're always doing something different.
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Yeah, it's more hectic, but it's more exciting.
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It's more fun for us because we're all creative music people.
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We're not like, yeah, let's make 100,000 more Dunkin' Yo-Yos.
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Well, that's fine.
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You know, okay.
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But even when we're doing a 50,000 or 60,000 run of the Suicide Boys,
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after a while you're like, yeah, we're still pressing the Coke bottle green.
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Yeah, okay, it's good.
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I appreciate that.
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It's paying the rent, obviously, you know, and the salaries.
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And actually on the note of salaries, we pay, I don't know, Ashley could give you the numbers,
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but I bet you we're at least 30 to 40% higher than most pressing facilities or manufacturing facilities.
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Yeah, making sure that our people are taken care of is really important for us.
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And especially, like I said, we feel like we're family.
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So I want to make sure that every single person here is able to have higher than a living wage.
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And it keeps people wanting to be here because you care about them.
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Well, on our tour of your record pressing plant, we saw lots of happy people.
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That's for sure.
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Everybody was very, you know, enthused about being there, happy to meet us and really excited to show us, you know, the art that they're working on, as well as the science they're working on.
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We learned so much about the process of manufacturing a vinyl record when we were there.
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I thought I knew a little bit about it, but I walked out knowing a lot more.
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So would you please walk us briefly through the process?
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We know you start with raw vinyl, if you will.
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But what happens between that and taking the finished record off the pressing machine?
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That's a big question, I know.
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I can really simplify it to a degree.
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The basic stages, there's probably four or five basic stages.
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Stage one is the most important.
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It's taking that audio, whatever form it is, whether it's however it originated on a waveform,
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similar to the one you're streaming on your Spotify.
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We take that and we turn it into record one.
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What we do is we take that sound and we get a big, basically blank record.
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And with a lathe, a machine that actually is going to automatically move across the record and cut the first groove, that's lacquer one.
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You make record one.
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You take that record.
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You send it to this great guy, Desmond in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who this is kind of cool.
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He takes that. So that's a record that you can play. It looks like a record. You spray it in silver. Okay. Then you plate it, you electro plate it in nickel. What does that mean? If you run a high voltage through a piece of metal and you dip it in a metal solution like nickel, the electrons make that metal stick to the record.
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So now you're spinning this thing in this liquid.
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All of a sudden, as if it was like some sort of whatever plastic, it adheres to that record.
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You take that record out of that bath after about two hours.
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Now you peel that new, it's like a skin peel.
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You peel that off the metal.
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You now have a negative of the record.
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So where there were grooves cut in, you now have bumps that sunk into that groove.
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So now you have a record that's the opposite of a record.
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Instead of grooves, there's bumps on it.
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You take that, you put that in a record on a vinyl pressing machine,
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one on the top for the A side, one on the bottom for the B side.
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You put a puck in there that looks like a hockey puck that you heat to 180 degrees Celsius,
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about 350 degrees, and you heat it up really fast, then you squish it with 15 tons of pressure.
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That record, that's like a waffle, and now it squeezes out over those stampers,
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comes out the edge, like when you put too much batter in that waffle.
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You take that now record waffle, oh, nice, out of the press, you put it on a trimmer,
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And you trim off all that excess.
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You put that in between metal plates while it's cooling and your record is done.
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The one step I missed, when you put that puck into the press, you have to put a label on the top lacquer, on the top stamper and the bottom stamper.
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The pressure of that press now presses that vinyl,
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that label into the vinyl,
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changing the molecular structure.
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So now it is part of that vinyl.
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You don't glue it on, it's never coming off.
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That comes off, again, it comes off,
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it sits in that,
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you put about five records to a cooling plate.
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It sits on that spindle for about 12 hours.
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Then you take that record,
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You put it in a sleeve.
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Now, of course, during the process, it's inspected when it's made.
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It's inspected when it's sleeved.
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It's often inspected again when it's jacketed.
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And then it goes from sleeving to jacketing to the shrink wrap.
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Boom.
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There's your new, who's a popular band?
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Turnstile.
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There's your new Turnstile record that my friend Will Yip produces.
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Thank you for that.
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That was really easy to follow.
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So thank you, Phil.
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I appreciate that.
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I'm an easy guy.
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I'm a dumb guy.
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You're humble for sure.
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You're very humble.
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I respect that about you.
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Not childish, childlike.
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It's an important difference.
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Our audience members accustomed to digital music
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via streaming services might be surprised to learn
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that vinyl records come in all sorts of colors these days.
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Phil, you just mentioned the Coca-Cola bottle green
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that the Suicide Boys are using.
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And as Erik and I learned on our tours, it can be a mix of almost any color.
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So tell us about how records have evolved beyond the traditional black.
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How are these new colors produced?
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And on these new records, do the colors produce different sounds than, say, a black record might?
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It does.
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I'll throw it to Ashley because she's really in the front office, so to speak, with clients, talking to them about colors, talking to them about what to do and how to do.
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And she's also involved, along with Drew and Vince, all of our staff, developing cool records.
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You can't see it on the radio, but that we do.
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So Ashley, why don't you take that?
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And we've been monumental in developing higher sound quality.
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And she can talk to you about that, too.
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Yeah, I mean, there's purists out there that will tell you that black records sound the best.
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There are purists out there that will tell you that virgin material is what sounds the best.
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Then you've got people that are going to tell you that black records that are half virgin and half reground material is what sounds the best.
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Either way, it all comes down to how it was cut.
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If it was cut badly, it's not going to sound great no matter what material you're using.
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But we do have some colors that are going to have a lot more of a noise floor with them just inherently.
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Glow in the Dark Records, you're going to hear some sound.
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Like, there's nothing we can do about that.
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It's going to happen.
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It's just the way the material is made and how the chemical compounds in it work.
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Anything that has glitter in it, you're going to hear it.
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It's going to look really cool, but you're going to hear it.
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Our team works really hard with our machines and our settings to make sure that our black records, the sound, the quality that you're going to get with black records are the same with any colors that we work with.
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That's anything from splatters to swirls to the clear records to opaque.
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And I mean, depending on what you're using and how you're mixing them, that also might change the sound quality.
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Sometimes certain mixes of splatters, you're going to hear a little bit more noise.
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Sometimes certain mixes on the swirls, you're going to hear a little bit more noise because of the type of swirl that you're throwing in there.
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Because everything has a different chemical compound.
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Everything has a different melting point.
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Your opaques have a higher melting point than your clears.
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Some of your specialties need to be run at a hotter temperature to melt properly into the vinyl.
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And then you get into the fact that you've got different types of vinyl.
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Some have lead in it.
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Some don't.
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And lead is not something you have to worry about in this process, by the way.
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Thank you for clarifying.
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That was going to be a follow-up question.
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Do not lick this record at home, kids.
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Don't lick it.
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Okay.
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Well, you can lick it.
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You can chew on it even.
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You would have to set the vinyl on fire for it to be a problem.
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And then there's other fumes that are going to be more dangerous than the lead, I think.
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Don't do that.
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Yeah, but it's different.
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And example, we use a mix of vinyls here.
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We've got some vinyls that we prefer to use the mixes that have lead in it because they melt better when doing swirls or specific specialties.
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And then we have other ones that we prefer to use the non-lead-based vinyl materials because of how they're going to react in our machines during the press process.
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It really depends on what the client wants at the very beginning when we start working out what their expectations are.
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Sometimes they'll hand you a mock-up of something and you're going to look at it and go, that is not physically possible when we're pressing the record.
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But we can get as close as possible.
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So we'll pick and choose what's going to work the best.
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And the other thing I want to say, we're really proud of the fact that we've been instrumental and monumental in the improvement of colored vinyl.
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Because five years ago, when we were first starting to get into this business, I was introduced to Casey Gibson, who's the largest importer of high definition of virgin vinyl.
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It's called Neotech.
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He's got a plant that's two years ago, three years ago, he built in Taiwan.
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And I started, we became good friends and we became a test facility to try those different.
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And again, sometimes it's 0.01% of an additive.
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That's the difference between a red record sounding good and sounding terrible.
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Natural vinyl, which is actually cream colored, was the worst sounding.
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And it was no additives.
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But now with the work we've done with Casey, it's one of the best.
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Clear used to be terrible.
365
00:30:34,780 --> 00:30:51,040
Now you see, you know, these reissues of whoever, I mean, amazing jazz artists on clear vinyl, because we've managed to help improve that by testing different, like, how's this sound?
366
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:51,560
Oh, it's better.
367
00:30:51,700 --> 00:30:52,260
How's this sound?
368
00:30:52,260 --> 00:30:52,680
It's worse.
369
00:30:53,230 --> 00:30:56,780
And we're really proud of the fact that we've been monumental in that.
370
00:30:57,180 --> 00:31:11,860
And even in the manufacturing with Newbuilt and Viral, the two biggest manufacturers of presses, working with them and our team here have developed improvements in the equipment that we say, use it.
371
00:31:12,180 --> 00:31:14,780
I don't need to copyright it.
372
00:31:15,590 --> 00:31:20,060
But we're really proud of the fact that we're monumental in that.
373
00:31:20,460 --> 00:31:30,360
And right now, as we talked about, we may say, we're one of the few cutting facilities that do half-speed vinyl, which is a complete game changer.
374
00:31:30,850 --> 00:31:35,620
I mean, it hasn't been done regularly since 1980.
375
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:47,820
And again, through Ronnie and myself and Doug Fern and the Hazel Rigs, we've developed the first new half-speed vinyl cutting system since 1980 that Neumann made.
376
00:31:48,260 --> 00:31:50,620
And we're really excited about all these things.
377
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:55,840
And, you know, we do it because we love it, but we want to see the whole process improve.
378
00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:04,300
It's so impressive to me that there is this much innovation happening in vinyl record production in 2026.
379
00:32:05,020 --> 00:32:17,080
It's just amazing what a big market it is and how people care about that level of sound quality and also visual quality when they're taking out and truly experiencing the record.
380
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:26,580
In addition to all the variants that comes from the additives and the colors, on the tour, we saw older pressing machines and newer pressing machines.
381
00:32:26,810 --> 00:32:31,500
And they're all dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, and more.
382
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,880
So what you run there, it's not simply an assembly line.
383
00:32:35,890 --> 00:32:41,240
It required some art and some science and often reapplied science on the fly.
