Perfectly Fine ≠ Perfectly Flat
Our aim with Swingin’ Gate was, is and will remain the perfect LP. Technically and artistically. A technically perfect LP is round and flat — in our understanding at least. When we received the first 500 copies of Soulful Journey, we noticed that not all LPs were as flat as we expected them to be. We didn’t notice this slight warp when we had the LP in our hands — but it becomes evident once the vinyl spins on the platter. It’s not a hill and dale kind of warp, the effect isn’t audible and it is also not big enough to get the woofer cones pumping like mad. And the warps are also so small that the folks in the pressing plant didn’t notice them when the inspected the LPs before puttting them into sleeves and into the cover. But the sad fact is that we have a pile of LPs that are not without exception up to our standards.
What do do?
Short of trashing yet another pile of perfectly fine records, we break each and every seal of the outer sleeve, pull the LPs out, put them into our ultrasonic record washing machine and check them for absolute flatness spinning on the glass platter of a Brinkmann Balance turntable. If the LP shows the slightest of slight warps, we put it into our AFI flat. record flattener. The next six hours, the LP undergoes a elaborate process of being warmed to exactely 60° C slowly and then cooling down to room temperature just as slowy. 60° C are not enough to plastify, let alone melt the vinyl, or even worse, damage the groove. The vinyl gets just a tad softer than it is at 20° C. But because the duration is so long, 60° C are enough to literally iron out any wrinkles in the vinyl. Once cooled down again, the LP is as flat as can be.No longer perfectly fine, but perfectly flat, too.
But not only that.
Slowly raising and lowering the temperature of the vinyl lets the plastic molecules rearrange their structure to a more relaxed state. If you’ve heard of cryo-ing and have also witnessed the effect deep-freezing has on metals and how they change their tonal properties … well, tempering plastics has the same effect. The re-arranged molecular structure makes itself very audible. Because the vinyl has less internal tension, the duration and amplitude of resonances will change to the (much) better. The music will sound more relaxed, more natural and less plastic-ky. Because the molecular structure is more relaxed, the groove walls become more elastic and less brittle. This in turn leads makes the record more resilient against the brute force of the hard rock that is dragged through a soft material — the record lives longer, will handle more plays with more grace and less groove noise.
Coming to the point:
Perfection has never been a free lunch. Instead of just shipping LPs to our customers, we burden ourselves with even more work. Do the math: if one LP stays in the AFI flat. for six hours, it takes us half a day just for one perfect 2 LP set. We spend hours cleaning LPs so you don’t have to because the mould release chemistry no longer makes the LP slippery and sticky at the same time (if you don’t clean new LPs before the first spin, the silicone mould release forms that goo around your stylus that is so hard to remove…). And some warps aren’t fully flattened out after the first try, requiring a second 6 hour cycle. And so on… We’re sure you value our perfectionism even more after having heard how glorious a perfectly flat and tempered copy of A Soulful Journey can sound. And you’ll agree that this justifies a price increase of 20 Swiss Francs per album (which nowhere nearly covers our cost, but makes the long hours we spend inspecting, washing and tempering your LPs more bearable.)
To make a long story short:
It’s not a typo that A Soulful Journey now costs CHF 80 instead of 60 — it’s just the reality that perfection has always had its price. But at least you know now the true meaning (and practicality) of Records made with TLC.