Vinyl records firm presses onLouis Aguilar / The Detroit News
Detroit -- If ever a National Register of Historic, Cool, Hard-core, 20th-Century Machinery is created, Archer Record Pressing would be a landmark.
Archer is one of the last companies in the world still making vinyl records -- a technology the corporate music industry decided to banish four decades ago.
This third-generation family business doesn't fear the death of vinyl: There's always a subculture of musicians that want their work on albums. Archer fears its massive record machines will die. And the machines constantly break down.
"We rely on the best of 1970s technology," said Joe Archer, whose father Norm, started the business in 1965.
The company has no choice. The last record-making machine is believed to have been made in 1986, according to various Web sites dedicated to vinyl records.
The five presses at Archer were bought from the other record press companies that went under decades ago.
A sole company in North America sells the specialized parts for the machines. At its core, a record-making machine is a hydraulic press with a closing force of 100 tons. It has steam pipes, tubes, buttons, motors, molds and mechanical doo-dads specific to mass-producing vinyl.
In operation, the machines produce a kind of score of heavy industry sounds. The boom of the press can be heard a half-block away. There's a rhythm of hissing steam, a hydraulic whoosh, a high-pitched metallic slice, the low rumble of a generator.
Few know how to fix the record machines. One is Mike Archer, 43, who learned by growing up watching Joe, his father, fix them.
"It's a daily battle," Mike Archer said. "They're finicky machines. If your scrap rate starts going up, you start looking at the press and say, 'All right, what are you doing to me today?'" Scrap rate refers to the number of defective records.
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