384
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:49,480
So how do you figure out all these ideal conditions and settings for making records between different machines that you have, different colors that you have?
385
00:32:49,900 --> 00:32:52,780
I mean, I'm just imagining there are a ton of variables.
386
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,720
And I noticed that Phil and Ashley, you both still have hair.
387
00:32:55,740 --> 00:32:57,460
You haven't pulled it all out yet.
388
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:00,340
So how do you sort through all that?
389
00:33:01,780 --> 00:33:04,780
It is, as Ashley said, we have three sayings here.
390
00:33:05,100 --> 00:33:05,960
Vinyl is chaos.
391
00:33:06,660 --> 00:33:09,580
Everything you know is wrong and everything breaks.
392
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:16,400
And I'll give you a perfect example of where it's just starting to do this.
393
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,460
Again, I was learning how to use the new built machine, which is from Germany.
394
00:33:22,140 --> 00:33:26,620
And I'm on the WhatsApp with Erwin because he couldn't come here.
395
00:33:27,220 --> 00:33:29,060
So we're going through and it's kind of working.
396
00:33:29,300 --> 00:33:31,480
And, you know, certain days it is, certain days it's not.
397
00:33:31,940 --> 00:33:33,960
And I'm like, God, the temperature is the same.
398
00:33:34,020 --> 00:33:35,120
The environment is the same.
399
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:36,180
The humidity is the same.
400
00:33:36,340 --> 00:33:37,280
The material is the same.
401
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:39,160
Yet today it's great.
402
00:33:39,460 --> 00:33:40,380
Yesterday it was horrible.
403
00:33:41,500 --> 00:33:47,060
there's doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it that I can figure out so I'm talking to Erwin
404
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,900
I said Erwin yesterday was great today it's not you know it seems to be different all the time
405
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:59,560
the conditions seem the exact same but it's not working he said uh Phil Phil uh what state is two
406
00:33:59,740 --> 00:34:06,438
states away from you and I'm thinking let's see Maryland I said West Virginia he said when someone
407
00:34:06,460 --> 00:34:12,399
opens the window in West Virginia, it'll change your settings. And that's when I went, oh,
408
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:25,100
S-H-I, you know, I was, oh, and that's when I realized it is, there are incredible parameters,
409
00:34:25,590 --> 00:34:34,060
but it is literally like flying an airplane, you know, through an approaching nor'easter.
410
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,659
You have to see things even before they occur.
411
00:34:37,370 --> 00:34:42,540
And you have to, it's, as we say, 50% science and 50% witchcraft.
412
00:34:42,790 --> 00:34:44,220
And the science isn't very good.
413
00:34:45,980 --> 00:34:57,380
So it is, that's why I've, it's really amazing that our team here has, you know, we're, again, some of us have been doing this for five years.
414
00:34:57,850 --> 00:35:01,760
And there's still days where we go, you can't believe, you know what?
415
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:12,400
I discovered that when you change the heat on chamber two instead of one to one degree, when you're using red, for some reason, the puck just wants to stay the right shape.
416
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:15,460
And it's working, hey, a third of the time.
417
00:35:15,870 --> 00:35:15,980
Okay.
418
00:35:16,700 --> 00:35:21,340
At least you have something you can go to a third of the time because it's always so different.
419
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:22,960
And it is.
420
00:35:23,010 --> 00:35:29,540
And that's what makes it such a challenging thing to do, but so rewarding.
421
00:35:29,940 --> 00:35:33,600
Because if it was easy, everyone would do it.
422
00:35:34,260 --> 00:35:43,820
And, you know, I share this enthusiasm with some other friends of mine who are unsimilarly like, yeah, well, nobody does this because it's so freaking hard, right?
423
00:35:44,540 --> 00:35:47,780
And, yeah, it's – but it is – it's fun.
424
00:35:47,990 --> 00:35:52,080
And I'm not saying we go through those crazy thunderstorms every day.
425
00:35:52,620 --> 00:35:59,840
But they do happen often enough that, you know what, we're not going to press Coke bottle green today because the machine just isn't going to do it.
426
00:36:00,300 --> 00:36:03,480
well, you know, red's pretty easy on new build too.
427
00:36:03,720 --> 00:36:03,820
Okay.
428
00:36:04,460 --> 00:36:06,220
So we pressed red on new build too
429
00:36:06,240 --> 00:36:06,980
because it's going to work.
430
00:36:07,660 --> 00:36:08,200
That's amazing.
431
00:36:08,500 --> 00:36:08,880
That's amazing.
432
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:10,100
You must have great patience
433
00:36:10,340 --> 00:36:12,620
and your team must be dedicated to learning.
434
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,180
It's kind of, yes, it's kind of funny
435
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,660
because it's almost, it's almost,
436
00:36:20,620 --> 00:36:21,900
I know this is going to sound dumb,
437
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:23,940
but it almost helps our ADD
438
00:36:24,420 --> 00:36:26,400
because you're always ready to do something anyway.
439
00:36:26,820 --> 00:36:28,460
Drew and I, God, God love Drew.
440
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:29,400
He's my son.
441
00:36:29,620 --> 00:36:31,320
But we both have this ADD thing.
442
00:36:31,910 --> 00:36:37,740
Unless we're focused on something that has so many variables, you don't have time to get distracted.
443
00:36:38,260 --> 00:36:38,960
I love it.
444
00:36:38,990 --> 00:36:39,400
I love it.
445
00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:42,260
So I want to keep touring around your factory floor here.
446
00:36:42,420 --> 00:36:44,480
Erik and I had just an amazing time.
447
00:36:44,620 --> 00:36:47,380
He and I went out for dinner afterwards and just talked for hours.
448
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:48,100
Did you see this?
449
00:36:48,110 --> 00:36:48,680
Do you remember that?
450
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:49,420
That was so cool.
451
00:36:50,140 --> 00:36:59,020
And really, one of the things that impressed the heck out of us that amazed us was how many different types of machines you have.
452
00:36:59,140 --> 00:37:07,800
Yes, you have the manual presses and you have the newer automatic presses, but you also have like a steam boiler and a label cooker.
453
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:13,540
And we had all sorts of virgin vinyl and repurposed or recycled vinyl.
454
00:37:13,670 --> 00:37:20,960
And I think my favorite machine was the Dunkin' Donuts bagel cooker that you folks had repurposed.
455
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:25,660
So let's start with that machine and tell us about some of the other, not record pressing machines,
456
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,480
but the machines that you need that make your, that allow you to press records.
457
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:34,580
Sure. The thing you're talking about, it's a Dunkin' Donuts confection oven.
458
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:41,100
And it's like, what, it looks like you've got labels in there. And it's like, yes, you do.
459
00:37:41,610 --> 00:37:47,840
When we started this, one of the hardest things to figure out was how long do you bake the labels?
460
00:37:48,290 --> 00:37:52,460
And it's like, bake the labels? What do you mean? You gotta, why do you bake the labels?
461
00:37:53,020 --> 00:38:03,680
Well, the water content, as I said, the label goes onto the puck and then it experiences 15 bar, which is 15 tons of pressure.
462
00:38:04,180 --> 00:38:05,740
Don't ask me why. That's what you have to do.
463
00:38:06,420 --> 00:38:10,640
Well, as I said, you change the molecular structure of that label.
464
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:22,100
If the water content isn't within a half of a percent of optimum, the label, if it's too dry, it cracks and it looks like something exploded on the record.
465
00:38:22,620 --> 00:38:28,800
If it's too wet, the label separates. So half of the label is on the record and half the label is
466
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:36,960
on the stamper. So that water content has to be perfect. And sometimes that means two hours of
467
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:43,480
baking, four hours of baking, eight hours of baking, 10 hours of baking, take it out, let it cool,
468
00:38:43,820 --> 00:38:49,520
and heat it up for 20 minutes before you use it. Because every label is different. Every label,
469
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,600
until we discovered Third Man Pressing,
470
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:56,860
which I think we got a lot of great advice
471
00:38:57,260 --> 00:38:59,400
from Jack White as a pressing facility,
472
00:38:59,860 --> 00:39:01,840
as some of you may know, called Third Man.
473
00:39:02,220 --> 00:39:02,800
It's in Detroit.
474
00:39:03,620 --> 00:39:06,340
And on many ways, I won't get into the details,
475
00:39:06,580 --> 00:39:07,660
but he saved my life.
476
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,780
Jack's main pressing production engineer, Brock,
477
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,920
came to our rescue and answered so many of the questions
478
00:39:15,220 --> 00:39:16,900
that we just couldn't figure out
479
00:39:17,260 --> 00:39:19,280
because we had no one to show us how to use it.
480
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:31,980
And those guys or somebody maybe when Ashley and I were on making vinyl, one of our trips, I think, to Minneapolis, they said, look, find the same company to make all your labels.
481
00:39:32,590 --> 00:39:38,480
Then you know the paper, the ink, everything is going to be the same.
482
00:39:39,060 --> 00:39:48,560
It's not always going to be identical, but at least you're going to narrow it down to just a ridiculous number of possibilities instead of an impossible number of possibilities.
483
00:39:49,060 --> 00:39:52,000
And actually, didn't we help them develop the non-bake label, I think?
484
00:39:53,200 --> 00:40:01,420
They were working on it when we first started working with them and we were doing small run stuff.
485
00:40:01,830 --> 00:40:12,820
And in order for us to do a lot of this small run stuff, it didn't make any sense for us to order a thousand labels, which was their basic run, if I'm only pressing a hundred records.
486
00:40:13,540 --> 00:40:22,180
So we started working with them on doing the small run batches of 250 labels or 500 and their no bakes.
487
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:35,220
And when they first started working with them, they were sending all of their tests to us to test on our machines the difference between baking them for 10 minutes versus 20 minutes.
488
00:40:36,500 --> 00:40:37,860
What does it look like on the viral?
489
00:40:37,970 --> 00:40:39,600
What does it look like on the new built?
490
00:40:40,140 --> 00:40:52,600
So it was a lot of trial and error of baking, running it in the machine, having the label stick to the plate, having it crack or split.
491
00:40:54,100 --> 00:41:09,240
But yeah, we helped. We worked with them immensely and they gave us a lot of tips on like baking and for the Dunkin' Donuts label baker.
492
00:41:09,260 --> 00:41:11,880
It's really cool because when you turn it on, the Dunkin' Donuts end up.
