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Start Local is focused on helping businesses and non-profits in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania, connect and grow together. Our aim is to bring together the many folks that make up our wonderful community in greater Philadelphia to share and learn from each other.
The Start Local podcast features interviews with business and nonprofit leaders from in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania.
The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce partners with the Start Local podcast to promote trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse, growing marketplace.
Learn more at the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce website, sccc.com.
Hey, hey, welcome to the Start Local Podcast. I am Liam Dempsey. I am here with Erik Gudmundson.
Hey, Erik, how are you today?
I'm doing very well. I'm actually a little extra excited because food and music are two of my favorite topics.
And today we're talking about music. So I'm ready.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And I think I'm ready, too. And I know I'm very excited.
I may not be ready, but I'm very excited. Folks, today we are pleased to welcome Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo.
Phil is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum record producer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer.
Ashley is a chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl, the Coatesville-based record-pressing company.
Yes, record-pressing company.
You heard that right, folks.
Owned by Phil.
And for clarity, I'll just go ahead and share that Ashley is Phil's daughter-in-law.
And while he's not with us here today in the podcast studio, we do also extend a big thanks to Drew Nicolo, Ashley's husband and Phil's son, if you keep the family tree straight there.
Because Drew was so kind in showing us around Studio 4 Vinyl's factory floor and graciously answering all of our questions about pressing records as we were getting set up and informed for this interview.
So thank you, Drew.
Yes, thank you, Drew. So many questions. And with that, welcome, Phil and Ashley. Thank you for joining us today.
Hey, man.
Thanks for having us.
It's my pleasure. It's great to be. And you guys are local, correct? I mean, you're in this area, right?
Yeah, absolutely. We are 100% focused on interviewing business and nonprofit leaders in and around Chester County.
Great. Yeah. So that's also awesome, too, because one of the main reasons we're here is because the Chester County Development Authority, we went to them through some friends and our attorney, and they were so welcoming to us in terms of setting up our move to where we are.
We were already all already in Chester County, actually, because we were originally in Nottingham.
But setting up our move here, our financing here, our relationship, finding our property.
I mean, there was so much that they did to encourage us to be here.
And now we're thrilled.
We've been here for a year and a half and it's cool.
So it's great to know that this has local roots.
Yeah, absolutely.
And thank you for leading us directly into our first question.
And it was really around just exactly that, the Chester County Economic Development Council,
Seedcopa.
Erik and I are familiar with that and through our work with the CCEDC.
And so we couldn't believe it.
Wait, there's a record company, a record-pressing company in Coatesville?
So that leads us to the direct question, Phil and Ashley, of why southeastern Pennsylvania?
You could have been anywhere.
Why here?
We love that you're here.
Tell us about why.
Originally, again, we started this business in, well, I guess it was 2020 is when it originally came to fruition.
My partner, Obi O'Brien, who you can see on the Studio 4 Vinyl website, he's a dear friend of mine, one of my mentors.
I've known him for 50 years.
We started looking for where to put the pressing plant.
He lived in Nottingham, which is on the outskirts there of Chester County to Lancaster.
And I live in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, which is far from that.
So we started looking like, where can we put this thing?
Where is it going to be?
And Obi found a location in Nottingham that was literally five minutes from his house and an hour and 12 from mine.
But it really worked out.
It was, as you know, right near, just about in Lancaster County.
It's way on the, it was literally on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland, Route 1, where the HERS potato chip factory is about 100 yards from there.
And we looked at it and it was like, wow, the price was good.
Everything seemed right.
And some of the people we wanted to use to help build the facility were in that area.
So, okay. So we moved to Nottingham and there we go. We started there in 2021 and the rest is history. We built the company there. We started during COVID and we can get into this. This may be a question further down the line, but just to get real quick.
We started during COVID, which is, as you can imagine, the best time to build a business that you have absolutely no idea how it goes and how it works.
Oh, and the equipment is made in Germany.
So, yeah, no problems with communication or travel or interface.
Great idea.
Okay.
Well, we did.
And through hell or high water, we built the place in Nottingham.
But the COVID was, again, it was a blessing and a curse.
It was a curse in that I had to learn how to use the equipment through WhatsApp while Erwin was in Dusseldorf, Germany, and I was here.
But on the plus side, you couldn't move fast.
You couldn't put in a massive mechanical factory quickly because it just couldn't happen.
So we had to move slow. And it turned out to be one of the best things because, again, we couldn't rush into it. And this business, making records, is one of the most difficult things in the world to do.
Let me stop you on that point, if I could, Phil, just because I have to ask, knowing its level of complexity or maybe not fully appreciating its level of complexity when you started, what inspired you and Phil to really go, or rather you and Obi to really go out and make a record-pressing plant in the first place?
Why would you take that on?
stupidity and complete lack of understanding of what it was to do. I mean, we were both in the
music business. I mean, let me back, maybe just backtrack that just a tiny bit. We were both in
the music industry for like 50 years. Again, very proud, highest world-class. Obie is Jon Bon Jovi's
right-hand man, has been with Jon for many years, as well as other great artists. Same thing,
roughhouse records, blah, blah, blah. And in 2017, I was with my other partner at Studio 4 Recording,
Will Yip, who's on the cover of Mix Magazine for his new facility that I'm also part of
in South Philly. But almost some of our clients were into all of a sudden making records, jazz,
independent rock. And I went to Will and I said, hey, we should build a vinyl pressing facility.
And he just looked at me and went, yeah, why don't we?
Okay, so I started looking into it.
And we discovered, yeah, records were on the return.
Obi and I had, you know, but the problem is, well, who are going to be, who are your clients going to be?
Well, we were close to the head of legacy at Universal and the music director at Disney and all these acts that it was like, well, you know what?
The biggest problem would normally be who are you going to work for?
Well, we have those contacts.
So, you know, again, being very naive with the process, it was like, yeah, I mean, make
a do a business that makes money when you sleep.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then as we got into it, we discovered, oh, oh, this is a pressure forged, you know,
I mean, it is one of the most complex molded plastic or high injection molded, not even high
injection. It's even harder to describe because making a record, a good record, is one of the
hardest things to do. And as a matter of fact, not to get too heavy into the technical side,
but a groove on a record is a tenth or a hundredth the size of a human hair.
that groove has to move up to 14,000 times a second,
which is a frequency of music.
Well, when you get that level of detail,
it makes making records easily the hardest
and most complex product to make in the world.
And we're going to get into that.
I definitely have questions on the technical side of that
because Erik and I geeked out a lot.
All the big ones.
Yeah.
So we decided to get in with,
we found some financing.
We jumped in and all of a sudden it was like, oh, crap.
We now have to figure this out.
And, you know, God keeps sending me angels.
I mean, great people, musicians, some of my temple students, Ashley, who came in not knowing how to do it, but ready to take their hands off and put their boxing gloves on.
We're going to make this work because we have to, because that's what we do.
Yeah, and that's where I want to jump in.
So Studio 4 Vinyl is technically up and running.
You're learning, you're starting to press things,
and you've started to land or at least are getting close to landing
these ever so important first contracts as you shared, Phil,
through your industry context.
Ashley comes in as the chief operating officer at Studio 4 Vinyl,
and you've been there since 2021.
And Ashley, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
But tell us about your day-to-day.
What does that look like?
What does it mean to run a record-pressing plant?
That is so cool.
Tell us about that.
What keeps you busy at work?
Everything.
It's everything.
Yeah.
One of our biggest mottos here is vinyl is chaos.
Everything you know is wrong.
