How to make a vinyl record  Vinyl may have been overtaken by CDs
and downloads but it still has passionate fans, with the last
major plant in the UK pressing about 25,000 records a week on
its 40-year-old presses   • The Guardian,   • Jump to comments
() vinyl factory making vinyl records One of the Vinyl Factory's
staff cleaning the nickel stamper being it goes in the press -
it's a noisy job but the product is a thing of beauty.
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian  Forty-year-old
record presses, installed by EMI in the 70s vinyl heyday, grind
noisily away, oozing hydraulic oil on to the floor. Long pipes
run the length of the factory floor, carrying steam to power the
presses. It's as if the digital age has never occurred.  Hi-tech
this is not, but über-cool niche it certainly is. I'm on an
industrial estate in Hayes, Middlesex. This was once the EMI
vinyl manufacturing plant, until the record label sold it off in
2001, and it became the Vinyl Factory. In the 70s this plant
pressed 1m records a week.