Fidelity Record Pressing Oxnard CA Opened its Doors to Tracking Angle

[@analoguecity3454]

Michael you are awesome to your subs, I want you to know we appreciate everything you do to bring us this stuff! Keep up the good work!😊

[@Big-J-8579]

CDs do sound really good. Records sound good also. I enjoy them both.

[@playbackamusicloversjourne8620]

Nice to see another startup pressing plant with new presses. Thanks.

[@LPS-R-US]

A nice tour. Best of luck to FIDELITY.

[@OFBCyclingWorld]

Love this Mikey, the nerdy stuff is very interesting to a lot of us vinyl people.Their process and attention to detail is wonderful to see. Thanks.

[@Trebleclefaudio]

Always nice to see people enthusiastic and diligent about what they do, so the rest of us can listen to quality recordings.

[@SafeAndSoundTXAudioExcursion]

Thanks Michael for the tour!

[@donniemunden3283]

Nice tour. Keep the great content coming !!!

[@Abefroman-lq3md]

Mad Mikey McMadlad Is back. It is a good day! Salutations from Belfast Northern Ireland 🇬🇧

[@jamesfernandes3699]

Wonderful information on the details of our wonderful hobby 😊

[@brotherbrian5625]

I noticed coming from the medical manufacturing industry, this plant is set up right. But mainly this owner understands and knows how to do a high percentage of everything his self. Probably everything but idk.... Great tour Thankyou

[@automatedelectronics6062]

That is really cool. A good first step was to use new presses. So many start-up record pressing companies use reconditioned presses. Equipment is only new once. No matter what is done to old equipment will never make it new again. Although the new presses have been updated in design, there are other new record press manufacturers who started with a clean slate and made improvements on former problem areas. More power to Fidelity and hopefully they will achieve and maintain the highest quality. Thank you Michael for the excellent video and the look inside one of the newest record pressing companies!

[@edwardhashimoto263]

We worked with the press builder to address all of the previous shortcomings of the original SMT press, heart of these presses are the hydraulic press design which the SMT press did and still does better than any other record press built

[@DizzyD9960]

@@edwardhashimoto263 hi! I'm Dave Hahn, Worked at RTI '78-'85. Finebilts then SMT's. Relays were the biggest "problem" with the SMT's. How are the electronics on these new guys?

[@edwardhashimoto263]

@@DizzyD9960 what are relays!!??!! These are all PLC controlled with hybrid stepper motors locating the biscuit and labels and stacking the records rather than the record slide. The most trouble I had with the relays were people just swapping relays around instead of just replacing the problem they'd just move the problem!

[@DizzyD9960]

@@edwardhashimoto263 yeah tracking the actual relay causing the problem was a swap and wait deal. Sometimes for days. And say howdy to Rick for me!

[@peterw6490]

amazing video thank you for sharing

[@DizzyD9960]

Hi Rick! Thanks for the Friday night shift bench gifts to get the shows out at that other plant one town over!

[@elvispresleycollectorsgroup]

Great video, really enjoyed this insight into the modern record making process. Fidelity Record Pressing deserve to do well! Hopefully the box label maker doesn't get in too much trouble 😅

[@Thestereosteve]

Thank you 🫶🏼

[@bmuhamad]

Looks to be well organized. Thanks.

[@carjo512]

Keep up the good work

[@dimebagdave77]

Thanks Mike✌️ have a good one

[@stampscapes]

Amazing. Shocked at how large a facility they're using. For so many years (years ago) it seemed like vinyl was a dead incarnation. Even at hi-fi shows, it was mostly CD's as far as the listening rooms went.

[@VinylGourmetTV]

Great video, gald to see Fidelity Record Pressing up and running! ... and what about that Datsun Roadster??? Great little car, make it good Mr. E. Hashimoto ;)

[@edwardhashimoto263]

Should we stop Pressing records so I can I can work on the Datsun!?!😜

[@VinylGourmetTV]

@@edwardhashimoto263 🤣🤣🤣 Let's have it all! 😉Thanks for the hard and really great work, loved the tour, impressive job you did on that plant!

[@MrRom92DAW]

I have my first discs pressed at FRP and they really don’t look great, visually at least, but I have yet to give them a spin. Hopeful they will churn out good wax. Really don’t have an hour+ to give this my undivided attention so I have no idea if this was addressed. Will FRP be using Neotech’s VR900 “supervinyl” or is this still exclusive to RTI?

[@MediaWest]

our motto: it aint final, til it's vinyl...

[@Pluralofvinylisvinyls]

It looks similar to an injection molding plant I worked at except records are a lot cooler than truck dashboards

[@christopher.cordova]

Whoever licenses those DCC laquers, take my money.

[@bill8985]

Wow, what a great tour. I was a facilities/process engineer at Specialty in Olyphant back in the 80s. Most things at your facility are very much the same as what we had in Olyphant. You have a wonderfully clean operation with excellent process design. Best wishes to you and your crew! KEEP VINYL ALIVE! (Digital is boring.) Wonderful how the RPM presses have advanced since the SMTs. Incidentally, who does you nickel electroforming? If you need some help, let me know. (would love to get back to work at a record factory.)

[@trackingangle929]

RTI does the electroplating. That video is going up soon. I visited Specialty just before they trashed the presses. I was there with mastering engineer Greg Calbi and record producer Craig Street. They told us the presses were on the way out to make way for DVD production. I begged them to not throw away the presses because vinyl was going to make a comeback. They laughed at me...

