Step 1 of 4
Send us a playlist
Paste a link or a tracklist. We check run times against the format and come back within two working days with a side split.
Any playlist. Even the guilty ones, especially the guilty ones. Wax forgives everything.
The Process
Six weeks,
one squeeze.
Four steps between the playlist in your pocket and a record on your shelf. Two of them need your ears. All of them go through a 1978 press that we bought secondhand and love unconditionally.
Four steps
From playlist
to platter.
Each step below is a real week of somebody's life, usually Theo's. Read them in order; the wax does.
Step 2 of 4
We cut the lacquer
Theo masters for vinyl (less low end, tamed sibilance), then cuts a lacquer at 33⅓ or 45 rpm. You approve a reference before anything is plated.
Your songs become a groove, carved in real time on a spinning disc. This is where the magic physics lives.
Step 3 of 4
The press closes
Two pucks of PVC at 160 °C, one from each hopper, meet between stampers for 28 seconds. The swirl is different every time.
Two colours of hot wax meet in a single squeeze. Swirl: unpredictable. On purpose. Mostly.
Step 4 of 4
It ships flat
Cooled overnight, trimmed, sleeved by hand, packed in a stiffened mailer. Tracked shipping in the UK and EU; further on request.
Board-backed, never bent, with a note about which happy accidents happened to yours.
The calendar
Six weeks,
roughly.
Here is where the time goes. Two of these weeks are yours to hold up, so keep your headphones somewhere you can find them.
| When | What happens | How | Your part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Playlist check and mastering | Theo checks run times against the format, splits the sides, and masters for vinyl: less low end, tamed sibilance. | Approve the side split. |
| Week 2 | Lacquer cut and your approval | The lacquer is cut in real time at 33⅓ or 45 rpm. You get a reference recording of the actual cut. | Listen. Say yes, or say what is wrong. |
| Weeks 3 and 4 | Plating and stampers | The lacquer is silvered, nickel-plated, and turned into the metal stampers Bertha presses from. This part cannot be hurried. | Nothing. Enjoy the wait. |
| Week 5 | Test pressing | Five test presses come off the platen. We keep four, play them end to end, and post one to you. | Your listen. This is the last stop before pressing. |
| Week 6 | Pressing, trimming, sleeving, shipping | Bertha presses the run, records cool overnight, get trimmed, sleeved by hand, and boarded into a stiffened mailer. | Wait by the door. Optional but traditional. |
Shipping is tracked in the UK and EU. Further afield on request, and with a sturdier box.
The Machine
One press.
Born 1978.
Bertha is an SMT-12, built the year punk was already over, bought from a plant in the Midlands that was closing down. She weighs about as much as a small van and has never, not once, pressed two identical records.
1
Twin hoppers
Two colours, two hoppers, 90 grams from each per LP. Refilled every twenty records, by hand, from a very heavy sack.
2
The platen
Heated to 160 °C, closes at about 100 tonnes for 28 seconds, then cools with water while the record is still in it.
3
Control panel
Fourteen dials, one working gauge, and a sticker that says DO NOT in Theo's handwriting. We obey the sticker.
4
Trim station
Shaves the flash from the edge. Sixty records an hour on a good day; the trimmings go back in the hopper as Car Park.
SMT-12 PRESS
ONE OPERATOR AT A TIME
SERVICED EVERY 400 RECORDS
What can go wrong
Honestly? These
three things.
About one record in fourteen does not make it out the door. We tell you when yours is one of them, we press it again, and the reject goes in the crate by the entrance for a fiver.
Off-centre
The centre hole lands a millimetre or two off, and a slow song develops a slow wobble. Under 0.5 mm we ship it; over, we press again.
Non-fill
The wax did not reach the edge of the groove before it cooled. Sounds like a soft tearing noise in the quiet bits. Always a reject.
Warp
Pulled from the press a minute early, or stacked warm. A gentle dish that most turntables forgive, and we do not. Overnight cooling fixes most of it.
batch 39 · press 7 · the wobble was audible on side B
batch 40 · press 1 · cold puck, warm room, wrong order
batch 42 · press 19 · stacked before they were ready
Start the clock
Week one starts
when you send it.
A playlist link is enough. We come back within two working days with a side split, a price, and the date Bertha can fit you in.