493
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:14,760
That's the best part.
494
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:16,320
It really is.
495
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:16,980
It really is.
496
00:41:17,240 --> 00:41:19,700
So there's the big – and, you know –
497
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:20,220
Yeah.
498
00:41:20,740 --> 00:41:22,880
You bake them on the croissant setting.
499
00:41:23,240 --> 00:41:23,560
Yes.
500
00:41:24,060 --> 00:41:25,200
That seems to be –
501
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:26,040
That's the best setting.
502
00:41:26,190 --> 00:41:27,800
That seems to be the best setting.
503
00:41:28,180 --> 00:41:39,060
And, again, in terms of equipment that supports what we do, as I said, the pressing machine has to heat the puck almost instantly to 180 degrees Celsius.
504
00:41:39,740 --> 00:41:44,560
To do that, we run high-pressure steam, 150 PSI.
505
00:41:44,820 --> 00:41:51,760
It's 150 pounds per square inch, which will cut a car door in half of steam into that machine.
506
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:59,900
To do that, as Erik and Liam alluded to, you need high-pressure steam boilers.
507
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:04,980
Our boiler room has two 60-horsepower Hurst boilers.
508
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:09,160
Both of those are close to the size of a steam locomotive.
509
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:10,480
They're huge.
510
00:42:11,010 --> 00:42:21,420
And they put out massive amounts of steam into this huge cinder block room that gets to 138 degrees with a 38-foot ceiling.
511
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:26,740
I mean, it looks like you're in the boiler room of a submarine because you are.
512
00:42:27,940 --> 00:42:31,480
And that creates the consistent steam that we need.
513
00:42:32,100 --> 00:42:39,720
When the record is pressed, you need to do the exact same thing with water, 150 PSI water.
514
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:49,740
So we have, again, a water pump cooling system that's larger than a fire engine because it puts out a higher pressure than a fire engine.
515
00:42:50,420 --> 00:42:54,200
And it's this big, massive 40-horsepower motors.
516
00:42:54,860 --> 00:43:02,740
Again, it's like you're in the engine room of a battleship because basically you are.
517
00:43:03,580 --> 00:43:06,860
And that's just for heating the steam.
518
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:14,720
The pressure, the hydraulic pressure, which is not pneumatic, not compressed oil, but air,
519
00:43:15,050 --> 00:43:20,340
the machines all have parts that move automatically through pressurized air.
520
00:43:20,780 --> 00:43:31,220
So we have these 150 PSI air compressors, very similar to the ones that you'll see in your favorite automotive shop back in the 50s, except we have four of them.
521
00:43:31,900 --> 00:43:39,480
And then there's the hydraulic pressure, the oil that is used to press 115 bar.
522
00:43:39,820 --> 00:43:42,320
And those compressors also are in the room running.
523
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:50,460
So when people come to look, it's like, wow, the biggest joke I love is, wow, this looks like the Rebel Base.
524
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:53,280
And I'm like, yes, it is.
525
00:43:54,000 --> 00:44:01,640
You know, there's all this machinery that's used and then an 8,000 square foot warehouse to store jackets and materials.
526
00:44:02,140 --> 00:44:04,360
And we regrind all of our material.
527
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:06,020
We're a green facility.
528
00:44:07,060 --> 00:44:17,740
When we cool the water, we don't use air conditioning type, whatchamacallit.
529
00:44:19,740 --> 00:44:28,060
Yeah, Freon, we don't use any of that kind of things that damage the air.
530
00:44:28,270 --> 00:44:37,600
We use evaporative cooling, which is cooling towers, where you actually run the water across a fan and expose it to cooled air.
531
00:44:37,990 --> 00:44:43,260
And that's what cools it, as opposed to using Freon and refrigeration, which is better for the environment.
532
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,420
We don't use any caustic chemicals in our boilers.
533
00:44:46,870 --> 00:44:48,360
Again, they're all natural chemicals.
534
00:44:49,220 --> 00:44:51,160
They cost more and we have to use them every day.
535
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:58,760
But, you know, I want my kids and my grandchildren to be able to live here when I'm dead.
536
00:45:00,300 --> 00:45:02,300
And the same thing with, you know, electricity.
537
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:14,440
We bring in high voltage power, so we use less electricity and we can actually, you know, run our 483 phase volts, but more efficiently.
538
00:45:15,460 --> 00:45:23,220
That's all really impressive. And it's amazing how much machinery, like you just said, goes into making this traditional music.
539
00:45:23,310 --> 00:45:29,000
We have a grinder that we grind our pucks. It's bigger than a refrigerator. And it makes a lot of noise, man, let me tell you.
540
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:38,680
And you also repurpose your vinyl. You recycle the vinyl. So if a vinyl pit is not, if virgin vinyl isn't used, it can be reused for a new record, right?
541
00:45:38,700 --> 00:45:57,680
Exactly. And as Ashley indicated, sometimes we can make a better record by mixing virgin and regrind because the regrind is still pure. It's not like, oh, it's got contaminants. No, it's been compressed 15 tons, but that doesn't make it bad. That doesn't make it contaminated.
542
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:07,280
And as a matter of fact, since it's already gone through that process, as Ashley also indicated, it takes a little bit more heat, but it's more stable.
543
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,500
So you can actually make a better record that's 20% regrind.
544
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:21,120
And then we offer a cheaper, if you use what we call the EcoMix, we actually can make your records cheaper.
545
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:22,060
What were you going to say, Ashley?
546
00:46:22,100 --> 00:46:42,960
I think one of the problems or misconception with regrind or recycled vinyl material or eco, whatever you want to call it, is, you know, back in the day when vinyl was the thing, a lot of plants were just grinding the whole record.
547
00:46:43,600 --> 00:47:00,860
So, yeah, you were getting contaminants. You were getting the center label because they weren't cutting it out. They were just throwing it in the grinder and like whatever happened, happened. It was like they just were just like, I just regrind it, reuse it. Whereas every plant now, you are cutting that center label out.
548
00:47:01,460 --> 00:47:07,860
You are making sure that your vinyl is usable, that there's nothing in it.
549
00:47:07,940 --> 00:47:15,460
If you get a bucket, because the way we regrind is by a five-gallon bucket at a time.
550
00:47:16,940 --> 00:47:20,440
And if you're regrinding into that five-gallon bucket and you see,
551
00:47:21,339 --> 00:47:25,820
we missed a piece of center label because the center label was off-center,
552
00:47:26,140 --> 00:47:29,980
which happens during pressing, then that whole bucket is gone.
553
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:31,780
You're just, that's trash.
554
00:47:31,970 --> 00:47:32,960
We're not putting it in.
555
00:47:33,660 --> 00:47:40,620
And we'll just do another five-gallon bucket, and then it goes into the larger storage of reground vinyl.
556
00:47:41,100 --> 00:47:42,380
We're hole-punching the records.
557
00:47:42,430 --> 00:47:43,100
We clean them.
558
00:47:43,150 --> 00:47:46,180
We just make sure there's no contaminants, that it's really clean.
559
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:53,380
And there are times when we'll do a custom color, so the reground is really a good thing.
560
00:47:53,780 --> 00:47:56,660
Because if the client wants a repress, there it is.
561
00:47:56,700 --> 00:48:10,620
We've got 50 buckets of, well, like whatever, school bus yellow or whatever, you know, some really interesting sunset red or something that we can just use to regrind.
562
00:48:11,620 --> 00:48:18,460
Well, let's focus on the process of taking the digital files of songs and getting those sounds onto vinyl.
563
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:24,500
You have some highly specialized equipment for that, including a cutting lathe used to create the stampers.
564
00:48:24,660 --> 00:48:30,600
And so stampers you talked about earlier, they're the negative impressions of the master disc used to press their records.
565
00:48:31,130 --> 00:48:40,900
And on the tour and earlier in this interview, you explained a little bit about that process to us and how you're doing something unique and innovative there when it comes to 50% speed.
566
00:48:41,150 --> 00:48:44,220
So talk about that a little bit more, if you would.
567
00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:48,740
And what makes Studio 4 Vinyl's stamper creation process so unique?
568
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:51,120
Sure.
569
00:48:52,040 --> 00:49:03,000
We have, you know, as I said, my chief tech, he's electronic as well as mechanical, as well as a lot of stuff.
570
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,100
Ronnie, he's a genius.
571
00:49:07,420 --> 00:49:09,440
He's crazy, but he's a genius, which is great.
572
00:49:09,900 --> 00:49:10,480
So am I.
573
00:49:11,860 --> 00:49:19,200
But what we did is we, about three years ago, I got a lathe system.
574
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:30,080
Because the lathe system that I talked about, which cuts record one, they haven't been made since 1980 because there was no need for them.
575
00:49:30,530 --> 00:49:33,880
In 1982, CDs hit the market.
576
00:49:34,470 --> 00:49:40,920
By 1984, most people were buying CDs and certainly not records.
577
00:49:41,700 --> 00:49:57,680
So the last lathe system that was actually developed and designed by the Neumann Company, a great, wonderful company in Germany, the last lathe that was produced was made in 1980.
578
00:49:58,450 --> 00:50:01,840
Because by 82, you didn't need a new one.
579
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:04,640
And by 84, you didn't need them at all.
580
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:23,400
So that process of cutting lacquers even has gone by the wayside because the great guys that did it back then, Bob Ludwig, George Marino, Ted Jensen, etc., they stopped cutting records and they don't cut them anymore.
581
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:28,420
So that art got lost.
582
00:50:29,610 --> 00:50:31,960
Now, fortunately, I've been doing this for 50 years.
583
00:50:32,060 --> 00:50:39,160
So the first, oh, over a third of my career, I was making records for vinyl, watching those
584
00:50:39,260 --> 00:50:42,240
guys cut records, understanding the limitations of it.
585
00:50:42,980 --> 00:50:47,740
Because what you're doing is you're taking the sound, the audio, and you're putting it
586
00:50:47,940 --> 00:50:51,380
onto a piece of plastic, bumps on a piece of plastic.
587
00:50:52,060 --> 00:50:53,920
Now explain to me how that's going to work.
