Apollo Masters Fire - February 2020 - Current events

Scott Hull - Brings current events to this podcast.  Just a few days ago - Apollo Masters Headquarters, Factory, and Warehouse were destroyed by fire. Thankfully no one was hurt - but the repercussions will be felt for many months - maybe years.  Scott talks with KJ about this event and why it's SO significant to the entire record-making community.


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Music heard :
Artist - Bill Laurance
Song -  Aftersun
Listen on Spotify :  https://open.spotify.com/track/1U4x761c1TSmtDcsZUhs3G?si=K1DD_6bsTN--2E2lM3lK9g

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. I'm Scott Hull, the chief engineer and owner of Master Disc in New York. And I'm going to come to you with another episode of Making Vinyl. Today it's a little different. And today, instead of answering questions from the uh from the floor, um we've got a fairly recent news item to discuss. If you follow vinyl closely, you've already heard about it. But if you haven't, uh one of the major manufacturers of uh lacquer, um, a company was called Apollo Masters, um, their factory and storage facility in California uh was destroyed by fire um this past week. Uh today's uh February 10th, so this happened just about uh five or six days ago. But in any case, this event, uh it's obvious has uh replic replications, rep repercussions, repercussions all throughout the uh the vinyl industry. And um I'm I'm here today again with my trusted sidekick, KJ from the Odyssey. Hello, hello. Hey man, uh glad you're here. Because this is uh uh we all usually have a lot of fun, but uh uh this one's a kind of a serious topic.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Does that mean that I can't suggest that we rename the podcast to not making vinyl with master desk?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Oh well they'll start too soon? Too soon. Too soon. Yes. Got it. So uh let's do a little background for our uh uh listeners. I mean, some of you are you know mastering and maybe even cutting in uh students or engineers, and so may you may know all about this process, but I think it's probably worth giving a little background because we've talked about some of these things before, but a record is made uh in a press, in a pressing plant. Prior to being pressed, the metal parts that are needed in the press are made at a plating facility. The parts that are plated in the plating facility are cut in a mastering studio, and typically they're cut on a lacquer blank, uh a flat piece of metal covered with um lacquer. And we call it lacquer, it's it's actually a uh fairly complex formula of a whole bunch of different compounds, but um it's a little bit like a dried paint or a semi-dried paint. It also kind of smells like and kind of looks like um um uh nail polish. And it has some of the same characteristics as as nail polish, but um it doesn't ever get quite as hard as nail polish does, so it stays sort of semi-soft, and that's allows us to cut into it. Those blanks were um manufactured at this plant in Apollo in California, um, and there's only one other place on the planet right now that is making lacquer blanks, and that's a a plant in Japan. Uh we've been buying parts with these these blank lacquer from both facilities. Um the um the plant in Japan uh has only been uh making them for a few years. But Apollo and Transco, the two companies that are represented there in their plant, uh go back many, many decades. I mean uh uh Apollo and Transco were separately making record blanks um f uh 38 or 39 years ago when I first started at MasterDisc. So this company's been around for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

You know, can I just interject a question here? Sure. How the F-Bomb were there only two companies in the world making this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Well, it seems crazy now in the midst of this resurgence of vinyl, but uh there weren't only two companies. There were, you know, uh twelve at one point, and there was a so there are only two companies left making this stuff. Yeah, the when vinyl stopped being cool uh during the awful, you know, digital only days. Um in in sort of dramatic music here. Apollo was really the only company that was able to survive that. Uh they was they kept making blanks. There was a very small uh disco and DJ market, um uh and there was you know some diehard consumers, but there were very, very, very few labels making new records. And so they hung on. Um and uh they then ramped up their production significantly over the past uh five to ten years as the world rediscovered vinyl and their you know their love for the the black plastic.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It it it goes pretty deep. Um I I'm repeating from what I've been told and for from what I've surmised from what I know about about lacquerers, it's not an easy process to make, and it's an even more difficult process to to hurry. Uh in other words, um I I I sometimes make the analogy uh in in this case to food. When I'm not making an analogy to automobiles and racing, it's a foo food analogy.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah. Does this one have to do with quesadillas or pizza or something?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