Like every day, something that worked yesterday is not going to work today.
so most of my day-to-day is just keeping an eye on production uh timelines making sure that
everything that should be in motion is that um if something needs to be corrected it is corrected
thankfully i have an amazing team that uh work that works with me to make sure that everything
is running smoothly if something is not like i know about it the moment there is a problem
so thankfully because I have a good set of people I can focus on my customers I can answer questions
I can manage expectations I put out fires before a lot of people even know there is a fire and
that's really important for some of my customers who can hear well there's a problem and that
becomes catastrophic to them even though it might might be it might be but i don't want them to know
that not yet anyway right not yet yeah no not not anyway that's it's just like um you know i'll
figure it out before i even have to email them that there's a problem the printer's three weeks
behind i'll find someone else like we accidentally scratched a stamper putting it on we'll replace
it. Something happened during the cutting process or someone pressed the vinyl in the wrong color.
They'll never know. I'll reach out to the customer after the fact and say, hey, we pressed,
you know, some special copies for you. Do you want them? They'll never know it was an accident. We
did it on purpose. It's kind of like Bob Ross used to say, just happy little accidents, you know,
Make the world go by.
And the thing, again, real quick, you know, I'm sure we'll probably get into this, but there's probably at least 15 steps to making a record from getting the audio, cutting the lacquer, making the master, making the plating, doing test pressings.
And then you haven't even started to make it yet.
And then from that point, actually doing the test pressings, pressing the record, and then getting every aspects of the color of the record, the style of the record, the weight of the record.
We haven't even talked about the jacket where 90% of the time you got to get the artwork.
You got to put it on a template.
You got to see who's going to do it.
You have to set up expectations of print, blah, blah, blah.
the interface with the printer. So now you are the middleman. You become the printer because you have
to answer every question the printer has because the client doesn't even know what you're talking
about. And then all that has to be on a timeline where everything has to meet at the exact same
three-day period or you can't press the record. And your average run there, which is a customer
order might be smaller, but we know that you can produce runs as large as 100,000 records,
maybe even bigger. And to me, that's impressive. That's a huge number to imagine, like 100,000
records rolling out in a truck in a series of boxes. How big is the team at Studio 4 Vinyl?
Ashley, you mentioned your team is what makes it all work. How many roles and how many people do
have there? It's honestly much smaller than you would think. We've got a team of, at any given
time, about 20 people. And that's it. And when I tell you, they all work together seamlessly,
because if they didn't, the things that we do would not happen. So our office staff is three
to four people depending on if Drew's here and our packing team is about six people two of those
people float into our warehouse to make sure that shipments happen and then the rest of our folks
are in pressing and then you've got Phil and Ronnie doing the really hard stuff the lacquer
cutting itself and dealing with the audio. So it's relatively small compared to a lot of other
plants, but that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it here is because it feels like family. It's not
everyone here is family, but it's what it feels like to me. Like I appreciate every person here
and I love working with them and I would not change it for the world. And I think the music
industry in general, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it traditionally has been most like a
male-dominated industry. And same goes with old traditional manufacturing. But all that's really
beginning to change. And you yourself are active in an organization called Women in Vinyl. So
would you tell us a little bit about that, please? Yeah. So, I mean, women in vinyl is just,
it's, they're very underrepresented. Like it's, it is anytime you go into any networking event or
into any type of meeting, it's mostly men. You realize you are one of maybe three women in the
room. And it's, it's really nice to be in with this organization because they make it their
priority to make sure that women's voices are heard and not just in like the retail setting
which is where it originally like started more women in vinyl in retail in the production side
is very unheard of um and getting to meet other women that work at pressing plants that press
records. When you think of record people that press records, it's mostly men. And to see a woman
pressing a record, tooling a machine, doing something that would be typically a man's job,
it's amazing. It's wonderful to work with them and to have our voices heard in the industry.
It's been a wild ride.
Well, thank you for that.
And we will be sure to link to that organization's website over on our website on the show notes page over at starlocal.co.
Erik asked you about the larger runs, the big 100,000, and that would be amazing.
But if there's a new up-and-coming band tuning into our podcast and they want to press a record,
or maybe a well-known artist, an established artist is looking to do a limited edition boutique run,
What's the smallest run, Phil, that you and your team will put together?
It almost, there really isn't.
I mean, typically we say 100 only because the startup costs is where most of the cost is.
It's like, yes, you could make five or you could make 100, but it costs the same amount.
Because they get the lacquer cut, they get the metal work, they get the jackets, all those things.
to amortize it out. It, it, it doesn't,
it doesn't really make sense to do less than, than a hundred,
but we do a lot of runs of a hundred records. It's,
it's certainly more expensive than 500 or a thousand,
but it's not ridiculous. It's not like 10 times more expensive.
What we do is we really,
we really love supporting the smaller artists.
I would say on any given, I mean, obviously it's ebb and flow, but we do more smaller independent projects than we do larger projects.
And as much as it's more tedious, it's a lot more paperwork, it's a lot more interaction, we prefer that because you're always doing something different.
Yeah, it's more hectic, but it's more exciting.
It's more fun for us because we're all creative music people.
We're not like, yeah, let's make 100,000 more Dunkin' Yo-Yos.
Well, that's fine.
You know, okay.
But even when we're doing a 50,000 or 60,000 run of the Suicide Boys,
after a while you're like, yeah, we're still pressing the Coke bottle green.
Yeah, okay, it's good.
I appreciate that.
It's paying the rent, obviously, you know, and the salaries.
And actually on the note of salaries, we pay, I don't know, Ashley could give you the numbers,
but I bet you we're at least 30 to 40% higher than most pressing facilities or manufacturing facilities.
Yeah, making sure that our people are taken care of is really important for us.
And especially, like I said, we feel like we're family.
So I want to make sure that every single person here is able to have higher than a living wage.
And it keeps people wanting to be here because you care about them.
Well, on our tour of your record pressing plant, we saw lots of happy people.
That's for sure.
Everybody was very, you know, enthused about being there, happy to meet us and really excited to show us, you know, the art that they're working on, as well as the science they're working on.
We learned so much about the process of manufacturing a vinyl record when we were there.
I thought I knew a little bit about it, but I walked out knowing a lot more.
So would you please walk us briefly through the process?
We know you start with raw vinyl, if you will.
But what happens between that and taking the finished record off the pressing machine?
That's a big question, I know.
I can really simplify it to a degree.
The basic stages, there's probably four or five basic stages.
Stage one is the most important.
It's taking that audio, whatever form it is, whether it's however it originated on a waveform,
similar to the one you're streaming on your Spotify.
We take that and we turn it into record one.
What we do is we take that sound and we get a big, basically blank record.
And with a lathe, a machine that actually is going to automatically move across the record and cut the first groove, that's lacquer one.
You make record one.
You take that record.
You send it to this great guy, Desmond in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who this is kind of cool.
He takes that. So that's a record that you can play. It looks like a record. You spray it in silver. Okay. Then you plate it, you electro plate it in nickel. What does that mean? If you run a high voltage through a piece of metal and you dip it in a metal solution like nickel, the electrons make that metal stick to the record.
So now you're spinning this thing in this liquid.
All of a sudden, as if it was like some sort of whatever plastic, it adheres to that record.
You take that record out of that bath after about two hours.
Now you peel that new, it's like a skin peel.
You peel that off the metal.
You now have a negative of the record.
So where there were grooves cut in, you now have bumps that sunk into that groove.
So now you have a record that's the opposite of a record.
Instead of grooves, there's bumps on it.
You take that, you put that in a record on a vinyl pressing machine,
one on the top for the A side, one on the bottom for the B side.