588
00:50:54,460 --> 00:51:02,020
Well, even the most intelligent geniuses in the world kind of look at you and go, I don't
589
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:07,980
know why it works, but somehow it does. How, when you're taking this sound and you're putting it on
590
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:11,960
to this little, it's really, you're scratching it into the records, what you're doing. You're
591
00:51:12,140 --> 00:51:19,040
taking the sound and instead of putting the sound into a speaker, as we know, you don't have to be
592
00:51:19,620 --> 00:51:25,900
too technical, but as you know, somehow the sound gets amplified and it makes the speaker move or
593
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:32,080
the element in your earphone move, and that makes sound. Well, you take that same mechanical
594
00:51:32,380 --> 00:51:37,620
transfer and you put it onto a little needle, and that's what scratches the record. It's
595
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:43,100
orthophonic, which means the sound is moving the needle. So that's what makes that little
596
00:51:43,250 --> 00:51:50,839
needle move and bumps on plastic. The thing that makes it even more difficult, and I'm going to
597
00:51:50,860 --> 00:51:56,540
get a little technical for a minute here, but bear with me. What people don't realize when you play
598
00:51:56,570 --> 00:52:04,100
a record, it's an encoding decoding process. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well,
599
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:10,280
when you are listening to a record, when a record is cut back in the late thirties,
600
00:52:10,820 --> 00:52:15,820
records sounded terrible. And the long playing record was just being developed.
601
00:52:16,240 --> 00:52:25,520
But when they put the needle on that groove and they played it, it was like it sounded like when you're playing an old cylinder or a 78.
602
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:27,580
That didn't even be so dramatic.
603
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:32,220
But all that noise was like, oh, my God, that's the needle rubbing in the groove.
604
00:52:32,460 --> 00:52:32,920
That's terrible.
605
00:52:32,980 --> 00:52:33,920
What are we going to do?
606
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:36,440
Wait, let's try this.
607
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:44,280
Now that they had, you know, tube technology, electronic technology, if we increase the high end dramatically.
608
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:55,440
I mean, I am talking, if you looked at a meter and you went from the lowest it could be to the loudest and did that four times,
609
00:52:56,080 --> 00:53:04,900
if we increase the high end incredibly, like in technology, 40 dB, which is like, that's impossible.
610
00:53:04,940 --> 00:53:06,840
You can't even make that much of a change.
611
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:12,280
But if we add that much high end when we cut the record, then we take it away.
612
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,960
When we play it back, all that goes away
613
00:53:17,350 --> 00:53:18,680
because you're taking all that noise
614
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:20,060
and you're bringing it below.
615
00:53:20,300 --> 00:53:21,560
I'm looking at, I'm using my hands,
616
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:22,180
but you can't see me.
617
00:53:22,820 --> 00:53:25,120
You bring that noise below the noise floor.
618
00:53:25,450 --> 00:53:26,820
So now it, oh, wow.
619
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:29,500
The high end is nice and there's no noise.
620
00:53:30,260 --> 00:53:33,700
So they developed this thing called the RIAA curve
621
00:53:34,110 --> 00:53:35,300
in the late 40s.
622
00:53:35,610 --> 00:53:36,480
I mean, late 30s.
623
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:40,880
I think RCA was the first long playing record to use it.
624
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:46,380
But by doing that, wow, records now sounded high fidelity.
625
00:53:47,170 --> 00:53:48,500
Now, here's the problem.
626
00:53:49,030 --> 00:54:01,060
When you record that sound onto the record, you have to encode it with that RIAA curve of that 20 to 40 dB high end.
627
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:08,860
What people don't realize when you play back a record, your phono cartridge into either
628
00:54:09,380 --> 00:54:15,200
your Bluetooth device or your receiver or your amplifier or whatever has to go through
629
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:16,800
a phono preamp.
630
00:54:17,500 --> 00:54:21,480
It's like if you're doing it old school, yes, you got to take the record, plug it into a
631
00:54:21,620 --> 00:54:27,240
phono preamp, and then plug it into your amplifier or your old receiver with a phono setting.
632
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,780
that setting is doing the reduction of all that high end.
633
00:54:32,070 --> 00:54:33,200
So you could play it back.
634
00:54:33,410 --> 00:54:36,120
If you play a record without going through a phono preamp,
635
00:54:36,410 --> 00:54:38,900
it sounds, you hear all that high end, it's terrible.
636
00:54:38,970 --> 00:54:40,900
You hear the noise, it's terrible.
637
00:54:41,190 --> 00:54:43,960
But every record from the late 40s
638
00:54:44,340 --> 00:54:49,340
right through your newest Taylor Swift record
639
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:51,760
has that RIAA curve on it.
640
00:54:52,130 --> 00:54:56,039
So it makes cutting record one almost impossible
641
00:54:56,060 --> 00:54:59,900
because now the high end, the cymbals, the sibilance on the vocal,
642
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:05,040
that is now being amplified by almost 30, 40 times.
643
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,040
So trying to cut that is what's so difficult.
644
00:55:09,340 --> 00:55:14,980
That's what makes cutting record one such a difficult process
645
00:55:15,860 --> 00:55:21,220
is because it's kind of like painting with your eyes closed.
646
00:55:21,490 --> 00:55:25,180
Oh, and by the way, when you're putting blue on, it's going to turn to red.
647
00:55:25,900 --> 00:55:43,080
Okay. That's pretty hard. And it's a process. And Ronnie and I have been doing it for three years. But again, leaving my huge ego at the door, I pride myself at being a Grammy Award winning multi-platinum engineer producer mixer that we're doing it.
648
00:55:43,140 --> 00:55:49,360
And then in the last two and a half years have developed the half speed mastering.
649
00:55:49,660 --> 00:55:52,280
And I'll make this quick because I know we've been on this for a minute.
650
00:55:53,460 --> 00:56:03,280
What you do is if you're spinning the record at 33 and a third, you slow it down to 16 and a half, whatever that is.
651
00:56:03,330 --> 00:56:05,400
You slow it down half as fast.
652
00:56:06,110 --> 00:56:11,900
You take the audio and you slow it down also half as fast.
653
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:15,740
So now it's going real slow.
654
00:56:18,340 --> 00:56:21,900
And it sounds, I don't even know if you could hear this.
655
00:56:22,720 --> 00:56:23,700
Anyway, nevermind.
656
00:56:23,770 --> 00:56:27,920
I was going to play it, but it slows it down 50%.
657
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:35,420
But what that does, that little stylus that's now moving as fast as 14,000 times a second,
658
00:56:35,860 --> 00:56:40,360
well, those highest frequencies are now down to 7,000 times.
659
00:56:40,940 --> 00:56:46,680
And the mid-range, which is 2,000, ooh, is now down to 1,000.
660
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:50,120
So what's happening, it's pure physics.
661
00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:53,800
It can move slower, so it's going to have more detail.
662
00:56:54,580 --> 00:56:58,320
It's going to have more space and time to cut that sound.
663
00:56:59,060 --> 00:57:04,080
And in that process, and again, you could ask Doug Fern or some other genius,
664
00:57:05,120 --> 00:57:09,480
and even they're like, I don't know why, but you get like 2 dB more volume,
665
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:13,800
which is the logarithmic, that's a lot for the same space.
666
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:17,420
So we've pioneered in it.
667
00:57:17,710 --> 00:57:23,020
And now right now, if you Google AI, who can do half-speed mastering?
668
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:28,600
It's only Abbey Road, the Beatles studio in London, Mobile Fidelity,
669
00:57:29,090 --> 00:57:33,600
one of the most world-renowned high-specialty cutting facilities in Boston,
670
00:57:34,180 --> 00:57:37,480
and Studio 4 Vinyl in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
671
00:57:38,150 --> 00:57:39,180
And we're very proud of that.
672
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:50,300
And rightly so. Thank you for walking us through that. I know it was a longer technical answer, but even I was able to follow it, Phil. So you did a good job on that. Thank you.
673
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:52,360
It's like geeks listening to this podcast.
674
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:57,060
When you cut a lacquer, it does change the sound.
675
00:57:57,500 --> 00:58:00,080
And when you're dealing with modern recorded sounds,
676
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:01,820
I won't get into a lot of detail,
677
00:58:02,460 --> 00:58:06,020
but modern digital recording has a lot of square waves.
678
00:58:06,460 --> 00:58:10,840
It's a distortion that a sine wave or a record doesn't want to play.
679
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:12,840
So you have to figure out a way,
680
00:58:12,900 --> 00:58:19,579
how can I imitate this gain elevated square wave
681
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:21,820
that's only a possible in digital
682
00:58:22,660 --> 00:58:24,660
and translate it to an analog sound.
683
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:27,860
And we've been working on that right now.
684
00:58:27,860 --> 00:58:30,720
I just got the latest update from our engineer.
685
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:34,740
Luckily it said, okay, we're getting there.
686
00:58:35,540 --> 00:58:37,380
Okay, that's what you want to hear.
687
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:43,500
But the thing is, you have to listen to it.
688
00:58:43,750 --> 00:58:46,060
And that's where we play, you know,
689
00:58:46,730 --> 00:58:47,780
every time we cut records,
690
00:58:48,060 --> 00:58:52,360
our engineers listen to every single start of the day,
691
00:58:52,670 --> 00:58:53,400
every hundred records.
692
00:58:54,500 --> 00:58:55,840
But most importantly,
693
00:58:56,170 --> 00:58:59,260
when we're sending out test pressings and when we're cutting lacquers,
694
00:59:00,119 --> 00:59:06,720
we have to be intent on what's the artist's intention.
695
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,260
And when you said about what type of record player it will play on,
696
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:15,080
what that means is that there's a wide variety of record players.
697
00:59:15,340 --> 00:59:17,120
There's a thing that's called the Crosley,
698
00:59:17,700 --> 00:59:25,040
which is the John's bargain basement, as my mom would say, of simple, it's battery operated. It's
699
00:59:25,140 --> 00:59:31,140
got, it's basically an arm with a needle on it. You put it on the record, it pushes down and it'll
700
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:39,760
play that record pretty well. But if you want to get more volume onto the record, which means you
701
00:59:39,820 --> 00:59:45,539
want that groove to move a little bit faster and a little hotter, well, that crappy stylus is just
702
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:52,000
going to pop out. So it's going to skip. If you have too much low end on the record, again,
703
00:59:52,630 --> 00:59:57,140
low end is what moves the groove the most, which makes the grooves possibly touch.
