"Pressing Vinyl"

I don't think MoFi owns its own pressing plant. The original ones were done, as you no doubt know, by JVC in Japan. I think they owned a US plant briefly in the '90s, before they went bankrupt. Now that Music Direct owns them, and rebooted the brand, I suspect they use the usual suspects. Correct me if wrong. I have a few 'new' MoFi, and can look.

I would guess MOFI either owns its own plant or uses no more than 2 plants to press their records to exacting specs. The vinyl from MOFI is just too similar in every pressing in weight, touch, feel and playback clarity for it to come from many plants.

Saki70, there is still analog tape in production and there are still studios with analog tape. All three of our LPs that my band has made were recorded analog and the master tapes were used to make the LP.

Whart, I think it would be risky to assume that the current LP status is a bubble. The year of least LP production was 1993 and its been on the rise ever since! One recont contribution to LP sales has been that the CD is dying and the labels want something to sell. So far they've not come up with a good internet model, which is why Apple and others have jumped into the fray. But the LP is still around for a simple reason: they sound better ('better' = more detail, smoother sound). Additionally they allow for better presentation of the artwork so if you want to present an album concept, you are far better off as an artist to do it on LP.

Ralph: I'm happy about the resurgence and the resulting renassiance in the art of making records. I hope it does continue, but I do think there is a degree of 'fashion' to all of this right now that may not be enduring. I'm OK with that too. I hung in there during the nadir, and probably bought more records after The Death of Vinyl (TM) than before, when it was a mainstream medium. Most of my record buying in the past 10 years has been older stuff, filling in gaps, but I do buy some new material (not so much reissues, but sometimes). As I said, I hope you are right, and I am wrong. Even if it is a bubble, I think there have been benefits to revitalizing what was becoming a lost art.

In this town, for the last 15 years if you were really arrived as a band, you put out vinyl rather than a CD. Its that way in a lot of bigger metro areas these days.

Kids drive the market, not us fuddy-duddies :)