You put a puck in there that looks like a hockey puck that you heat to 180 degrees Celsius,
about 350 degrees, and you heat it up really fast, then you squish it with 15 tons of pressure.
That record, that's like a waffle, and now it squeezes out over those stampers,
comes out the edge, like when you put too much batter in that waffle.
You take that now record waffle, oh, nice, out of the press, you put it on a trimmer,
And you trim off all that excess.
You put that in between metal plates while it's cooling and your record is done.
The one step I missed, when you put that puck into the press, you have to put a label on the top lacquer, on the top stamper and the bottom stamper.
The pressure of that press now presses that vinyl,
that label into the vinyl,
changing the molecular structure.
So now it is part of that vinyl.
You don't glue it on, it's never coming off.
That comes off, again, it comes off,
it sits in that,
you put about five records to a cooling plate.
It sits on that spindle for about 12 hours.
Then you take that record,
You put it in a sleeve.
Now, of course, during the process, it's inspected when it's made.
It's inspected when it's sleeved.
It's often inspected again when it's jacketed.
And then it goes from sleeving to jacketing to the shrink wrap.
Boom.
There's your new, who's a popular band?
Turnstile.
There's your new Turnstile record that my friend Will Yip produces.
Thank you for that.
That was really easy to follow.
So thank you, Phil.
I appreciate that.
I'm an easy guy.
I'm a dumb guy.
You're humble for sure.
You're very humble.
I respect that about you.
Not childish, childlike.
It's an important difference.
Our audience members accustomed to digital music
via streaming services might be surprised to learn
that vinyl records come in all sorts of colors these days.
Phil, you just mentioned the Coca-Cola bottle green
that the Suicide Boys are using.
And as Erik and I learned on our tours, it can be a mix of almost any color.
So tell us about how records have evolved beyond the traditional black.
How are these new colors produced?
And on these new records, do the colors produce different sounds than, say, a black record might?
It does.
I'll throw it to Ashley because she's really in the front office, so to speak, with clients, talking to them about colors, talking to them about what to do and how to do.
And she's also involved, along with Drew and Vince, all of our staff, developing cool records.
You can't see it on the radio, but that we do.
So Ashley, why don't you take that?
And we've been monumental in developing higher sound quality.
And she can talk to you about that, too.
Yeah, I mean, there's purists out there that will tell you that black records sound the best.
There are purists out there that will tell you that virgin material is what sounds the best.
Then you've got people that are going to tell you that black records that are half virgin and half reground material is what sounds the best.
Either way, it all comes down to how it was cut.
If it was cut badly, it's not going to sound great no matter what material you're using.
But we do have some colors that are going to have a lot more of a noise floor with them just inherently.
Glow in the Dark Records, you're going to hear some sound.
Like, there's nothing we can do about that.
It's going to happen.
It's just the way the material is made and how the chemical compounds in it work.
Anything that has glitter in it, you're going to hear it.
It's going to look really cool, but you're going to hear it.
Our team works really hard with our machines and our settings to make sure that our black records, the sound, the quality that you're going to get with black records are the same with any colors that we work with.
That's anything from splatters to swirls to the clear records to opaque.
And I mean, depending on what you're using and how you're mixing them, that also might change the sound quality.
Sometimes certain mixes of splatters, you're going to hear a little bit more noise.
Sometimes certain mixes on the swirls, you're going to hear a little bit more noise because of the type of swirl that you're throwing in there.
Because everything has a different chemical compound.
Everything has a different melting point.
Your opaques have a higher melting point than your clears.
Some of your specialties need to be run at a hotter temperature to melt properly into the vinyl.
And then you get into the fact that you've got different types of vinyl.
Some have lead in it.
Some don't.
And lead is not something you have to worry about in this process, by the way.
Thank you for clarifying.
That was going to be a follow-up question.
Do not lick this record at home, kids.
Don't lick it.
Okay.
Well, you can lick it.
You can chew on it even.
You would have to set the vinyl on fire for it to be a problem.
And then there's other fumes that are going to be more dangerous than the lead, I think.
Don't do that.
Yeah, but it's different.
And example, we use a mix of vinyls here.
We've got some vinyls that we prefer to use the mixes that have lead in it because they melt better when doing swirls or specific specialties.
And then we have other ones that we prefer to use the non-lead-based vinyl materials because of how they're going to react in our machines during the press process.
It really depends on what the client wants at the very beginning when we start working out what their expectations are.
Sometimes they'll hand you a mock-up of something and you're going to look at it and go, that is not physically possible when we're pressing the record.
But we can get as close as possible.
So we'll pick and choose what's going to work the best.
And the other thing I want to say, we're really proud of the fact that we've been instrumental and monumental in the improvement of colored vinyl.
Because five years ago, when we were first starting to get into this business, I was introduced to Casey Gibson, who's the largest importer of high definition of virgin vinyl.
It's called Neotech.
He's got a plant that's two years ago, three years ago, he built in Taiwan.
And I started, we became good friends and we became a test facility to try those different.
And again, sometimes it's 0.01% of an additive.
That's the difference between a red record sounding good and sounding terrible.
Natural vinyl, which is actually cream colored, was the worst sounding.
And it was no additives.
But now with the work we've done with Casey, it's one of the best.
Clear used to be terrible.
Now you see, you know, these reissues of whoever, I mean, amazing jazz artists on clear vinyl, because we've managed to help improve that by testing different, like, how's this sound?
Oh, it's better.
How's this sound?
It's worse.
And we're really proud of the fact that we've been monumental in that.
And even in the manufacturing with Newbuilt and Viral, the two biggest manufacturers of presses, working with them and our team here have developed improvements in the equipment that we say, use it.
I don't need to copyright it.
But we're really proud of the fact that we're monumental in that.
And right now, as we talked about, we may say, we're one of the few cutting facilities that do half-speed vinyl, which is a complete game changer.
I mean, it hasn't been done regularly since 1980.
And again, through Ronnie and myself and Doug Fern and the Hazel Rigs, we've developed the first new half-speed vinyl cutting system since 1980 that Neumann made.
And we're really excited about all these things.
And, you know, we do it because we love it, but we want to see the whole process improve.
It's so impressive to me that there is this much innovation happening in vinyl record production in 2026.
It's just amazing what a big market it is and how people care about that level of sound quality and also visual quality when they're taking out and truly experiencing the record.
In addition to all the variants that comes from the additives and the colors, on the tour, we saw older pressing machines and newer pressing machines.
And they're all dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, and more.
So what you run there, it's not simply an assembly line.
It required some art and some science and often reapplied science on the fly.
So how do you figure out all these ideal conditions and settings for making records between different machines that you have, different colors that you have?
I mean, I'm just imagining there are a ton of variables.
And I noticed that Phil and Ashley, you both still have hair.
You haven't pulled it all out yet.
So how do you sort through all that?
It is, as Ashley said, we have three sayings here.
Vinyl is chaos.
Everything you know is wrong and everything breaks.
And I'll give you a perfect example of where it's just starting to do this.
Again, I was learning how to use the new built machine, which is from Germany.
And I'm on the WhatsApp with Erwin because he couldn't come here.
So we're going through and it's kind of working.
And, you know, certain days it is, certain days it's not.
And I'm like, God, the temperature is the same.
The environment is the same.
The humidity is the same.
The material is the same.
Yet today it's great.