704
00:59:57,780 --> 01:00:04,020
If a groove touches, it's going to push that stylus of the Crosley out. Now, if you have
705
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:10,859
a decent turntable, it doesn't have to be a million dollar, but a decent U-turn or a Technics
706
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:17,460
with an Audio Technica cartridge or, you know, $120 Best Buy, even turntable.
707
01:00:18,300 --> 01:00:19,800
Most of those things will play.
708
01:00:20,260 --> 01:00:25,760
But we have artists, understandably, sometimes in the metal world,
709
01:00:26,300 --> 01:00:32,560
where they're like, no, our, yeah, it played, yes, it's played great on all of our turntables.
710
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:37,280
Yeah, but we played it on a Crosley that wasn't working well and it skipped.
711
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:39,680
Can you get it so it plays on that?
712
01:00:40,500 --> 01:00:46,200
Sure we can. I got to bring the level down to DB. Okay. We would wrap, and that's their choice.
713
01:00:46,790 --> 01:00:53,460
We would rather bring the level down and it not skip than have it be louder and have the client
714
01:00:53,900 --> 01:01:00,580
complain. And, and, um, there was a vinyl me please. And there's a, a couple of, uh, uh,
715
01:01:00,900 --> 01:01:06,540
subscription based companies that had an issue because different clients would be like,
716
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:11,400
this doesn't sound good or this sounds good, but it skips.
717
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:13,980
So they had to find that lane.
718
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:16,220
And there was a one point where I heard they said, well,
719
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:19,560
just tape a quarter to that, to the, like the old school days,
720
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:23,080
just tape a quarter onto the tone arm and see if it plays,
721
01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:26,000
if it doesn't tape another quarter.
722
01:01:26,620 --> 01:01:29,340
And if it still doesn't tape another third.
723
01:01:31,740 --> 01:01:35,460
So, so that's why, yeah, we're, we're, we're,
724
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:38,920
Because, and even informationally,
725
01:01:39,420 --> 01:01:41,180
many of the people who are making records
726
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:42,460
never owned one.
727
01:01:43,320 --> 01:01:45,660
Kit, my son's 41 years old.
728
01:01:46,500 --> 01:01:48,120
He didn't know where records were
729
01:01:48,180 --> 01:01:49,220
until he came to the soul.
730
01:01:49,260 --> 01:01:50,480
And, you know, again,
731
01:01:51,340 --> 01:01:53,540
so many of our clients never owned a record,
732
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:54,540
never bought a record.
733
01:01:54,860 --> 01:01:56,080
Well, you know, why would you?
734
01:01:57,000 --> 01:01:58,520
And now we have walked them through,
735
01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:00,920
oh, did you set up the tone arm?
736
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:02,220
And it's just a blank.
737
01:02:02,940 --> 01:02:03,160
What?
738
01:02:03,900 --> 01:02:05,420
No, when you're playing the record,
739
01:02:05,940 --> 01:02:07,260
Can you adjust the turn on?
740
01:02:07,740 --> 01:02:08,540
I think so.
741
01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:10,260
Well, did you set it up?
742
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:11,080
What's that?
743
01:02:11,740 --> 01:02:14,540
Okay, go to a friend who has a turntable that works
744
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:17,500
and talk to one of my guys about setting your turntable up.
745
01:02:18,860 --> 01:02:22,940
The level of attention to detail that you have
746
01:02:23,140 --> 01:02:26,340
about creating these pieces of art for our ears
747
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:28,660
is utterly incredible to me.
748
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,440
And we're just scratching the surface, no pun intended,
749
01:02:33,020 --> 01:02:35,820
about the different aspects of it.
750
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:47,440
And it's just fascinating. I think that gives all of our listeners a little bit more of an impression of what really goes into making records these days and why records have a reputation for sounding better than other medium.
751
01:02:48,020 --> 01:02:53,520
I mean, personally, for me, I despise hearing like swishy cymbals and swishy high end sounds and things like that.
752
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:59,080
You don't hear that on records for many of the reasons, some of which Phil just described.
753
01:02:59,160 --> 01:03:06,420
But I want to go to one other aspect of enjoying a record, and that is the packaging.
754
01:03:07,420 --> 01:03:18,860
One of the most fulfilling parts of experiencing a record is holding the large album artwork in your hands and removing the sleeve and checking out the jacket and seeing what's going on inside that package you just bought.
755
01:03:19,460 --> 01:03:25,620
So you have humans in Coatesville making sure everything is just right for the person who will buy that record.
756
01:03:25,860 --> 01:03:31,400
Tell us a little bit about how that process works and why you don't have a robot doing it.
757
01:03:31,890 --> 01:03:34,160
Actually, that's your world. Why don't you take that?
758
01:03:35,700 --> 01:03:43,480
So they do make machines that will auto sleeve your records.
759
01:03:45,380 --> 01:03:49,960
It's not something that we ever want here.
760
01:03:50,020 --> 01:03:57,000
We do have people here looking at every single record because we feel like that is extremely important.
761
01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:04,560
A lot of places will have the robot that, you know, just leaves the record, takes it off the spindle, puts it in a sleeve.
762
01:04:05,300 --> 01:04:18,120
But unless you've had someone look at both sides, check to make sure there's not a scratch or that your center label is not off center or that there's even a center label there.
763
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:32,900
During the pressing process, on a manual machine, yes, you're going to have someone that looks at both sides and sees, okay, there's a center label on both sides and there's no major issues and every 100 records they're going to listen.
764
01:04:33,260 --> 01:04:44,960
But the importance of my packaging folks, my quality control, is they look at every single record to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks.
765
01:04:45,680 --> 01:04:52,160
That the matrix number that is carved around the center label in the dead wax is correct.
766
01:04:52,210 --> 01:04:55,420
That the A side is the A side and the B side is the B side.
767
01:04:55,900 --> 01:05:06,640
that the center label matches, that it's not off center, that there isn't some minute scratch that someone missed because they're processing, you know, 3000 records a day.
768
01:05:08,940 --> 01:05:17,800
It's a little tedious, but I mean, these people get to sit here all day, look at really cool art and they get to listen to music.
769
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:25,200
And a lot of times they put whatever record they're working on, they put it on the turntable in the packing room.
770
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:26,660
and they listen to it while they're working.
771
01:05:29,140 --> 01:05:30,740
But that's extremely important
772
01:05:30,900 --> 01:05:34,040
because you want to make sure that when your customer,
773
01:05:34,540 --> 01:05:36,240
that final person pulls it out,
774
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,180
that it is a full, complete package.
775
01:05:39,580 --> 01:05:40,760
It looks good.
776
01:05:40,860 --> 01:05:41,840
It sounds good.
777
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:45,320
You know, that everything's put together
778
01:05:45,420 --> 01:05:47,400
to the specs that your client wants.
779
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:49,880
If they want a custom inner sleeve,
780
01:05:50,380 --> 01:05:52,240
they're getting their custom inner sleeve
781
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:55,760
or they're getting their polylined black inner sleeve.
782
01:05:57,420 --> 01:06:02,840
That if the sticker needs to be in a certain spot on the jacket,
783
01:06:03,140 --> 01:06:07,540
that it is in that spot and then it's not randomly in the middle of the jacket,
784
01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:08,980
which I've seen.
785
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,320
I've taken some pictures in retail stores where I'm like,
786
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:16,220
oh, who put this sticker on this?
787
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:16,760
Oh, yeah.
788
01:06:17,620 --> 01:06:19,340
Actually, it'll be like in a Target or something.
789
01:06:19,820 --> 01:06:25,420
And here's like Diana Ross and the Supremes and the stickers on Diana Ross's face.
790
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:29,100
You're like, yeah, quality control.
791
01:06:29,680 --> 01:06:35,880
And we're just like, this is just like, I got to show you, this is just wrong.
792
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:40,580
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of automation in the packing.
793
01:06:41,040 --> 01:06:44,040
There's the machine that will sleeve the record for you.
794
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:48,940
There is the machine that'll put that sleeve record into a jacket.
795
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:56,480
it um there's the machine that will uh you know auto shrink wrap it and put the sticker on at the
796
01:06:56,580 --> 01:07:02,320
end now we do have an automatic shrink wrap tunnel here that has increased our speed we used to do a
797
01:07:02,460 --> 01:07:08,600
manual l bar but i can tell you as someone who has worked on the floor um after eight hours of
798
01:07:08,960 --> 01:07:15,260
manually shrink wrapping records your arm and your shoulder starts hurting and you're like man i'm
799
01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:22,260
getting too old for this. You get a shrink arm. It's like, ooh, bad. So we love the music and we
800
01:07:22,540 --> 01:07:27,780
enjoy so many of the bands that you've worked with at your record pressing plant. And when we were at
801
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:32,760
Studio 4 Vinyl, some of the folks working on the floor are, to be quite candid with our audience
802
01:07:32,940 --> 01:07:38,720
here, celebrities in the music world. And Phil, dare I say, you're no exception to that. Many of your
803
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:44,600
customers are extremely well-known chart-topping artists. And we were originally going to come for
804
01:07:44,620 --> 01:07:49,480
a tour earlier in this year, but you had one of those chart-topping artists out and you
805
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:52,100
were doing all sorts of secret stuff for their promotion.
806
01:07:52,250 --> 01:07:53,400
And that's just so neat to us.
807
01:07:53,960 --> 01:07:56,200
So Ashley, you're doing the day-to-day.
808
01:07:56,380 --> 01:07:57,480
You're dealing with the customers.
809
01:07:57,630 --> 01:08:03,020
And I'm expecting the customers are the managers or the artists themselves or any number of
810
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:03,260
things.
811
01:08:03,420 --> 01:08:07,840
So what's it like to interact with all these famous music people or famous people in the
812
01:08:07,950 --> 01:08:10,380
music world, not including your father-in-law?
813
01:08:10,460 --> 01:08:13,300
You don't have to talk about working him with like on a podcast.
814
01:08:13,700 --> 01:08:14,900
We'll let you answer that separately.
815
01:08:17,380 --> 01:08:32,259
So, I mean, I think it's definitely safe to say that you can still get starstruck, no matter how many times you have interfaced with someone who is just high up there in the celebrity world.
816
01:08:33,420 --> 01:08:34,620
It's just it's going to happen.
817
01:08:35,100 --> 01:08:44,480
I mean, eventually during the process, it just gets to this point where you're like, you know, we're just working on a record here.
818
01:08:44,700 --> 01:08:49,600
I've got things that I need to do and handle and I'm just going to have to that's going to have to wait.
