Having been in the consumer electronics business my entire carrier and an executive for a couple of major A/V tape manufacturers for a good chunk of that time, I had a unique perspective on the shift from analogue audio and video tape to the digital world as CD and other digital formats started to ramp up and eventually pretty much killing the analogue tape business. As this happened, a number of the big manufacturers of LP's started to slow down and ultimately shut down their operations. There were many of these with WAMO (Warner Records) in Scranton Pa. being one of the biggest. As these operations shut down their pressing plants tried to sell their pressing equipment, but eventually pretty much gave it away to anybody who would show up with a truck and haul it away. A few smaller companies figured that the vinyl business was going off a cliff, but would not completely go away due to the massive amount of record players 'in the field'. They kind of had the idea to be 'the last man in the buggy whip business'. The most notable of these companies was/is a company called Rainbow Records in the Los Angeles area. They picked up a ton of presses and associated equipment to put on line or cannibalize for spare parts.
A previous responder noted that the quality of pressings had deteriorated over the years. The dirty little secret about that was that for many years manufacturers pressed 'thick' discs and utilized virgin vinyl in the pressing process. For production savings, eventually discs started to be pressed thinner (causing increased warping and a number of other problems). What really had an effect however was when some pressing plants hit on the idea (driven by the record companies relentless quest for cost savings in a steadily shrinking market) of utilizing substantial amounts of 'regrind' vinyl sourced from unsold discs returned from retailers as well as 'in plant' pressing defects. Needless to say the introduction of foreign contaminants as the discs were cut from their album covers, piled up somewhere and eventually melted down was substantial. I should also mention that in most cases the LP disc labels were left on the discs to be melted down with everything else. The feeling was that most of the contaminants would be 'melted out' of the vinyl and since they would be adding a good percentage of virgin vinyl to the mix, nobody would notice. Well, I think everybody (at least the audiophiles) did.
Rainbow being one of the few people left in the game (I'm sure there are others, but I knew these guys) did some very good things due to a lack of price competition and requests from their somewhat 'picky' customers. They went back to pressing thick discs and utilize the best quality virgin vinyl available, no regrind. I also understand their cooling process is a little longer to allow the disc to harden up better in the mold. ANYWAY, discs being manufactured today in the U.S.A. are probably some of the best quality discs that have been manufactured in the last 25 years or so. Be thankful that the few remaining manufacturers in the vinyl disc business are (at least from my viewpoint) stressing quality of their product.
A previous responder noted that the quality of pressings had deteriorated over the years. The dirty little secret about that was that for many years manufacturers pressed 'thick' discs and utilized virgin vinyl in the pressing process. For production savings, eventually discs started to be pressed thinner (causing increased warping and a number of other problems). What really had an effect however was when some pressing plants hit on the idea (driven by the record companies relentless quest for cost savings in a steadily shrinking market) of utilizing substantial amounts of 'regrind' vinyl sourced from unsold discs returned from retailers as well as 'in plant' pressing defects. Needless to say the introduction of foreign contaminants as the discs were cut from their album covers, piled up somewhere and eventually melted down was substantial. I should also mention that in most cases the LP disc labels were left on the discs to be melted down with everything else. The feeling was that most of the contaminants would be 'melted out' of the vinyl and since they would be adding a good percentage of virgin vinyl to the mix, nobody would notice. Well, I think everybody (at least the audiophiles) did.
Rainbow being one of the few people left in the game (I'm sure there are others, but I knew these guys) did some very good things due to a lack of price competition and requests from their somewhat 'picky' customers. They went back to pressing thick discs and utilize the best quality virgin vinyl available, no regrind. I also understand their cooling process is a little longer to allow the disc to harden up better in the mold. ANYWAY, discs being manufactured today in the U.S.A. are probably some of the best quality discs that have been manufactured in the last 25 years or so. Be thankful that the few remaining manufacturers in the vinyl disc business are (at least from my viewpoint) stressing quality of their product.