Yesterday it was horrible.
there's doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it that I can figure out so I'm talking to Erwin
I said Erwin yesterday was great today it's not you know it seems to be different all the time
the conditions seem the exact same but it's not working he said uh Phil Phil uh what state is two
states away from you and I'm thinking let's see Maryland I said West Virginia he said when someone
opens the window in West Virginia, it'll change your settings. And that's when I went, oh,
S-H-I, you know, I was, oh, and that's when I realized it is, there are incredible parameters,
but it is literally like flying an airplane, you know, through an approaching nor'easter.
You have to see things even before they occur.
And you have to, it's, as we say, 50% science and 50% witchcraft.
And the science isn't very good.
So it is, that's why I've, it's really amazing that our team here has, you know, we're, again, some of us have been doing this for five years.
And there's still days where we go, you can't believe, you know what?
I discovered that when you change the heat on chamber two instead of one to one degree, when you're using red, for some reason, the puck just wants to stay the right shape.
And it's working, hey, a third of the time.
Okay.
At least you have something you can go to a third of the time because it's always so different.
And it is.
And that's what makes it such a challenging thing to do, but so rewarding.
Because if it was easy, everyone would do it.
And, you know, I share this enthusiasm with some other friends of mine who are unsimilarly like, yeah, well, nobody does this because it's so freaking hard, right?
And, yeah, it's – but it is – it's fun.
And I'm not saying we go through those crazy thunderstorms every day.
But they do happen often enough that, you know what, we're not going to press Coke bottle green today because the machine just isn't going to do it.
well, you know, red's pretty easy on new build too.
Okay.
So we pressed red on new build too
because it's going to work.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
You must have great patience
and your team must be dedicated to learning.
It's kind of, yes, it's kind of funny
because it's almost, it's almost,
I know this is going to sound dumb,
but it almost helps our ADD
because you're always ready to do something anyway.
Drew and I, God, God love Drew.
He's my son.
But we both have this ADD thing.
Unless we're focused on something that has so many variables, you don't have time to get distracted.
I love it.
I love it.
So I want to keep touring around your factory floor here.
Erik and I had just an amazing time.
He and I went out for dinner afterwards and just talked for hours.
Did you see this?
Do you remember that?
That was so cool.
And really, one of the things that impressed the heck out of us that amazed us was how many different types of machines you have.
Yes, you have the manual presses and you have the newer automatic presses, but you also have like a steam boiler and a label cooker.
And we had all sorts of virgin vinyl and repurposed or recycled vinyl.
And I think my favorite machine was the Dunkin' Donuts bagel cooker that you folks had repurposed.
So let's start with that machine and tell us about some of the other, not record pressing machines,
but the machines that you need that make your, that allow you to press records.
Sure. The thing you're talking about, it's a Dunkin' Donuts confection oven.
And it's like, what, it looks like you've got labels in there. And it's like, yes, you do.
When we started this, one of the hardest things to figure out was how long do you bake the labels?
And it's like, bake the labels? What do you mean? You gotta, why do you bake the labels?
Well, the water content, as I said, the label goes onto the puck and then it experiences 15 bar, which is 15 tons of pressure.
Don't ask me why. That's what you have to do.
Well, as I said, you change the molecular structure of that label.
If the water content isn't within a half of a percent of optimum, the label, if it's too dry, it cracks and it looks like something exploded on the record.
If it's too wet, the label separates. So half of the label is on the record and half the label is
on the stamper. So that water content has to be perfect. And sometimes that means two hours of
baking, four hours of baking, eight hours of baking, 10 hours of baking, take it out, let it cool,
and heat it up for 20 minutes before you use it. Because every label is different. Every label,
until we discovered Third Man Pressing,
which I think we got a lot of great advice
from Jack White as a pressing facility,
as some of you may know, called Third Man.
It's in Detroit.
And on many ways, I won't get into the details,
but he saved my life.
Jack's main pressing production engineer, Brock,
came to our rescue and answered so many of the questions
that we just couldn't figure out
because we had no one to show us how to use it.
And those guys or somebody maybe when Ashley and I were on making vinyl, one of our trips, I think, to Minneapolis, they said, look, find the same company to make all your labels.
Then you know the paper, the ink, everything is going to be the same.
It's not always going to be identical, but at least you're going to narrow it down to just a ridiculous number of possibilities instead of an impossible number of possibilities.
And actually, didn't we help them develop the non-bake label, I think?
They were working on it when we first started working with them and we were doing small run stuff.
And in order for us to do a lot of this small run stuff, it didn't make any sense for us to order a thousand labels, which was their basic run, if I'm only pressing a hundred records.
So we started working with them on doing the small run batches of 250 labels or 500 and their no bakes.
And when they first started working with them, they were sending all of their tests to us to test on our machines the difference between baking them for 10 minutes versus 20 minutes.
What does it look like on the viral?
What does it look like on the new built?
So it was a lot of trial and error of baking, running it in the machine, having the label stick to the plate, having it crack or split.
But yeah, we helped. We worked with them immensely and they gave us a lot of tips on like baking and for the Dunkin' Donuts label baker.
It's really cool because when you turn it on, the Dunkin' Donuts end up.
That's the best part.
It really is.
It really is.
So there's the big – and, you know –
Yeah.
You bake them on the croissant setting.
Yes.
That seems to be –
That's the best setting.
That seems to be the best setting.
And, again, in terms of equipment that supports what we do, as I said, the pressing machine has to heat the puck almost instantly to 180 degrees Celsius.
To do that, we run high-pressure steam, 150 PSI.
It's 150 pounds per square inch, which will cut a car door in half of steam into that machine.
To do that, as Erik and Liam alluded to, you need high-pressure steam boilers.
Our boiler room has two 60-horsepower Hurst boilers.
Both of those are close to the size of a steam locomotive.
They're huge.
And they put out massive amounts of steam into this huge cinder block room that gets to 138 degrees with a 38-foot ceiling.
I mean, it looks like you're in the boiler room of a submarine because you are.
And that creates the consistent steam that we need.
When the record is pressed, you need to do the exact same thing with water, 150 PSI water.
So we have, again, a water pump cooling system that's larger than a fire engine because it puts out a higher pressure than a fire engine.
And it's this big, massive 40-horsepower motors.
Again, it's like you're in the engine room of a battleship because basically you are.
And that's just for heating the steam.
The pressure, the hydraulic pressure, which is not pneumatic, not compressed oil, but air,
the machines all have parts that move automatically through pressurized air.
So we have these 150 PSI air compressors, very similar to the ones that you'll see in your favorite automotive shop back in the 50s, except we have four of them.
And then there's the hydraulic pressure, the oil that is used to press 115 bar.
And those compressors also are in the room running.
So when people come to look, it's like, wow, the biggest joke I love is, wow, this looks like the Rebel Base.
And I'm like, yes, it is.
You know, there's all this machinery that's used and then an 8,000 square foot warehouse to store jackets and materials.
And we regrind all of our material.
We're a green facility.
When we cool the water, we don't use air conditioning type, whatchamacallit.
Yeah, Freon, we don't use any of that kind of things that damage the air.
We use evaporative cooling, which is cooling towers, where you actually run the water across a fan and expose it to cooled air.
And that's what cools it, as opposed to using Freon and refrigeration, which is better for the environment.
We don't use any caustic chemicals in our boilers.
Again, they're all natural chemicals.
They cost more and we have to use them every day.
But, you know, I want my kids and my grandchildren to be able to live here when I'm dead.
And the same thing with, you know, electricity.
We bring in high voltage power, so we use less electricity and we can actually, you know, run our 483 phase volts, but more efficiently.
That's all really impressive. And it's amazing how much machinery, like you just said, goes into making this traditional music.
We have a grinder that we grind our pucks. It's bigger than a refrigerator. And it makes a lot of noise, man, let me tell you.