819
01:08:54,940 --> 01:09:01,000
it's, it's, it's wild sometimes, like the, the people that I've, I've met, um,
820
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:09,480
and really it, it varies from, sometimes I'm working directly with the artist, um, which is
821
01:09:11,719 --> 01:09:19,580
sometimes great, sometimes a little, you're having to set expectations, but no one wants to tell you
822
01:09:19,620 --> 01:09:25,500
too. I'm sorry, we can't do yellow vinyl with blue splatter and not have any green come out.
823
01:09:25,650 --> 01:09:34,900
Like, who wants to tell you too? No, you can't have that. I had to. But I mean, it's...
824
01:09:37,580 --> 01:09:42,339
So let me jump in with a follow-up question to that. Okay, so you had to tell you too, no.
825
01:09:43,380 --> 01:09:47,859
Sorry, physics doesn't work like that. Chemistry does not allow that. This is us not being mean.
826
01:09:48,020 --> 01:09:49,960
This is just chemistry setting the rules.
827
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:59,780
Can I ask you, would you be willing to share what's an artist or a musician who you met who was one of your music idols either now or growing up?
828
01:09:59,830 --> 01:10:03,460
And it was like, oh, my gosh, you folks are here or you're here.
829
01:10:04,400 --> 01:10:12,960
So, yeah, I met Ice-T a couple of years ago now, and that was like top tier for me.
830
01:10:14,220 --> 01:10:15,480
And he didn't come here.
831
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:21,040
I went to his house to pick up signed record jackets.
832
01:10:22,020 --> 01:10:26,000
And I got to meet Ice-T and his dog on the same day.
833
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:29,300
So that was just the best day ever for me.
834
01:10:29,820 --> 01:10:33,240
We all are, but Ashley is a massive dog person, by the way.
835
01:10:34,240 --> 01:10:34,420
Yeah.
836
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:38,180
But yeah, that was great.
837
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:39,400
I got to meet him.
838
01:10:39,420 --> 01:10:40,400
I got to talk to him.
839
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:41,580
I got a picture with him.
840
01:10:42,100 --> 01:10:50,340
I was trying so hard to not be a crazy fan, but I was just looking for the best day ever.
841
01:10:50,960 --> 01:11:02,920
Well, no interview with Phil Nicolo would be complete without asking at least one question about your storied career as record producer, mixer, mastering engineer, and many more titles that we could bestow on you.
842
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:10,420
So for our audience edification, Phil has worked with Grammy-winning artists and artists from practically every genre.
843
01:11:10,940 --> 01:11:13,620
John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Cypress Hill,
844
01:11:13,860 --> 01:11:15,960
Lauryn Hill, The Hooters, Amy Grant, Anthrax,
845
01:11:16,120 --> 01:11:17,000
just to name a few.
846
01:11:18,620 --> 01:11:20,560
Of all your work with so many talented
847
01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:21,860
and successful artists,
848
01:11:22,120 --> 01:11:24,300
kind of like Liam just asked Ashley,
849
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:28,820
what album or work was especially meaningful to you
850
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:29,660
and why?
851
01:11:32,100 --> 01:11:32,280
Wow.
852
01:11:33,280 --> 01:11:34,140
I would say,
853
01:11:35,680 --> 01:11:38,880
and I keep coming back to the same artist,
854
01:11:39,260 --> 01:11:41,340
which is, and he's become a dear friend of mine.
855
01:11:41,460 --> 01:11:42,220
He's a blues artist.
856
01:11:42,460 --> 01:11:44,500
Some of your audience will know.
857
01:11:44,500 --> 01:11:45,500
His name is Taj Mahal.
858
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:48,040
He's 81 years old.
859
01:11:49,300 --> 01:11:52,600
One of the greatest performing blues artists,
860
01:11:52,940 --> 01:11:56,080
but he's a force of nature.
861
01:11:57,340 --> 01:12:03,000
I had the pleasure of working with him 36 years ago in 1990
862
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:06,360
with a record that I did with producer Skip Drinkwater
863
01:12:06,900 --> 01:12:07,760
called Like Never Before.
864
01:12:08,740 --> 01:12:11,860
And that was my first time to meet and to work with Taj.
865
01:12:12,700 --> 01:12:17,200
And to this day, he is, I mean, I speak to him every few months.
866
01:12:17,800 --> 01:12:20,060
He's out on tour right now, I think, with Kebmo.
867
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:30,860
But it was just, it was life-changing in terms of his passion, his intelligence, his creativity,
868
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:40,500
his humanity, his just having a grasp on life and reality to a point that it totally blew my mind.
869
01:12:40,730 --> 01:12:45,720
And because, again, for those of you who don't know Taj Mahal, he's respected by just about
870
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:53,140
anybody in the industry. And in 1990, we had some acquaintances who came, not acquaintances,
871
01:12:53,380 --> 01:12:59,440
but people who came to play on the record like, oh, I don't know, Hall and Oates, Ringo Starr,
872
01:12:59,740 --> 01:13:07,620
the Pointer Sisters, Little Feet. It was just like, okay. Every time I turned around,
873
01:13:07,730 --> 01:13:15,520
we were doing a song, Dr. John. I mean, it was just amazing. And in every case,
874
01:13:15,970 --> 01:13:20,460
he was less the celebrity, but he was acting like, look, I'm just doing my thing.
875
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:28,800
And to this day, and I'll just give you an example. About two years ago,
876
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:33,100
He played the New Orleans Jazz Fest.
877
01:13:34,080 --> 01:13:36,400
And I hadn't done a live record with him in a while.
878
01:13:36,470 --> 01:13:38,240
I said, hey, Taj, why don't we record the show?
879
01:13:38,760 --> 01:13:40,660
He was like, yeah, he goes, Nicolo.
880
01:13:41,260 --> 01:13:41,820
Yeah, Nicolo.
881
01:13:42,100 --> 01:13:44,160
We always talk in Italian because he loves Italian.
882
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:45,460
He said, ma si.
883
01:13:46,080 --> 01:13:46,340
Okay.
884
01:13:47,320 --> 01:13:49,960
So I went down to record him and I got there.
885
01:13:50,200 --> 01:13:52,640
We had to do a rehearsal at 9 o'clock in the morning.
886
01:13:53,780 --> 01:13:55,780
And I went to his hotel, 8 o'clock.
887
01:13:55,820 --> 01:14:02,980
he's in the lobby with the band already animated vibrant he's 81 years old we get into the van to
888
01:14:02,980 --> 01:14:08,280
go over to the venue to to do a nine o'clock sound check he gets in the van and he goes he
889
01:14:08,280 --> 01:14:14,980
goes to the driver brother put on 9 to 3.5 i gotta hear and all of a sudden this is an like a an old
890
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:24,360
like funk r&b station and this song by maze comes on before frankie beverly was the lead singer
891
01:14:24,380 --> 01:14:26,020
Most of you don't even know what that means.
892
01:14:26,410 --> 01:14:29,120
He goes, oh, this is before Frank and Beverly was on Mays.
893
01:14:29,400 --> 01:14:30,320
Listen to this, brother.
894
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:31,200
This guy's amazing.
895
01:14:31,580 --> 01:14:42,900
And we're listening to this music, and he's freaking out over this song that was pushing his buttons because every minute of his life, music is in his veins.
896
01:14:43,880 --> 01:14:47,520
And I'm like, holy, this guy's 81 years old, and it's 830.
897
01:14:47,680 --> 01:14:52,360
We're on our way to do a rehearsal at Jazz Fest, and he's that pumped.
898
01:14:52,880 --> 01:14:57,180
And that man, it just, you know, and then at the, at the, at the, at the jazz fest,
899
01:14:57,560 --> 01:15:00,060
Oh, a friend of mine's going to come. It's Ricky Lee Jones.
900
01:15:00,960 --> 01:15:05,240
I'm sitting in the, in the, in the, you know, in the dressing room and this nice woman comes in.
901
01:15:05,300 --> 01:15:10,000
And I got to say, I'm sorry. I didn't recognize her, but he goes, Oh, Ricky, you got to meet my friend.
902
01:15:10,140 --> 01:15:14,660
It's still this Ricky Lee Jones. And I'm like, Oh, you're, Oh, you're, Oh, you're Ricky Lee Jones.
903
01:15:16,080 --> 01:15:20,240
It's that kind of, and then we recorded the performance. It was off the hook.
904
01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:27,920
He's still, at any rate, and he, and honestly, I could have used Lauryn Hill, Billy Joel, Yoko Ono.
905
01:15:28,220 --> 01:15:35,920
There's a bunch of people who have, who have impressed me in my life to be like, okay, music does pulse in your veins.
906
01:15:38,380 --> 01:15:39,040
Thank you for that.
907
01:15:39,240 --> 01:15:41,160
I really enjoyed hearing that story.
908
01:15:41,300 --> 01:15:47,120
I, I'm a fan of Taj Mahal and I'm even more so now after that story that was really enduring.
909
01:15:47,720 --> 01:15:50,920
So now it's my turn to kind of nerd out on you.
910
01:15:51,420 --> 01:15:56,660
One of my absolute favorite albums of all time is Saturation by Urge Overkill.
911
01:15:56,780 --> 01:15:57,540
I listened to that.
912
01:15:57,540 --> 01:15:58,200
You talked about it yesterday.
913
01:15:59,060 --> 01:16:01,520
Once a month at least, if not, right?
914
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:04,100
And I just absolutely love it.
915
01:16:04,100 --> 01:16:09,700
And for our audience, I'll share that Phil was involved in the making of that album, the success that it was.
916
01:16:09,700 --> 01:16:13,460
And it was a hugely successful album for Urge Overkill.
917
01:16:13,740 --> 01:16:16,540
And they celebrate its 25th anniversary and so on.
918
01:16:16,620 --> 01:16:17,680
It's just that kind of album.
919
01:16:18,260 --> 01:16:21,000
And I have so many questions for you, Phil.
920
01:16:21,200 --> 01:16:23,680
But Erik is limiting me to just one.
921
01:16:24,060 --> 01:16:24,900
So here it comes.
922
01:16:25,620 --> 01:16:29,840
So in advance of the show, I was listening to some different interviews that you've given over the years.
923
01:16:30,100 --> 01:16:40,160
And in a number of these interviews, you shared that, and correct me if I get this wrong, that your production style is to enable the musical artists to be themselves, to let them do what they do best.
