26 WINTER 2019 • POPSCI.COM by Stan Horaczek / photograph by Jon Enoch
high-volume operations make copies from
copies of the father, maximizing efficiency
but reducing fidelity to the original.
Hutchison spent three years and well
into six figures restoring the machines. “We
found them in a garage in Romania with wa-
ter dripping on them from the roof,” he says.
Hutchison overhauled the gear with help from
sound engineers Duncan Crimmins and Sean
Davies, the latter of whom used it decades ago
and still owned the service manuals.
Because his source material was recorded
long before modern electronics, the old-
fashioned equipment provides a more
authentic re-creation of the original pressings.
The restoration allowed Hutchison to scru-
tinize the sonic effect of different capacitors,
resistors, wires, and, most important, the
vacuum tubes that power it all. He auditioned
dozens of models before choosing a set he
liked. “It’s a minefield of experimentation,”
he says. “And it’s a big part of what we do.”
Each record requires still more trial and
error. While working on his latest project, a
reissue of Way Out West by jazz saxophonist
Sonny Rollins, Hutchison discovered that
the original producer added reverb—the
slight echo that gives music depth—during
postproduction. Software can create it with a
click, but Hutchison chose an analog solution:
two 500-pound steel sheets, called reverb
plates, that hang on springs and vibrate to the
sound playing on the master tape. Electric
pickups like those in a guitar capture their
warbling, which he added to the recording.
The hassle was worth it in Hutchison’s opin-
ion. Anything less would be unacceptable.
Just like talking while the music is playing.IT’S A
MINEFIELD OF
EXPERI MEN TA-
TION. AND IT’S
A BIG PART OF
WHAT WE DO.”
—PETE
HUTCHISONHe meticulously crafts reissues of jazz and classical titles
(including his prized Mozart) from the 1950s and ’60s—
wrapped in letter pressed sleeves—that sell for $350 or
more. Most labels churn out vinyl by the thousands with
modern equipment, but Hutchison’s outfit, the Electric
Recording Co., mints no more than 300 copies of each
album. “Some of these very famous studios take the
original master, and put it onto a digital system to play
around with it and process it,” he says. “I don’t know why
they’re bothering. They’re just degrading the sound.”
Hutchison’s methods are time-consuming: Since
founding the firm in 2012, he’s produced just 41 titles. Buy-
ers snap them up, and used copies (on the rare occasions
you see them for sale) fetch several times their retail price.
While many labels cut LPs using digital files, the Electric
Recording Co. favors midcentury gear Hutchison con-
siders the best of its era. “It just sounds better,” he says.
“We’ve done tests.” A reel-to-reel playback machine feeds
audio from the magnetic tape of the recording session
into a cutting lathe, which carves the music onto a lacquer
disc. The device features a Swiss microscope that Hutchi-
son uses to inspect his work before creating the negative,
called the father, that stamps every record in the run. MostLISTENING TO RECORDS WAS A REVERENT ACT IN PETE
Hutchison’s childhood home. Whenever his parents
played their beloved Ravel and Debussy works, they
enforced one rule: “You weren’t allowed to talk,”
he says. Though Hutchison favored rock and jazz
when he started his own collection as a teen in the
1970s, he returned to classical upon inheriting his fa-
ther’s LPs. His interest in the genre eventually grew
so deep that he spent $12,000 on a pristine copy
of Mozart a Paris, a rare seven-disc set released in
France in 1956.¶Hutchison now makes what many
music aficionados consider the finest records on Earth.
FOR THE
RECORDS
IN PROFILE / PETE HUTCHISON