And you also repurpose your vinyl. You recycle the vinyl. So if a vinyl pit is not, if virgin vinyl isn't used, it can be reused for a new record, right?
Exactly. And as Ashley indicated, sometimes we can make a better record by mixing virgin and regrind because the regrind is still pure. It's not like, oh, it's got contaminants. No, it's been compressed 15 tons, but that doesn't make it bad. That doesn't make it contaminated.
And as a matter of fact, since it's already gone through that process, as Ashley also indicated, it takes a little bit more heat, but it's more stable.
So you can actually make a better record that's 20% regrind.
And then we offer a cheaper, if you use what we call the EcoMix, we actually can make your records cheaper.
What were you going to say, Ashley?
I think one of the problems or misconception with regrind or recycled vinyl material or eco, whatever you want to call it, is, you know, back in the day when vinyl was the thing, a lot of plants were just grinding the whole record.
So, yeah, you were getting contaminants. You were getting the center label because they weren't cutting it out. They were just throwing it in the grinder and like whatever happened, happened. It was like they just were just like, I just regrind it, reuse it. Whereas every plant now, you are cutting that center label out.
You are making sure that your vinyl is usable, that there's nothing in it.
If you get a bucket, because the way we regrind is by a five-gallon bucket at a time.
And if you're regrinding into that five-gallon bucket and you see,
we missed a piece of center label because the center label was off-center,
which happens during pressing, then that whole bucket is gone.
You're just, that's trash.
We're not putting it in.
And we'll just do another five-gallon bucket, and then it goes into the larger storage of reground vinyl.
We're hole-punching the records.
We clean them.
We just make sure there's no contaminants, that it's really clean.
And there are times when we'll do a custom color, so the reground is really a good thing.
Because if the client wants a repress, there it is.
We've got 50 buckets of, well, like whatever, school bus yellow or whatever, you know, some really interesting sunset red or something that we can just use to regrind.
Well, let's focus on the process of taking the digital files of songs and getting those sounds onto vinyl.
You have some highly specialized equipment for that, including a cutting lathe used to create the stampers.
And so stampers you talked about earlier, they're the negative impressions of the master disc used to press their records.
And on the tour and earlier in this interview, you explained a little bit about that process to us and how you're doing something unique and innovative there when it comes to 50% speed.
So talk about that a little bit more, if you would.
And what makes Studio 4 Vinyl's stamper creation process so unique?
Sure.
We have, you know, as I said, my chief tech, he's electronic as well as mechanical, as well as a lot of stuff.
Ronnie, he's a genius.
He's crazy, but he's a genius, which is great.
So am I.
But what we did is we, about three years ago, I got a lathe system.
Because the lathe system that I talked about, which cuts record one, they haven't been made since 1980 because there was no need for them.
In 1982, CDs hit the market.
By 1984, most people were buying CDs and certainly not records.
So the last lathe system that was actually developed and designed by the Neumann Company, a great, wonderful company in Germany, the last lathe that was produced was made in 1980.
Because by 82, you didn't need a new one.
And by 84, you didn't need them at all.
So that process of cutting lacquers even has gone by the wayside because the great guys that did it back then, Bob Ludwig, George Marino, Ted Jensen, etc., they stopped cutting records and they don't cut them anymore.
So that art got lost.
Now, fortunately, I've been doing this for 50 years.
So the first, oh, over a third of my career, I was making records for vinyl, watching those
guys cut records, understanding the limitations of it.
Because what you're doing is you're taking the sound, the audio, and you're putting it
onto a piece of plastic, bumps on a piece of plastic.
Now explain to me how that's going to work.
Well, even the most intelligent geniuses in the world kind of look at you and go, I don't
know why it works, but somehow it does. How, when you're taking this sound and you're putting it on
to this little, it's really, you're scratching it into the records, what you're doing. You're
taking the sound and instead of putting the sound into a speaker, as we know, you don't have to be
too technical, but as you know, somehow the sound gets amplified and it makes the speaker move or
the element in your earphone move, and that makes sound. Well, you take that same mechanical
transfer and you put it onto a little needle, and that's what scratches the record. It's
orthophonic, which means the sound is moving the needle. So that's what makes that little
needle move and bumps on plastic. The thing that makes it even more difficult, and I'm going to
get a little technical for a minute here, but bear with me. What people don't realize when you play
a record, it's an encoding decoding process. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well,
when you are listening to a record, when a record is cut back in the late thirties,
records sounded terrible. And the long playing record was just being developed.
But when they put the needle on that groove and they played it, it was like it sounded like when you're playing an old cylinder or a 78.
That didn't even be so dramatic.
But all that noise was like, oh, my God, that's the needle rubbing in the groove.
That's terrible.
What are we going to do?
Wait, let's try this.
Now that they had, you know, tube technology, electronic technology, if we increase the high end dramatically.
I mean, I am talking, if you looked at a meter and you went from the lowest it could be to the loudest and did that four times,
if we increase the high end incredibly, like in technology, 40 dB, which is like, that's impossible.
You can't even make that much of a change.
But if we add that much high end when we cut the record, then we take it away.
When we play it back, all that goes away
because you're taking all that noise
and you're bringing it below.
I'm looking at, I'm using my hands,
but you can't see me.
You bring that noise below the noise floor.
So now it, oh, wow.
The high end is nice and there's no noise.
So they developed this thing called the RIAA curve
in the late 40s.
I mean, late 30s.
I think RCA was the first long playing record to use it.
But by doing that, wow, records now sounded high fidelity.
Now, here's the problem.
When you record that sound onto the record, you have to encode it with that RIAA curve of that 20 to 40 dB high end.
What people don't realize when you play back a record, your phono cartridge into either
your Bluetooth device or your receiver or your amplifier or whatever has to go through
a phono preamp.
It's like if you're doing it old school, yes, you got to take the record, plug it into a
phono preamp, and then plug it into your amplifier or your old receiver with a phono setting.
that setting is doing the reduction of all that high end.
So you could play it back.
If you play a record without going through a phono preamp,
it sounds, you hear all that high end, it's terrible.
You hear the noise, it's terrible.
But every record from the late 40s
right through your newest Taylor Swift record
has that RIAA curve on it.
So it makes cutting record one almost impossible
because now the high end, the cymbals, the sibilance on the vocal,
that is now being amplified by almost 30, 40 times.
So trying to cut that is what's so difficult.
That's what makes cutting record one such a difficult process
is because it's kind of like painting with your eyes closed.
Oh, and by the way, when you're putting blue on, it's going to turn to red.
Okay. That's pretty hard. And it's a process. And Ronnie and I have been doing it for three years. But again, leaving my huge ego at the door, I pride myself at being a Grammy Award winning multi-platinum engineer producer mixer that we're doing it.
And then in the last two and a half years have developed the half speed mastering.
And I'll make this quick because I know we've been on this for a minute.
What you do is if you're spinning the record at 33 and a third, you slow it down to 16 and a half, whatever that is.
You slow it down half as fast.
You take the audio and you slow it down also half as fast.
So now it's going real slow.
And it sounds, I don't even know if you could hear this.
Anyway, nevermind.
I was going to play it, but it slows it down 50%.
But what that does, that little stylus that's now moving as fast as 14,000 times a second,
well, those highest frequencies are now down to 7,000 times.
And the mid-range, which is 2,000, ooh, is now down to 1,000.
So what's happening, it's pure physics.
It can move slower, so it's going to have more detail.
It's going to have more space and time to cut that sound.
And in that process, and again, you could ask Doug Fern or some other genius,
and even they're like, I don't know why, but you get like 2 dB more volume,
which is the logarithmic, that's a lot for the same space.
