Schallplatten Pallas pressed yet.

The oldest machines have a half-century on the hump, but they are still well in the business: In the northern German Diepholz produces one of the last day stamping 10,000 records. A journey into the history of consumer electronics.

 

It whistles, hisses, squeaks and clatters - louder than a disco. When Pallas Diepholz in Lower Saxony, one of the last remaining vinyl stamping Europe, is still partly to almost 50-year-old machines. Here you can "time travel experience," Frank Dietz calls Mann, technical manager at Pallas in the hell of noise, where every day 10,000 small and large records to be produced.

Basic ingredient for each record is Polyvinylchorid (PVC). "The exact recipe is secret, however," Dietz says Mann. The PVC granule is heated, and as a black mass on a form is pressed. Matrices with the A-and B-side then pressing this mass with 180 degree hot steam flat. Then the black disc down with a suction cup to focus in a paper bag sunk.

Everything fully automatic.

Several of the sixties, born in the stamping machines, he still inherited from his father, the 1949, the company says Pallas CEO Holger Neumann. Parts of this were on the market no longer available. If one was needed, ready the company's own locksmith to. The junior for the company would house trained.

Customers: Indie labels, the vanguard of the industry

For clients of his company to 80 percent among independent record companies, explains the company's boss. But even big labels like Sony, EMI and BMG in order Diepholz. 60 percent of production goes into the techno and hip-hop scene. The remaining 40 percent are high-quality records from the fields of rock, pop, jazz and classical. Only recently was at Pallas, the complete catalog of the Rolling Stones has been pressed.

Most customers of the company are based in the United States. Only recently has the American record company by Metallica 80,000 copies of the new album "Death Magnetic" in Diepholz ordered. In the Americas were the customers of the quality of Diepholzer Vinyls confident man says Dietz. There will even consider, plates with the quality seal "Made by Pallas' device.

It is much easier to a CD as a vinyl record manufacture.

A compact disc of which 100,000 per day in Diepholzer works are produced in 3.4 seconds is ready for a record 26 seconds are needed. Probably for this reason, many record companies at the beginning of the nineties, the death of the record predicted, says Neumann. "At that time we had about the production."

Small but stable niche

But it was different: In the techno scene attacked the mid-nineties many DJs on the old vinyl back. "I find that vinyl really sounds better than a CD," says DJ and producer Mousse T. from Hanover. It is for club-goers even more thrilling, a DJ to see the beautiful art and vinyl handle than small pieces of silver to use, or perhaps even the entire evening on a computer monitor to stare.

He had not a lot. And because CDs were not so hard, pick it, unlike many colleagues, is always less for the record, admits Mousse T. A. For many DJs, the plates with the "only a matter of philosophy or even pure nostalgia." In addition, there were labels that their music released on vinyl only.

Records would be but never quite disappears, Mousse T is convinced. Finally, they were "cult".

It is this cult of the black discs pay homage to the members of the Analogue Audio Association, a registered association for the preservation and promotion of analog music reproduction. "Since its founding in 1990, we work to ensure that a significant part of the cultural heritage of humanity - namely, the analog vinyl record - not the supposed progress victim to fall," it says on the website aaanalog.de.

A Keeper of analog recordings is Uwe Mehlaff from Hanover. He collects records, cassettes, tapes and CDs. The "analog music enjoyment" interested him the manual says Mehlaff.

"You have the record out of the shell take it on the turntable set, they cleanse, tone arm gently to hang up - this is fascinating," says the 51-year-olds. People like it when he should Pallas Diepholz remain in force to rattle.