No, you know that that that really fun dessert you get at the end of the day when you're really splurging on a big meal and you get that like chocolate bomb cake dessert. Molten the lava lava cake kind of thing. Yeah. They all have different names. Well, I learned the hard way that those things take three days to make.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Oh. So so this is so this takes forever to do. I assume that it's capital intensive. I assume that it, you know, that you have to hire and train a staff, that there's certain machines involved, uh there's a reason that nobody picked up on the fact that vinyls had a resurgence for the past, I don't know how many years, and maybe, you know, there's a market for these things.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Well, I I was told that there's a company that makes uh recording tape in France that has been trying to make lacquers and has been uh diligently working towards that task for over a year and still doesn't have a product that we can reliably cut on. In in a hundred words or less, can you tell me why they why why why why they're failing? Um the formula is a trade secret, um uh for obvious reasons. So it's not just you can't just go buy lacquer. Um the cutting properties that we require to produce a quiet record um have you know 0.000000001 tolerance for imperfections or uh or um uh batch problems or mixture problems or humidity problems. Um so uh it's hard to maintain a lacquer uh uh production line, even once you've produced them, uh it's hard to keep producing them. Very hand-intensive process, just like for all the reasons that we love vinyl, um uh you know, we have the same issues with the uh with the lacquer manufacturer. I can literally receive a box of 25 lacquers, and for no explainable reason, you know, the third one from the top uh sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Gotcha. Well, okay, so so so um so the Apollo and the the company, the Japanese company that's like Coke and Pepsi, and in their vault is the secret formula to awesome lacquers. And here comes this other company, the the tape manufacturer, and they want to be the RC Cola. Um if that's even I don't know, Dr. Pepper, if that's even still a reference, anyway, and and but but they they haven't quite got a formula that anybody likes to drink at the moment is that yeah, that's step one.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Um step one is figuring out the formula, but you the the formula is tied directly to the to the machinery and the methods that you use to make them. Um it's it's classic old world brain trust information that's that's needed. And um really the only way that it's that it's gained is by purchasing the uh uh the assets and and and um staff from an existing company or spending a heck of a lot of time experimenting and and making and having failures. Um you know it's I I can't really describe how difficult the process it is. Uh um this lacquer has to be um of of exactly the right um firmness to be able to hold the groove and not just snap back like jello. Um it has to be able to be uh when it's cut uh the chip or the piece of the of the record that we're taking out, the groove, has to be able to be sucked out and off of the disc in such a way in one continuous strand. In other words, it has to be able to be separated like a a strand or a bead. Um and um it has to stick appropriately to aluminum, so it has to have enough adhesion that it'll stay on the lacquer blank. Oh, and then it has to be able to survive about a 200 degree um uh um uh plating bath uh so that the metal parts can be grown off of it after it's uh after it's been cut. There are modern materials, but I'm told by experts that do this stuff for a living, that there aren't any modern materials at the moment that we know of that have all of these um the electrical and the the the density and the porosity of the blah blah blah, all these big scientific words. There's no other there's no other way to do this. Yeah. Okay, so for part of the sidebar, there are other blanks that we can cut into. Uh um we've talked about well briefly about DMM. So at the moment, we have one supplier in the in Japan that up to this point was only supplying about 25% of the worldwide market. Um it depends on who you ask, that number's somewhere in the 25 to 30 percent. But you know, so now the the world is trying to get their supply of lacqueres from this one plant, so everyone's gonna be on short supply. So DMM is uh completely a separate process. Uh direct metal mastering is what DMM stands for, and the metal they use is copper. So that is a copper coating on a stainless steel plate, but the rest of the process is kind of similar. Uh the differences that most people note are one of um aesthetic differences between the two. And as it turns out, uh direct metal mastering uh tends to be a little less expensive because, well, one, it's it's it's done in countries where um quality of living isn't as high, so the prices are lower, but premium, but presently mostly done in the Czech Republic at this point. So um so um uh environmental concerns and and uh human rights uh concerns aren't aren't nearly as as high a priority as they are in the US. Indeed. There will still be records made, and and I think one of the underlying um important facts that I want to point out here is that this isn't does not mean a sudden end of uh record releases, but it does mean that we have to think a little more carefully uh uh about how we we use our lockers and if we're going to continue to have a vinyl to care about and to uh swoon over and to review and talk about and and justify spending lots of money on on cartridges and tone arms and turntables and and tube power amps and things like that. As a group, you know, we have to we have to make sure we have adequate supply of the raw materials. And and this is a uh uh is a big issue. Um what I did also want to mention is there's uh some polycarbonate, some plastic discs that can be cut onto to actually make records, but they don't sound the same as uh black vinyl records. Um and there's also a process which I've alluded to occasionally on previous episodes, uh HD vinyl. They have in development now a process that will eliminate the need for lacquer and for any disc cutting at all. They're gonna go straight to being able to make a stamper with a laser beam. The jury's really out as to whether this is even possible or how it's gonna sound, but they're getting closer and closer to being able to do it. The bad news is it's gonna be really expensive and it's gonna be a slow process, so it's not going to be a good substitute for our tried and true lacquer, uh, which gets it done you know pretty regular relatively easily and gets it done pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