So we've pioneered in it.
And now right now, if you Google AI, who can do half-speed mastering?
It's only Abbey Road, the Beatles studio in London, Mobile Fidelity,
one of the most world-renowned high-specialty cutting facilities in Boston,
and Studio 4 Vinyl in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
And we're very proud of that.
And rightly so. Thank you for walking us through that. I know it was a longer technical answer, but even I was able to follow it, Phil. So you did a good job on that. Thank you.
It's like geeks listening to this podcast.
When you cut a lacquer, it does change the sound.
And when you're dealing with modern recorded sounds,
I won't get into a lot of detail,
but modern digital recording has a lot of square waves.
It's a distortion that a sine wave or a record doesn't want to play.
So you have to figure out a way,
how can I imitate this gain elevated square wave
that's only a possible in digital
and translate it to an analog sound.
And we've been working on that right now.
I just got the latest update from our engineer.
Luckily it said, okay, we're getting there.
Okay, that's what you want to hear.
But the thing is, you have to listen to it.
And that's where we play, you know,
every time we cut records,
our engineers listen to every single start of the day,
every hundred records.
But most importantly,
when we're sending out test pressings and when we're cutting lacquers,
we have to be intent on what's the artist's intention.
And when you said about what type of record player it will play on,
what that means is that there's a wide variety of record players.
There's a thing that's called the Crosley,
which is the John's bargain basement, as my mom would say, of simple, it's battery operated. It's
got, it's basically an arm with a needle on it. You put it on the record, it pushes down and it'll
play that record pretty well. But if you want to get more volume onto the record, which means you
want that groove to move a little bit faster and a little hotter, well, that crappy stylus is just
going to pop out. So it's going to skip. If you have too much low end on the record, again,
low end is what moves the groove the most, which makes the grooves possibly touch.
If a groove touches, it's going to push that stylus of the Crosley out. Now, if you have
a decent turntable, it doesn't have to be a million dollar, but a decent U-turn or a Technics
with an Audio Technica cartridge or, you know, $120 Best Buy, even turntable.
Most of those things will play.
But we have artists, understandably, sometimes in the metal world,
where they're like, no, our, yeah, it played, yes, it's played great on all of our turntables.
Yeah, but we played it on a Crosley that wasn't working well and it skipped.
Can you get it so it plays on that?
Sure we can. I got to bring the level down to DB. Okay. We would wrap, and that's their choice.
We would rather bring the level down and it not skip than have it be louder and have the client
complain. And, and, um, there was a vinyl me please. And there's a, a couple of, uh, uh,
subscription based companies that had an issue because different clients would be like,
this doesn't sound good or this sounds good, but it skips.
So they had to find that lane.
And there was a one point where I heard they said, well,
just tape a quarter to that, to the, like the old school days,
just tape a quarter onto the tone arm and see if it plays,
if it doesn't tape another quarter.
And if it still doesn't tape another third.
So, so that's why, yeah, we're, we're, we're,
Because, and even informationally,
many of the people who are making records
never owned one.
Kit, my son's 41 years old.
He didn't know where records were
until he came to the soul.
And, you know, again,
so many of our clients never owned a record,
never bought a record.
Well, you know, why would you?
And now we have walked them through,
oh, did you set up the tone arm?
And it's just a blank.
What?
No, when you're playing the record,
Can you adjust the turn on?
I think so.
Well, did you set it up?
What's that?
Okay, go to a friend who has a turntable that works
and talk to one of my guys about setting your turntable up.
The level of attention to detail that you have
about creating these pieces of art for our ears
is utterly incredible to me.
And we're just scratching the surface, no pun intended,
about the different aspects of it.
And it's just fascinating. I think that gives all of our listeners a little bit more of an impression of what really goes into making records these days and why records have a reputation for sounding better than other medium.
I mean, personally, for me, I despise hearing like swishy cymbals and swishy high end sounds and things like that.
You don't hear that on records for many of the reasons, some of which Phil just described.
But I want to go to one other aspect of enjoying a record, and that is the packaging.
One of the most fulfilling parts of experiencing a record is holding the large album artwork in your hands and removing the sleeve and checking out the jacket and seeing what's going on inside that package you just bought.
So you have humans in Coatesville making sure everything is just right for the person who will buy that record.
Tell us a little bit about how that process works and why you don't have a robot doing it.
Actually, that's your world. Why don't you take that?
So they do make machines that will auto sleeve your records.
It's not something that we ever want here.
We do have people here looking at every single record because we feel like that is extremely important.
A lot of places will have the robot that, you know, just leaves the record, takes it off the spindle, puts it in a sleeve.
But unless you've had someone look at both sides, check to make sure there's not a scratch or that your center label is not off center or that there's even a center label there.
During the pressing process, on a manual machine, yes, you're going to have someone that looks at both sides and sees, okay, there's a center label on both sides and there's no major issues and every 100 records they're going to listen.
But the importance of my packaging folks, my quality control, is they look at every single record to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks.
That the matrix number that is carved around the center label in the dead wax is correct.
That the A side is the A side and the B side is the B side.
that the center label matches, that it's not off center, that there isn't some minute scratch that someone missed because they're processing, you know, 3000 records a day.
It's a little tedious, but I mean, these people get to sit here all day, look at really cool art and they get to listen to music.
And a lot of times they put whatever record they're working on, they put it on the turntable in the packing room.
and they listen to it while they're working.
But that's extremely important
because you want to make sure that when your customer,
that final person pulls it out,
that it is a full, complete package.
It looks good.
It sounds good.
You know, that everything's put together
to the specs that your client wants.
If they want a custom inner sleeve,
they're getting their custom inner sleeve
or they're getting their polylined black inner sleeve.
That if the sticker needs to be in a certain spot on the jacket,
that it is in that spot and then it's not randomly in the middle of the jacket,
which I've seen.
I've taken some pictures in retail stores where I'm like,
oh, who put this sticker on this?
Oh, yeah.
Actually, it'll be like in a Target or something.
And here's like Diana Ross and the Supremes and the stickers on Diana Ross's face.
You're like, yeah, quality control.
And we're just like, this is just like, I got to show you, this is just wrong.
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of automation in the packing.
There's the machine that will sleeve the record for you.
There is the machine that'll put that sleeve record into a jacket.
it um there's the machine that will uh you know auto shrink wrap it and put the sticker on at the
end now we do have an automatic shrink wrap tunnel here that has increased our speed we used to do a
manual l bar but i can tell you as someone who has worked on the floor um after eight hours of
manually shrink wrapping records your arm and your shoulder starts hurting and you're like man i'm
getting too old for this. You get a shrink arm. It's like, ooh, bad. So we love the music and we
enjoy so many of the bands that you've worked with at your record pressing plant. And when we were at
Studio 4 Vinyl, some of the folks working on the floor are, to be quite candid with our audience
here, celebrities in the music world. And Phil, dare I say, you're no exception to that. Many of your
customers are extremely well-known chart-topping artists. And we were originally going to come for
a tour earlier in this year, but you had one of those chart-topping artists out and you
were doing all sorts of secret stuff for their promotion.
And that's just so neat to us.
So Ashley, you're doing the day-to-day.
You're dealing with the customers.
And I'm expecting the customers are the managers or the artists themselves or any number of
things.
So what's it like to interact with all these famous music people or famous people in the
music world, not including your father-in-law?
You don't have to talk about working him with like on a podcast.
We'll let you answer that separately.
So, I mean, I think it's definitely safe to say that you can still get starstruck, no matter how many times you have interfaced with someone who is just high up there in the celebrity world.
