The heart of the plant
We press with Toolex Alpha fully-automatic machines, some of which are over 40 years old. Each machine is unique and is no longer produced. Maintenance is therefore very time-consuming. Technical understanding along with a lot of enthusiasm are necessary to keep our machines running.
The pressing process is also connected with a lot of manual work because the settings on the machines have to be adjusted individually for each order. Both the test pressings and the main pressings undergo a final quality control - the records are checked visually and acoustically.
Records are pressed from the plastic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC for short). In this context, the question of whether our records are made of virgin vinyl or regranulate arises again and again. Virgin vinyl is a new granulate that has not yet been used. Regranulate, on the other hand, is made from PVC waste from record production. This means that cut edges and excess records can be shredded and re-integrated into the production cycle making it possible to reduce plastic waste considerably.
Our many years of experience have shown that the use of regranulate does not result in any auditory losses. Therefore we generally use recycled granulate for our black 140g pressings. Only the surface of the record can show slight streaks on closer inspection. Due to production restrictions, both our 7" and our 180g press are made with virgin vinyl. By request, we can also press 140g orders with virgin vinyl. Coloured pressings are generally made of Virgin granulate, as this is the only way to guarantee colour fastness.