924
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:44,340
And then you will push or guide them only when you think they needed it.
925
01:16:45,020 --> 01:16:46,240
And so my question is this.
926
01:16:46,500 --> 01:16:51,240
When making Saturation, where did you push or guide George Overkill?
927
01:16:51,610 --> 01:16:53,580
And how can we hear that influence on the album?
928
01:16:54,860 --> 01:16:55,240
Okay.
929
01:16:56,240 --> 01:16:57,160
I'll tell you.
930
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:05,120
They were very unique in that they, you know, most acts,
931
01:17:06,050 --> 01:17:10,060
they know who they want to be and they focus and that's all they want to do.
932
01:17:10,800 --> 01:17:16,000
But they were like, and I take this with a grain of salt.
933
01:17:16,420 --> 01:17:22,020
They were almost bored of, yeah, we're urged to overkill, but can we be somebody else for a minute?
934
01:17:22,900 --> 01:17:24,240
And can we focus more?
935
01:17:24,910 --> 01:17:37,560
And so in a way, what I did was, myself and my twin brother, Joe, we kind of let them kind of do what they do, but then reel it in and focus it in.
936
01:17:38,100 --> 01:17:47,940
And I'll tell you the one thing, and if you listen to it and think about it, again, because they were just lazy musicians, okay?
937
01:17:49,420 --> 01:17:52,960
Geffen, Mio Vukovic of Geffen bought them an eight-channel.
938
01:17:52,970 --> 01:17:54,480
At the time, it was an eight-channel.
939
01:17:54,610 --> 01:17:56,700
It was $693, $92, $93.
940
01:17:57,300 --> 01:18:01,020
An eight-channel TAC recording machine, a console, some microphones.
941
01:18:01,580 --> 01:18:08,260
I mean, whatever, maybe $10,000 worth of stuff, which was decent, you know, that you could make demos with.
942
01:18:08,300 --> 01:18:09,240
And he sent it to them.
943
01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:14,620
They had an engineer friend, and they said, yeah, we'll set it up and we'll start making some demos.
944
01:18:15,480 --> 01:18:17,180
A month passed, two months passed.
945
01:18:18,180 --> 01:18:23,900
All Mio's getting is a cassette with a couple songs on it that sounded like it was one mic in the room.
946
01:18:24,500 --> 01:18:28,800
So Mio said, Phil, can you go to Chicago and hang with these guys and help them write demos?
947
01:18:29,440 --> 01:18:30,820
Because I don't know what they're doing with the equipment.
948
01:18:31,280 --> 01:18:32,040
Well, I got there.
949
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:34,340
The equipment was all piled up in the corner.
950
01:18:34,620 --> 01:18:35,260
It's still in the box.
951
01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:38,580
So I unpacked it.
952
01:18:39,400 --> 01:18:41,220
And we started setting it up.
953
01:18:41,520 --> 01:18:46,560
And I'm thinking of records that felt like the energy they were talking about.
954
01:18:46,980 --> 01:18:50,000
That was kind of rampant rock, but pop.
955
01:18:50,700 --> 01:18:56,180
And in my mind, one of my favorite records of all time is Todd Rundgren, Something Anything.
956
01:18:57,000 --> 01:18:58,360
So many great songs.
957
01:18:58,540 --> 01:18:59,980
There's a song on that.
958
01:19:00,380 --> 01:19:02,840
It's couldn't I tell you the way I feel?
959
01:19:03,340 --> 01:19:03,800
Couldn't not.
960
01:19:03,940 --> 01:19:04,960
And it rocks.
961
01:19:05,540 --> 01:19:08,660
But his voice is intense, but it's a pop song.
962
01:19:09,300 --> 01:19:15,060
So I played that song for the guys and they went, that's the template.
963
01:19:15,880 --> 01:19:16,100
Yeah.
964
01:19:16,580 --> 01:19:16,640
Okay.
965
01:19:17,400 --> 01:19:20,320
Like pop, but that is rock.
966
01:19:20,400 --> 01:19:23,940
That doesn't always have to go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, tag.
967
01:19:24,860 --> 01:19:27,420
Something that's edgy and rock.
968
01:19:28,100 --> 01:19:30,420
And that's what we used as the template.
969
01:19:31,070 --> 01:19:38,880
And we went into the basement and we started and we cut five, six demos that became rhythm tracks.
970
01:19:39,470 --> 01:19:44,020
But again, no real lyrics, like a third of the songs.
971
01:19:44,050 --> 01:19:44,920
And I'm not kidding.
972
01:19:45,190 --> 01:19:46,500
We would do a rhythm track.
973
01:19:46,850 --> 01:19:50,840
And on the take sheet, for no reason, I would write Crack Babies.
974
01:19:51,980 --> 01:19:53,460
And that became the title.
975
01:19:53,620 --> 01:19:54,300
Crack Babies.
976
01:19:54,940 --> 01:19:55,140
Okay.
977
01:19:55,780 --> 01:19:56,780
Positive Bleeding.
978
01:19:57,070 --> 01:19:57,860
There was no lyrics.
979
01:19:58,020 --> 01:19:59,700
I just thought, what's good?
980
01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:01,140
Positive bleeding.
981
01:20:02,180 --> 01:20:07,000
All of a sudden the song generated out of planting the seed of the title,
982
01:20:07,620 --> 01:20:09,320
which many great songwriters tell me,
983
01:20:09,680 --> 01:20:11,800
some of the greatest songwriters I've ever worked with,
984
01:20:11,920 --> 01:20:14,140
they say, I write the song title first,
985
01:20:14,480 --> 01:20:15,720
and then I write the song around that.
986
01:20:16,640 --> 01:20:16,880
Okay.
987
01:20:18,440 --> 01:20:20,300
So there's a little tidbit.
988
01:20:20,740 --> 01:20:24,420
One of the funnest, greatest records Joey and I have ever done to this day.
989
01:20:24,900 --> 01:20:25,680
I have more people.
990
01:20:26,080 --> 01:20:27,000
Dave Grohl.
991
01:20:28,320 --> 01:20:29,580
I mean, so many artists.
992
01:20:30,700 --> 01:20:31,140
Butcher Brothers.
993
01:20:31,780 --> 01:20:32,260
Saturation.
994
01:20:32,540 --> 01:20:33,000
Oh, my God.
995
01:20:33,140 --> 01:20:34,320
That's one of my favorite records.
996
01:20:35,100 --> 01:20:36,740
You know, it's not a household name,
997
01:20:37,300 --> 01:20:40,480
but it's gotten me more work than almost any record I've done
998
01:20:41,060 --> 01:20:42,520
just because there's something about it.
999
01:20:42,520 --> 01:20:45,040
You put it on and it captures your attention.
1000
01:20:46,140 --> 01:20:48,240
Well, thank you, sir, for the work that you did do
1001
01:20:48,520 --> 01:20:52,780
because you've given me hours and hours and hours and hours.
1002
01:20:52,780 --> 01:20:53,060
Oh, thank you.
1003
01:20:53,200 --> 01:20:54,840
Over decades of listening pleasure.
1004
01:20:54,980 --> 01:20:55,760
So thank you, sir.
1005
01:20:56,080 --> 01:20:57,240
As they say, you're too kind.
1006
01:20:58,940 --> 01:21:03,640
Well, as our interview time here winds to a close, I have to ask you this question.
1007
01:21:04,140 --> 01:21:08,060
Tell us about a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.
1008
01:21:08,070 --> 01:21:13,280
And Ashley, Phil, feel welcome to answer whichever one of you has a thought on it or if you both do.
1009
01:21:13,780 --> 01:21:18,140
There's a pizza place right up the street here called Jack's.
1010
01:21:18,720 --> 01:21:27,000
And that is like our go-to place anytime that we need to have just, it's a bad day.
1011
01:21:27,220 --> 01:21:30,640
And my staff are just like, man, today is not going great.
1012
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:31,720
Everything is breaking.
1013
01:21:32,780 --> 01:21:35,880
It's like, it's pizza today and we're going.
1014
01:21:36,340 --> 01:21:38,140
And they never fails.
1015
01:21:38,440 --> 01:21:41,980
Like we call them, we like, we're not ordering one or two pizzas.
1016
01:21:42,400 --> 01:21:48,760
We're ordering like five to 10, depending on the day and how long we're going to be here.
1017
01:21:48,940 --> 01:21:51,300
And they're just like, we'll take care of you.
1018
01:21:51,660 --> 01:21:51,760
Yeah.
1019
01:21:52,540 --> 01:21:56,960
And honestly, right down the street toward us is the Double D Diner.
1020
01:21:57,500 --> 01:21:58,180
Same routine.
1021
01:21:58,420 --> 01:21:59,020
It's a diner.
1022
01:21:59,260 --> 01:21:59,740
It's great.
1023
01:21:59,880 --> 01:22:00,720
It's like a diner.
1024
01:22:01,040 --> 01:22:05,240
There's old pictures of Coatesville that are so faded they were taken in 1931.
1025
01:22:06,000 --> 01:22:06,660
It doesn't matter.
1026
01:22:07,160 --> 01:22:11,180
You know, it's just a fun place that the owners there are just like, they're courteous enough.
1027
01:22:11,540 --> 01:22:11,800
You know?
1028
01:22:11,880 --> 01:22:15,340
So it's a great place to do that.
1029
01:22:15,780 --> 01:22:19,540
And again, the development, the Coatesville, all the development of people.
1030
01:22:19,620 --> 01:22:27,340
I mean, all the things that we have had through Seed Copia and the Coates, not Coatesville, Chester County.
1031
01:22:27,340 --> 01:22:28,660
Chester County Economic Development Council.
1032
01:22:28,860 --> 01:22:28,960
Economic Development.
1033
01:22:30,860 --> 01:22:31,220
Amazing.
1034
01:22:31,320 --> 01:22:35,100
I mean, they probably deserve the biggest shout out because they're so good.
1035
01:22:35,540 --> 01:22:39,100
I mean, if you're a small business in Chester County, talk to them.
1036
01:22:39,260 --> 01:22:40,740
I recently lost my accountant.
1037
01:22:41,240 --> 01:22:46,360
started looking. I called them and they were like, oh, they gave me four leads. The second one,
1038
01:22:46,380 --> 01:22:50,880
they're not, she's now my accountant. And this was like in March. Okay. This was the worst time
1039
01:22:51,280 --> 01:22:55,500
to call for an accountant. So I would say those people definitely.