It's just it's going to happen.
I mean, eventually during the process, it just gets to this point where you're like, you know, we're just working on a record here.
I've got things that I need to do and handle and I'm just going to have to that's going to have to wait.
it's, it's, it's wild sometimes, like the, the people that I've, I've met, um,
and really it, it varies from, sometimes I'm working directly with the artist, um, which is
sometimes great, sometimes a little, you're having to set expectations, but no one wants to tell you
too. I'm sorry, we can't do yellow vinyl with blue splatter and not have any green come out.
Like, who wants to tell you too? No, you can't have that. I had to. But I mean, it's...
So let me jump in with a follow-up question to that. Okay, so you had to tell you too, no.
Sorry, physics doesn't work like that. Chemistry does not allow that. This is us not being mean.
This is just chemistry setting the rules.
Can I ask you, would you be willing to share what's an artist or a musician who you met who was one of your music idols either now or growing up?
And it was like, oh, my gosh, you folks are here or you're here.
So, yeah, I met Ice-T a couple of years ago now, and that was like top tier for me.
And he didn't come here.
I went to his house to pick up signed record jackets.
And I got to meet Ice-T and his dog on the same day.
So that was just the best day ever for me.
We all are, but Ashley is a massive dog person, by the way.
Yeah.
But yeah, that was great.
I got to meet him.
I got to talk to him.
I got a picture with him.
I was trying so hard to not be a crazy fan, but I was just looking for the best day ever.
Well, no interview with Phil Nicolo would be complete without asking at least one question about your storied career as record producer, mixer, mastering engineer, and many more titles that we could bestow on you.
So for our audience edification, Phil has worked with Grammy-winning artists and artists from practically every genre.
John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Cypress Hill,
Lauryn Hill, The Hooters, Amy Grant, Anthrax,
just to name a few.
Of all your work with so many talented
and successful artists,
kind of like Liam just asked Ashley,
what album or work was especially meaningful to you
and why?
Wow.
I would say,
and I keep coming back to the same artist,
which is, and he's become a dear friend of mine.
He's a blues artist.
Some of your audience will know.
His name is Taj Mahal.
He's 81 years old.
One of the greatest performing blues artists,
but he's a force of nature.
I had the pleasure of working with him 36 years ago in 1990
with a record that I did with producer Skip Drinkwater
called Like Never Before.
And that was my first time to meet and to work with Taj.
And to this day, he is, I mean, I speak to him every few months.
He's out on tour right now, I think, with Kebmo.
But it was just, it was life-changing in terms of his passion, his intelligence, his creativity,
his humanity, his just having a grasp on life and reality to a point that it totally blew my mind.
And because, again, for those of you who don't know Taj Mahal, he's respected by just about
anybody in the industry. And in 1990, we had some acquaintances who came, not acquaintances,
but people who came to play on the record like, oh, I don't know, Hall and Oates, Ringo Starr,
the Pointer Sisters, Little Feet. It was just like, okay. Every time I turned around,
we were doing a song, Dr. John. I mean, it was just amazing. And in every case,
he was less the celebrity, but he was acting like, look, I'm just doing my thing.
And to this day, and I'll just give you an example. About two years ago,
He played the New Orleans Jazz Fest.
And I hadn't done a live record with him in a while.
I said, hey, Taj, why don't we record the show?
He was like, yeah, he goes, Nicolo.
Yeah, Nicolo.
We always talk in Italian because he loves Italian.
He said, ma si.
Okay.
So I went down to record him and I got there.
We had to do a rehearsal at 9 o'clock in the morning.
And I went to his hotel, 8 o'clock.
he's in the lobby with the band already animated vibrant he's 81 years old we get into the van to
go over to the venue to to do a nine o'clock sound check he gets in the van and he goes he
goes to the driver brother put on 9 to 3.5 i gotta hear and all of a sudden this is an like a an old
like funk r&b station and this song by maze comes on before frankie beverly was the lead singer
Most of you don't even know what that means.
He goes, oh, this is before Frank and Beverly was on Mays.
Listen to this, brother.
This guy's amazing.
And we're listening to this music, and he's freaking out over this song that was pushing his buttons because every minute of his life, music is in his veins.
And I'm like, holy, this guy's 81 years old, and it's 830.
We're on our way to do a rehearsal at Jazz Fest, and he's that pumped.
And that man, it just, you know, and then at the, at the, at the, at the jazz fest,
Oh, a friend of mine's going to come. It's Ricky Lee Jones.
I'm sitting in the, in the, in the, you know, in the dressing room and this nice woman comes in.
And I got to say, I'm sorry. I didn't recognize her, but he goes, Oh, Ricky, you got to meet my friend.
It's still this Ricky Lee Jones. And I'm like, Oh, you're, Oh, you're, Oh, you're Ricky Lee Jones.
It's that kind of, and then we recorded the performance. It was off the hook.
He's still, at any rate, and he, and honestly, I could have used Lauryn Hill, Billy Joel, Yoko Ono.
There's a bunch of people who have, who have impressed me in my life to be like, okay, music does pulse in your veins.
Thank you for that.
I really enjoyed hearing that story.
I, I'm a fan of Taj Mahal and I'm even more so now after that story that was really enduring.
So now it's my turn to kind of nerd out on you.
One of my absolute favorite albums of all time is Saturation by Urge Overkill.
I listened to that.
You talked about it yesterday.
Once a month at least, if not, right?
And I just absolutely love it.
And for our audience, I'll share that Phil was involved in the making of that album, the success that it was.
And it was a hugely successful album for Urge Overkill.
And they celebrate its 25th anniversary and so on.
It's just that kind of album.
And I have so many questions for you, Phil.
But Erik is limiting me to just one.
So here it comes.
So in advance of the show, I was listening to some different interviews that you've given over the years.
And in a number of these interviews, you shared that, and correct me if I get this wrong, that your production style is to enable the musical artists to be themselves, to let them do what they do best.
And then you will push or guide them only when you think they needed it.
And so my question is this.
When making Saturation, where did you push or guide George Overkill?
And how can we hear that influence on the album?
Okay.
I'll tell you.
They were very unique in that they, you know, most acts,
they know who they want to be and they focus and that's all they want to do.
But they were like, and I take this with a grain of salt.
They were almost bored of, yeah, we're urged to overkill, but can we be somebody else for a minute?
And can we focus more?
And so in a way, what I did was, myself and my twin brother, Joe, we kind of let them kind of do what they do, but then reel it in and focus it in.
And I'll tell you the one thing, and if you listen to it and think about it, again, because they were just lazy musicians, okay?
Geffen, Mio Vukovic of Geffen bought them an eight-channel.
At the time, it was an eight-channel.
It was $693, $92, $93.
An eight-channel TAC recording machine, a console, some microphones.
I mean, whatever, maybe $10,000 worth of stuff, which was decent, you know, that you could make demos with.
And he sent it to them.
They had an engineer friend, and they said, yeah, we'll set it up and we'll start making some demos.
A month passed, two months passed.
All Mio's getting is a cassette with a couple songs on it that sounded like it was one mic in the room.
So Mio said, Phil, can you go to Chicago and hang with these guys and help them write demos?
Because I don't know what they're doing with the equipment.
Well, I got there.
The equipment was all piled up in the corner.
It's still in the box.
So I unpacked it.
And we started setting it up.
And I'm thinking of records that felt like the energy they were talking about.
That was kind of rampant rock, but pop.
And in my mind, one of my favorite records of all time is Todd Rundgren, Something Anything.
So many great songs.