So the question uh I think the question the bear's asking is is can the Japanese company ramp up and supply the other 70% of the market? And are they going to quintuple prices?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Uh-huh. Um that's that's uh that's all of the above. Um uh they are um uh as as of the last communication we've had them with them, they are rationing their supply so that each each customer gets us you know a a small amount, uh presumably enough to s so they can stay open. And the second point is they don't know um what's gonna happen to their prices. Um I think once uh once the once we get a a week or two into this and see what else is going to happen. I I I think it might be a mistake for them to radically raise the prices. Well, I don't know. It's not my business. Um I'm actually forced with into the same problem. Um it won't be too long before I have to choose which projects I'm going to um record on to my the the few lacquers I have available per month per month. And um so there's gonna be some fallout. I think uh consumers not gonna see it uh until maybe Christmas time this year. There might be fewer releases, but there's still a lot of capacity in direct metal, and um you know if you're a real fan of of the original lacquer-made records, you might have to look a little harder to find them. And um anybody I talk to, I'm gonna encourage them to actually put on the outside of the disc, you know, uh that it's a a little real lacquer uh icon of some sort that uh that uh kind of test a testimony to the uh to the way the record was cut.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

So so MasterD you you and MasterDisc don't have to necessarily turn away clients uh in the you know in the in the intervening months as much as you have to decide which ones are going to get real lacquer and which ones are gonna get an alternate method. Is that the case?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Well, we only have facilities for lacquer. So uh but uh there's the double-edged side of the sword. If we raise our prices as because uh demand is out uh is outreaching our supply, um then more people will choose DMM as an alternate process. So at the moment, people are paying a little bit more to use lacquers. Um that bar will just move to another location. In other words, the people who are on the fence about spending the extra money for lacquer will be compelled to make their records on DMM because of the higher prices. It's um i it's early, it's really still kind of early, but um given the conversations that I've been seeing on social media and uh in the press, I actually just got a phone interview with a reporter from the New York Times that wanted to run an article about this the replications. I keep screwing that up. The imp the uh how this uh repercussions repercussions, thank you. You think I could get like it's a I'm I'm here for you.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I'm your I'm your thesaurus.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

It's like uh a um a uh uh a percussionist with a stutter, I guess, is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I'm just gonna let that one sail by.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Percussion repercussions. Sorry, folks. I am an audio engineer, not uh not a linguist.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Um two syllables max.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Uh I don't know. What do you think? That's that's what that's what we usually have to say. When someone asks us how it when someone asks us how does it sound, we usually say, I I don't know. How do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

So I'm gonna mention something that we you know uh I feel compelled to have mentioned earlier now, and that's that nobody was hurt, um, is what I read. Nobody was hurt in this thing, nobody died in the fire.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yes, I wouldn't we we wouldn't be making um any sort of light of this if uh if that had been the case. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

I I might I might still be making fun of it. No, perhaps not.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

No, the story um that was in the paper, um which you can look up, uh the company Apollo Masters, and literally if you uh uh Google Apollo Masters fire, uh you'll still see the black plume of smoke uh rising from this uh building in in um in California. The sort of good news is that uh the material that they had stored there, lacquer, um um uh the bad news is it's incredibly flammable. The good news is it burns very, very quickly. So um uh uh the building fire was actually contained within a couple hours, but the building was a complete destruction it was completely destroyed.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Um yeah, the manager, um, one of the managing partners of the of the facility told um told a friend that uh it sounded like uh the first indication that they knew that there was a problem, it sounded like a truck had had driven into the building. Um they thought they literally, you know, like they're like someone had had backed into the building on the loading dock. It was this huge bang, and then they looked out and over the the floor and saw a fire starting out, and everybody scrambled and got out, and there was nobody injured. It was and no firefighters injured and in putting it out as well, which is also very, very fortunate for everybody involved.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Um so uh d do we know when they'll be back up and running?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

No, they haven't they haven't committed to to much of anything. Um well machinery would have been destroyed as well. Um I I would be really surprised if it could be salvaged. They would have stockpiled probably a year's worth or or maybe potentially even more worth of the raw materials needed to make a record. So they're gonna have to, besides rebuilding a facility, besides rebuilding the line, besides all the testing and alignment and the quality control and everything else, they're gonna have to resource all resource all of the lacquer. Now there's a fair amount of money in the vinyl business now, so there's potential for someone to to come along and invest and and and solve these problems. And I'm pretty confident, to be honest. I I I'm not really one of the um the sky is falling kind of chicken little sort of uh thoughts on this matter. I'm I'm actually pretty confident that uh the minds that we have in in the the record making business will find a solution.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well, but still still, I mean, as discussed, somebody's gotta have the recipe for coke, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