1040
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:03,420
So we have heard so much about what a wonderful place it is to work. Aside from the fact that you
1041
01:23:03,580 --> 01:23:07,720
are making records and there's music everywhere, that alone is cool, but that you have such a
1042
01:23:08,380 --> 01:23:13,160
a fantastic business culture, and it's a great place to work, and it sounds very fun as well,
1043
01:23:14,080 --> 01:23:16,580
really makes us ask the question, are you hiring?
1044
01:23:18,300 --> 01:23:31,040
Not right now. We had people come with us from Nottingham. We did have about three positions
1045
01:23:31,300 --> 01:23:35,700
open up when we moved into the building, closer to four. One of them is part-time,
1046
01:23:36,280 --> 01:23:42,920
And I actually, we found three people that live literally two minutes down the road.
1047
01:23:43,640 --> 01:23:44,440
They can walk here.
1048
01:23:45,200 --> 01:23:50,300
But we will be most likely hiring into the beginning of next year while we're expanding.
1049
01:23:50,340 --> 01:23:59,220
And as a matter of fact, I will say, I tell you, we're not, but we are looking for people who are interested in being pressing engineers.
1050
01:24:00,120 --> 01:24:22,880
So if you have an interest, if you're mechanically oriented, you understand thermodynamics to a degree, even if you don't, if you want to come and spend two or three hours a day here and learn a skill that you could get hired for, because that's the real shortcoming we have, is you can't hire a pressing engineer because they don't exist.
1051
01:24:23,370 --> 01:24:28,640
And even if you've done it in another facility, it's like, no, that's not the kind of blimp that we drive.
1052
01:24:29,820 --> 01:24:37,880
So if anyone is interested in possibly a career, in being a pressing engineer, it's an apprentice.
1053
01:24:38,280 --> 01:24:42,120
You're not going to get paid, but you're going to learn a valuable skill.
1054
01:24:42,820 --> 01:24:45,960
And if you get good enough, I'll hire you.
1055
01:24:46,420 --> 01:25:00,740
So, you know, it's in that regard, we're always looking for people who are interested in learning a very unusual talent and could become very valuable to us.
1056
01:25:00,770 --> 01:25:07,960
Because that's our shortcoming right now is we need more because unfortunately our workflow is high or low.
1057
01:25:08,260 --> 01:25:10,840
So it's great to have a couple of people.
1058
01:25:11,260 --> 01:25:15,300
This isn't their full-time gig, but hey, I could use 20 hours over the weekend.
1059
01:25:15,780 --> 01:25:15,960
Sure.
1060
01:25:16,020 --> 01:25:18,500
that is qualified to do that.
1061
01:25:18,820 --> 01:25:21,280
So I would say that's the only caveat,
1062
01:25:21,960 --> 01:25:23,580
not caveat, but we're always looking
1063
01:25:23,820 --> 01:25:25,600
for someone in that world.
1064
01:25:26,220 --> 01:25:28,320
And if folks are interested in that,
1065
01:25:28,460 --> 01:25:29,060
hit the website.
1066
01:25:29,400 --> 01:25:31,460
Is there an email address or a contact form
1067
01:25:31,640 --> 01:25:33,440
that you'd like them to get in touch with?
1068
01:25:33,440 --> 01:25:34,320
Is there a preferred way?
1069
01:25:35,660 --> 01:25:37,480
Yeah, just if you're interested,
1070
01:25:38,320 --> 01:25:39,940
send us your resume
1071
01:25:41,240 --> 01:25:43,280
or just a quick inquiry email
1072
01:25:43,560 --> 01:25:45,840
to our info at studio4vinyl.com.
1073
01:25:45,960 --> 01:26:08,960
Yeah, and it's the number four. Studio, the number four vinyl. And my recording studio is Studio, the number four recording, if you want to see that. And that's also very active. I'm there not as much, but Ron DeSivestro is there running it all the time. Longest running, 45 years, July 8th, but the longest running world-class studio in Philly.
1074
01:26:09,440 --> 01:26:11,040
and then Will Yip's new extension,
1075
01:26:11,360 --> 01:26:11,740
which is Studio,
1076
01:26:12,340 --> 01:26:12,600
which is,
1077
01:26:14,100 --> 01:26:14,720
what is it?
1078
01:26:15,300 --> 01:26:15,580
Mirror?
1079
01:26:16,520 --> 01:26:17,380
I forgot his facility,
1080
01:26:17,500 --> 01:26:18,260
but it's in South Philly.
1081
01:26:19,080 --> 01:26:20,040
We'll be sure to put links
1082
01:26:20,180 --> 01:26:21,640
to all of those locations
1083
01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:23,440
and websites on our website too
1084
01:26:23,620 --> 01:26:24,460
for easy reference
1085
01:26:24,520 --> 01:26:25,000
for our listeners
1086
01:26:25,260 --> 01:26:27,260
at startlocal.co.
1087
01:26:27,920 --> 01:26:29,800
One final question for you both.
1088
01:26:30,040 --> 01:26:31,420
How can the community support
1089
01:26:31,700 --> 01:26:32,480
Studio 4 Vinyl?
1090
01:26:33,740 --> 01:26:34,240
Make records.
1091
01:26:36,720 --> 01:26:37,280
Very good.
1092
01:26:38,560 --> 01:26:43,240
Yeah, I honestly spread the word, spread the word word of mouth. I'm sorry to me to cut you off, actually.
1093
01:26:44,870 --> 01:26:49,040
Spread the word word of mouth is how we get most and our most and our best clients.
1094
01:26:50,380 --> 01:26:54,620
Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those things where a lot of people will go, well, I can get this cheaper.
1095
01:26:56,200 --> 01:27:01,440
Yeah, somewhere else. And it's like, that's all right. I understand. Yes, you could.
1096
01:27:02,240 --> 01:27:16,260
But if you're coming here, you're not only supporting the local area, the local people here, you're getting a quality that we like to stand behind.
1097
01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:22,360
When you call here, you're getting a real person and you're talking to someone about your project and you're troubleshooting.
1098
01:27:23,280 --> 01:27:28,740
A lot of other places, you have to go through a phone system before you finally get someone,
1099
01:27:28,960 --> 01:27:32,580
and that someone might not know exactly what you're talking about with your project.
1100
01:27:35,219 --> 01:27:43,040
And every record that gets pressed here locally comes with a tour of the plant and a meet and greet with one of the office dogs.
1101
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:45,460
Very impressive.
1102
01:27:46,100 --> 01:27:48,320
Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo of Studio 4 Vinyl.
1103
01:27:48,380 --> 01:27:55,260
Aside from your website and the email address you gave, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about you in Studio 4 Vinyl?
1104
01:27:55,780 --> 01:28:02,740
Or if musicians are interested in chatting about you to press their records, what's the best way to make that happen?
1105
01:28:04,660 --> 01:28:13,940
Anyone that's interested in making a record, we've got a direct sales email that will go to all of our production managers.
1106
01:28:15,300 --> 01:28:19,200
That's sales at studio4, the number four, vinyl.com.
1107
01:28:21,780 --> 01:28:26,060
Anyone that has any specific questions may, by all means, reach out to me directly.
1108
01:28:26,820 --> 01:28:32,500
I'd be happy to talk to anyone about the process, give a tour, go over it.
1109
01:28:33,500 --> 01:28:34,780
Just send me an email.
1110
01:28:35,480 --> 01:28:35,560
Yeah.
1111
01:28:35,760 --> 01:28:42,820
So at the Studio 4 Vinyl, if you want to contact me about production, mixing, mastering, any of that stuff,
1112
01:28:43,300 --> 01:28:47,780
The Studio 4 vinyl one is the one that someone will pay attention to the most.
1113
01:28:48,150 --> 01:28:49,840
So you could hit me there.
1114
01:28:50,340 --> 01:28:54,660
Ashley and Phil, thank you so much for joining us today and for the tour a few weeks ago.
1115
01:28:54,840 --> 01:29:02,420
It's just been an absolute pleasure going through a little bit of local music history and future as well.
1116
01:29:02,580 --> 01:29:03,840
Thank you both so much for your time.
1117
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:04,780
And to Drew as well.
1118
01:29:05,200 --> 01:29:06,760
You folks have been very kind and welcoming.
1119
01:29:06,890 --> 01:29:07,180
Thank you.
1120
01:29:07,640 --> 01:29:08,000
Thank you.
1121
01:29:08,140 --> 01:29:14,180
You guys are really, again, as we like to say, price is subject to clients' attitude.
1122
01:29:15,060 --> 01:29:19,620
So you guys are great people, really, like your excitement, you know, your love of music.
1123
01:29:20,140 --> 01:29:20,940
That's why we do it.
1124
01:29:21,040 --> 01:29:21,980
So you're very welcome.
1125
01:29:22,140 --> 01:29:23,280
It's definitely our pleasure.
1126
01:29:23,940 --> 01:29:25,820
And hey, let's do it again sometime.
1127
01:29:26,740 --> 01:29:28,340
Well, thank you very much to the three of you.
1128
01:29:28,380 --> 01:29:34,280
I would love to take you up on an encore tour someday and see what the latest you have going on there in your world.
1129
01:29:34,400 --> 01:29:39,460
What's the latest thing that made you order lots of pizzas or pull more hair out or whatever the case might be?
1130
01:29:40,320 --> 01:29:42,140
Thank you also to my co-host, Liam Debsy.
1131
01:29:42,500 --> 01:29:43,480
I'm Erik Gudmundson.
1132
01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:46,360
The Start Local podcast is published every two weeks.
1133
01:29:46,620 --> 01:29:53,100
We invite you to subscribe to Start Local using your favorite podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Start Local podcast.
1134
01:29:53,720 --> 01:30:01,140
You can visit the Start Local website at startlocal.co for show notes, including links mentioned on the show and summaries of past episodes.
1135
01:30:01,640 --> 01:30:12,700
There's also a newsletter subscription option on the startlocal.co site so you can receive announcements about our show and the occasional free networking events to meet your hosts, our guests, and other listeners.
1136
01:30:13,100 --> 01:30:14,500
We hope you join us for the next episode.
1137
01:30:15,160 --> 01:30:15,660
Thank you for listening.