[@bill8985]

@@trackingangle929 and boy oh boy were you right. I wish I had been there with you because we could have scooped up all that beautiful equipment for 5 cents on the dollar. It was a huge press floor. I didn't ever meet Calbi or Street... I am a bit older than you. My mentors were Clair, Andy, Lenny, Karl, John and Nick. And well, Rene M... despite the fact that I told her once to f off because she was getting a bit snotty. But she was a very smart lady. Her husband, Myron, was a truly nice fellow.

[@BronsonOsborne]

enjoyed my friend

[@manolokonosko2868]

@19:05 EXCELLENT QUESTION, FREMER!!!! Almost EVERY record pressed today in the United States suffers from lack of Quality Control, as opening a brand new LP that is NOT pressed off center today is almost like winning the lottery. And it isn't warped, then it's an added bonus. Because of that problem, I went through 3 US pressings of the 2012 stereo White Album until I paid more money and bought a European pressing..... And you got a bullshit answer from this guy and his robotic automated pressing plant. The frequency of off centered records is much greater and the degree of inaccuracy much more than what he is quoting. I'm sorry, but I will try to stick to German, UK or Japanese pressings whenever possible. His answer is deflecting blame: The cutting engineer is going to provide a perfectly centered lacquer. It is the carelesnsess that follows at the pressing plant that yields so many records with untrue centers - INCLUDING MOBILE FIDELITY! I returned a brand new sealed $200 record (Aimee Mann - Los In Space ) for that same reason., It is unacceptable. All they need to do it to hire someone whose job would be to take s record off a batch, test it and play it for flaws so that the problem can be arrested quickly and not let a shipment of 10,000 , 50,000 records leave the factory all f--cked up as they have been doing for years now since the rebirth of the LP.

[@chrisrobertson9264]

I remember when the sugar beet factory was running You could smell it in Somis

[@LPS-R-US]

Fascinating. I wonder if WALMART vinyl is pressed in such a well organized plant...lol.

[@trackingangle929]

Wal-Mart vinyl is same as everyone else’s

[@kentdaigle]

WOW.....

[@Michael-bj4sz]

What is the reason for stamping vs injection molding?

[@edwardhashimoto263]

PVC can not be extruded hot enough to be able to flow into an injection mold so another material would need to be used but nothing else matches PVC to be able to form the grooves accurately and create a low noise floor

[@UptownReef]

Who TF clips on those mics?! Mike, it would take less than 5 seconds to clip those on correctly. Step it up, bro!

[@trackingangle929]

Would take 5 seconds for you to detail how best to clip on microphones

[@brianmoss5483]

Someone ought to fix those labels with a sharpie. Ha

[@trackingangle929]

I'm trying to figure out what you mean. What do you mean?

[@AnchorTH]

​@@trackingangle929I think he's referring to "Garfunkle"

[@brianmoss5483]

Yes sharpie the shipping labels

[@xprcloud]

"Environmentally friendly" way to mechanically engrave digital sourced musing into plastic, making is lower fidelity, makes perfect sense.

[@trackingangle929]

it was tried but it didn't work...

[@revelry1969]

Too bad not a good record will ever be pressed there. 99% of these modern pressings are mastered like crap all done on a DAW and PCM’d and dynamics squashed. The last few new artists on vinyl I have bought sound like crap. Mike this is your next battle fighting crap modern mastering of digital sourced vinyl records. These guys seem legit but they are just jumping on the vinyl craze. We don’t only want well manufactured vinyl…we want great masterings and cutting. It’s amazing that I can buy a disk from 1959 and it smokes these modern faux remasters.

[@trackingangle929]

Whoah! Wait a minute. Rick Hashimoto spent decades developing and running RTI. He’s the opposite of a bandwagon jumper on-er!

[@trackingangle929]

And yes, many poor masterings produced but more great ones available now than any one person can afford to buy…

[@trueaudiofiles8453]

Most of the ones done here will be Mofi which use no modern mastering technics or DAWs and no Mofi titles are using PCM files unless it’s what the original master was.

[@revelry1969]

@@trueaudiofiles8453 cool, thanks for the clarification. But I still stand by that many modern remasters or even first release modern recordings are crap. They are compressed out dynamically hard. How do you know as a presser if you have a good sounding mastering and are you picky only to get lacquers from the good mastering/cutting houses? You are just provided a lacquer normally, right? I hope you never “do” T Swift as her vinyl pressings sound terrible (my wife loves her). I love mofi. Glad to hear mofi. Do you validate the masterings are good quality before you press them, You are the last guard of crap pressings/masterings that get into the market? Your shop looks like you will press a good disk. It wasnt a rip on your shop, I like how clean it was and don’t question your ability to press a good quality disk, but you are at the mercy of the mastering/cutting. I have been burned too many times with crap masterings these days. Many people don’t even play their vinyl. Just put em on a shelf for show. The quality nowadays of the source recordings is so suspect. With regards to Mofi. Many including Mike are not really a fan of mofi after the DSD thing (maybe not before either). Why didn’t he say he wasn’t a fan in this video? I honestly believe mofi is the only one pushing the edges to get a great cutting from a digital file and using DSD. I love all my Mofi pressings even the 10 UD1S I have. Rock on. You guys appear to be experts at pressing. If it is compromised before pressing than we all lose. What are the disks you have pressed recently ? Any you can say? I will seek a few out. Hope all well for you. Never questioned your ability to press a disk.

[@trueaudiofiles8453]

@@revelry1969 I don’t work for Fidelity Pressing. I can’t speak to what they take for jobs but I would doubt they refuse to press something because it wasn’t mastered to audiophile standards or mastered with modern brickwalling.