It's oh well uh you know the MDC, the the plant from Japan um is called MDC, and and uh they use a different formula. They uh invented their own uh formula and um and it's different. It has a different characteristic than the Transco and it has a different characteristic than the Apollo lacquerers. So um, you know, uh when we had two or three uh lines going at the same time, you picked which ones, which ones were the best or which ones that were were gonna get the job done. I actually haven't mentioned uh uh there's a little confusion, uh potential confusion there. Uh Transco used to be completely independent from Apollo, but a number of years ago, Apollo purchased the Transco line and its formula and housed them both um in their one big facility in California. So we actually lost two lines of lacquers in the one in the one fire. Jeez. And I for left out another interesting point. That facility was pretty much one of the significant um uh makers of the cutting styli that we used. The the little sapphire-tipped um uh stylide that we used to cut the record, um, were actually manufactured at that Apollo plant and um and sourced from other um uh locations as well. So we're uh in a mad scramble to find cutting styli now, in addition to trying to find lacquer. So it's uh it's an interesting time.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Uh yeah, interesting to say the least, and uh I guess it won't make your job any any easier.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

No, and um the reason for the news and the podcast is so people you know who want to learn a little bit more about why this is an important factor, why why it matters so much, you know, they can learn a little bit about it, but also to let people know that your records aren't gonna go away, there's still other ways of making them, and that we're gonna get this, get the lacquer process. Um well, let me put it a different way. Um, lacquers aren't haven't gone away. There is still one very substantial manufacturer of it. Um it's we're just gonna have to um make do with what we got. We're gonna just gonna have to it's we're gonna have to deal with the rationing, and there will be some disappointed people in the process. But that's w interestingly enough, I've mentioned the Making Vinyl conference at several times um uh during the podcast. And I I've attended all three of them, and at each one of them, at least once or twice during each one of those conferences, uh, someone got on the mic and said, Uh, why aren't we talking about lacquers? We only have two manufacturers of lacquerers worldwide. And if one of those you know manufacturers went away, uh we'd be, you know, insert um unpleasant uh adjective. Screwed? Uh yeah, at least.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Um Well, um well, it wasn't that oppression statement from that person. I hope that person bought a lottery ticket that day because they really called it.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Well, really did, and um um it's uh tragic and and um we're we're we're all trying to sort of pull together as a community to um uh to do something about it, but at the same time we're all struggling to make ends meet and to pay our staffs and uh keep our people keep people employed and to keep the the lights on in our facilities. So uh it's uh It's an interesting time. It's it's not um it's not like uh you know like a potato famine, you know, where the government should get involved in subsidized vinyl manufacturing or something, but um it is a it's an area where um I'm not quite sure what to suggest. Um it's it's actually still kind of fresh in our minds and we're we're all kind of uh discussing uh what it means to us and how we're gonna how we're gonna react, how we're gonna um uh try to get by.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Well, there was no way we were gonna come up with solution with a solution today on this podcast, but uh, you know, hence the you know, but uh it it's you know it's interesting. I mean it you know that I I have a feeling this is gonna be a subject of conversation for uh subsequent episodes as as the story sort of develops. Film at 11.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

I guess so. Um I that's that's kind of it for the newscast. Look up for the the the more details as they come along, but you'll probably go into the uh holiday season probably notice um uh maybe notice viewer titles um uh uh uh in display. I I'm hoping that's not the case. Um I know the the folks that uh are cutting DMM and and plating um DMM uh in in Europe are um uh probably have the capability of doing more um than they're doing. So they'll probably be able to make up the difference. It's unfortunate that um that places like mine and um probably the you know hundred or so other uh cutting uh facilities um you know might lose out on market share and it may stay gone. It may have a um a lasting impact on our on our business. We'll we'll just have to see.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Indeed. And listeners, if you uh you know, if you if you notice anything in the you know fewer funeral records or an artist's uh record from an artist you love that uh you know was gonna come out and didn't come out, um hit us up, you know, on Twitter, on uh Instagram, on Facebook at masterdisc.com. Let us know what you what you see, and um, you know, we could include your your comments or observations in the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

I'm gonna re reiterate there's some very smart people uh involved in this, as uh not to m not the least of which was the company that had the devastating fire. So um their their uh knowledge and brain trust is is gonna go somewhere. Um if if if they rebuild um then uh everything will be fine, or if they get redistributed to other places that are gonna start making lockers, then then maybe it won't take them a year to get up to speed. So um so it's an opportunity for somebody with a couple million dollars uh um to start a lock. Can I write a check? Uh I didn't yeah, well, Marcus, sure. You can write a check for that.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Oh, well, there you go. Well, um we'll we'll you know we'll follow the story as it unfolds.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yep. You heard it here second.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Um Indeed. Yes. And this episode was brought to you by the number two and the word repercussion.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Repercussions. Yes. That's a um um it's actually a four-piece um repercussion ensemble, I believe. The repercussions.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Now we're gonna have to start a band called repercussions. Which you won't be able to say.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

I'm gonna end our listeners' misery with a sign-off here. And uh thank everyone for listening, uh, despite our um slap happiness today. This has been Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. We'll catch up with another episode very shortly, and thanks for listening. Goodbye. See everyone.