There's a song on that.
It's couldn't I tell you the way I feel?
Couldn't not.
And it rocks.
But his voice is intense, but it's a pop song.
So I played that song for the guys and they went, that's the template.
Yeah.
Okay.
Like pop, but that is rock.
That doesn't always have to go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, tag.
Something that's edgy and rock.
And that's what we used as the template.
And we went into the basement and we started and we cut five, six demos that became rhythm tracks.
But again, no real lyrics, like a third of the songs.
And I'm not kidding.
We would do a rhythm track.
And on the take sheet, for no reason, I would write Crack Babies.
And that became the title.
Crack Babies.
Okay.
Positive Bleeding.
There was no lyrics.
I just thought, what's good?
Positive bleeding.
All of a sudden the song generated out of planting the seed of the title,
which many great songwriters tell me,
some of the greatest songwriters I've ever worked with,
they say, I write the song title first,
and then I write the song around that.
Okay.
So there's a little tidbit.
One of the funnest, greatest records Joey and I have ever done to this day.
I have more people.
Dave Grohl.
I mean, so many artists.
Butcher Brothers.
Saturation.
Oh, my God.
That's one of my favorite records.
You know, it's not a household name,
but it's gotten me more work than almost any record I've done
just because there's something about it.
You put it on and it captures your attention.
Well, thank you, sir, for the work that you did do
because you've given me hours and hours and hours and hours.
Oh, thank you.
Over decades of listening pleasure.
So thank you, sir.
As they say, you're too kind.
Well, as our interview time here winds to a close, I have to ask you this question.
Tell us about a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.
And Ashley, Phil, feel welcome to answer whichever one of you has a thought on it or if you both do.
There's a pizza place right up the street here called Jack's.
And that is like our go-to place anytime that we need to have just, it's a bad day.
And my staff are just like, man, today is not going great.
Everything is breaking.
It's like, it's pizza today and we're going.
And they never fails.
Like we call them, we like, we're not ordering one or two pizzas.
We're ordering like five to 10, depending on the day and how long we're going to be here.
And they're just like, we'll take care of you.
Yeah.
And honestly, right down the street toward us is the Double D Diner.
Same routine.
It's a diner.
It's great.
It's like a diner.
There's old pictures of Coatesville that are so faded they were taken in 1931.
It doesn't matter.
You know, it's just a fun place that the owners there are just like, they're courteous enough.
You know?
So it's a great place to do that.
And again, the development, the Coatesville, all the development of people.
I mean, all the things that we have had through Seed Copia and the Coates, not Coatesville, Chester County.
Chester County Economic Development Council.
Economic Development.
Amazing.
I mean, they probably deserve the biggest shout out because they're so good.
I mean, if you're a small business in Chester County, talk to them.
I recently lost my accountant.
started looking. I called them and they were like, oh, they gave me four leads. The second one,
they're not, she's now my accountant. And this was like in March. Okay. This was the worst time
to call for an accountant. So I would say those people definitely.
So we have heard so much about what a wonderful place it is to work. Aside from the fact that you
are making records and there's music everywhere, that alone is cool, but that you have such a
a fantastic business culture, and it's a great place to work, and it sounds very fun as well,
really makes us ask the question, are you hiring?
Not right now. We had people come with us from Nottingham. We did have about three positions
open up when we moved into the building, closer to four. One of them is part-time,
And I actually, we found three people that live literally two minutes down the road.
They can walk here.
But we will be most likely hiring into the beginning of next year while we're expanding.
And as a matter of fact, I will say, I tell you, we're not, but we are looking for people who are interested in being pressing engineers.
So if you have an interest, if you're mechanically oriented, you understand thermodynamics to a degree, even if you don't, if you want to come and spend two or three hours a day here and learn a skill that you could get hired for, because that's the real shortcoming we have, is you can't hire a pressing engineer because they don't exist.
And even if you've done it in another facility, it's like, no, that's not the kind of blimp that we drive.
So if anyone is interested in possibly a career, in being a pressing engineer, it's an apprentice.
You're not going to get paid, but you're going to learn a valuable skill.
And if you get good enough, I'll hire you.
So, you know, it's in that regard, we're always looking for people who are interested in learning a very unusual talent and could become very valuable to us.
Because that's our shortcoming right now is we need more because unfortunately our workflow is high or low.
So it's great to have a couple of people.
This isn't their full-time gig, but hey, I could use 20 hours over the weekend.
Sure.
that is qualified to do that.
So I would say that's the only caveat,
not caveat, but we're always looking
for someone in that world.
And if folks are interested in that,
hit the website.
Is there an email address or a contact form
that you'd like them to get in touch with?
Is there a preferred way?
Yeah, just if you're interested,
send us your resume
or just a quick inquiry email
to our info at studio4vinyl.com.
Yeah, and it's the number four. Studio, the number four vinyl. And my recording studio is Studio, the number four recording, if you want to see that. And that's also very active. I'm there not as much, but Ron DeSivestro is there running it all the time. Longest running, 45 years, July 8th, but the longest running world-class studio in Philly.
and then Will Yip's new extension,
which is Studio,
which is,
what is it?
Mirror?
I forgot his facility,
but it's in South Philly.
We'll be sure to put links
to all of those locations
and websites on our website too
for easy reference
for our listeners
at startlocal.co.
One final question for you both.
How can the community support
Studio 4 Vinyl?
Make records.
Very good.
Yeah, I honestly spread the word, spread the word word of mouth. I'm sorry to me to cut you off, actually.
Spread the word word of mouth is how we get most and our most and our best clients.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those things where a lot of people will go, well, I can get this cheaper.
Yeah, somewhere else. And it's like, that's all right. I understand. Yes, you could.
But if you're coming here, you're not only supporting the local area, the local people here, you're getting a quality that we like to stand behind.
When you call here, you're getting a real person and you're talking to someone about your project and you're troubleshooting.
A lot of other places, you have to go through a phone system before you finally get someone,
and that someone might not know exactly what you're talking about with your project.
And every record that gets pressed here locally comes with a tour of the plant and a meet and greet with one of the office dogs.
Very impressive.
Phil Nicolo and Ashley Nicolo of Studio 4 Vinyl.
Aside from your website and the email address you gave, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about you in Studio 4 Vinyl?
Or if musicians are interested in chatting about you to press their records, what's the best way to make that happen?
Anyone that's interested in making a record, we've got a direct sales email that will go to all of our production managers.
That's sales at studio4, the number four, vinyl.com.
Anyone that has any specific questions may, by all means, reach out to me directly.
I'd be happy to talk to anyone about the process, give a tour, go over it.
Just send me an email.
Yeah.
So at the Studio 4 Vinyl, if you want to contact me about production, mixing, mastering, any of that stuff,
The Studio 4 vinyl one is the one that someone will pay attention to the most.
So you could hit me there.
Ashley and Phil, thank you so much for joining us today and for the tour a few weeks ago.
It's just been an absolute pleasure going through a little bit of local music history and future as well.
Thank you both so much for your time.
And to Drew as well.
You folks have been very kind and welcoming.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You guys are really, again, as we like to say, price is subject to clients' attitude.
So you guys are great people, really, like your excitement, you know, your love of music.
That's why we do it.
So you're very welcome.
It's definitely our pleasure.
And hey, let's do it again sometime.
Well, thank you very much to the three of you.
I would love to take you up on an encore tour someday and see what the latest you have going on there in your world.
What's the latest thing that made you order lots of pizzas or pull more hair out or whatever the case might be?
Thank you also to my co-host, Liam Debsy.
I'm Erik Gudmundson.
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