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 Post subject: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 11 Jan 2019, 01:14 
Young Padawan
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Found this article in an old issue of Video Magazine of a tour of the Pioneer LDCA Pressing Plant in Carson, California. Scanned it in so you all can read too.

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Article confirms what Publius stated in another thread when I asked about what was format was used for the master which they pressed LDs from. At this point it was D-2 Digital Composite tape.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 11 Jan 2019, 04:48 
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Thanks so much for posting this, really interesting read.

So the elephant condoms were referred to as "onion skin sleeves".

Some of the figures quoted were really interesting - "Total capacity is now 1.5 million discs per month, and the facility typically runs at 50 to 60 percent of capacity." & "pumping out around 1000 different laser titles each month" makes a hell of a lot of discs.

Great read & the pictures were also interesting, the amount of acrylic held in the silos was quite something.

Thanks again :thumbup:
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 11 Jan 2019, 05:16 
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I didn't read above but looked at the pictures :lol:
That makes sense the "onion skin" sleeves, there was something else in another collecting realm I was in once and remember thinner stuff being called onion skin.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 05:58 
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I love stuff like this. Thanks for posting. I didn't know the discs were inserted into the sleeves by hand!
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 07:07 
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Thanks for posting this. I went to college in Carson, CA so this is pretty cool to me!
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 08:04 
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sonicboom wrote:
Thanks for posting this. I went to college in Carson, CA so this is pretty cool to me!


Oh, that's really cool !
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 14:43 
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cplusplus wrote:
I love stuff like this. Thanks for posting. I didn't know the discs were inserted into the sleeves by hand!

Yeah, I remember someone told me when I bought the Galaxy Express movie box that the US had stacks of LDs and would get scratched when put into sleeves and Japanese LDs were superior since they didn't get scratches by the workers.

Don't know how true this is but that's what I was told.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 15:14 
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Well considering %60 of all US EC’s come pre-crumpled in the sleeve I sort of always assumed they were hand done.
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All about LD care, inner sleeves, shrink wrap, etc.

https://youtu.be/b3O-vHpHRpM
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 12 Jan 2019, 23:12 
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rein-o wrote:
cplusplus wrote:
I love stuff like this. Thanks for posting. I didn't know the discs were inserted into the sleeves by hand!

Yeah, I remember someone told me when I bought the Galaxy Express movie box that the US had stacks of LDs and would get scratched when put into sleeves and Japanese LDs were superior since they didn't get scratches by the workers.

Don't know how true this is but that's what I was told.


Pretty much correct.

There is a video (pretty easy to find if memory serves me) showing how PIONEER produced their discs with the final bit showing the machine packing process - again if memory serves me the title shown being packed is Top Gun but not to sure on that.

Most (but not all) Japanese pressed LDs commissioned for the US market were sent from Japan packed in boxes (apparently in the "onion skin" sleeves) which were then opened at wherever the packing was done in the US & popped by hand into the outer cover which would have been printed & made in the US then shrink-wrapped.

It was a tax cost thing apparently as if the cover was "Made in the USA" & "Packed in the USA" it was then classed as part of the manufacturing process so incurred a lesser tax rate compared to bringing them in fully finished - ie: the disc & cover made in Japan, packed & ready for sale would incur a much higher tax cost.

On the cover of many LD US titles you will find "Disc made in Japan. Cover printed (or Cover made) in USA."

Would perhaps explain the previously mentioned chewed inner sleeves on many "new/sealed" US LD titles.



Hi rein-o, the feature is worth a read - some interesting information within it.

Cheers
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 13 Jan 2019, 10:13 
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So very cool to see this. Thanks for posting. I am sure DVD and BD are made in a similar manner today - but it's pretty incredible to see what went into mass producing LDs back in the day and how much of an investment Pioneer really had in it. Amazing stuff.

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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 13 Jan 2019, 10:44 
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Now I'm picturing a tour of the Sony plant in Illinois looking like Beavis & Butt-head working at Burgerworld.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 13 Jan 2019, 19:37 
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takeshi666 wrote:
Now I'm picturing a tour of the Sony plant in Illinois looking like Beavis & Butt-head working at Burgerworld.


This made me burst out laughing :lol:
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 01 Jun 2022, 01:55 
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Sorry to bump an old thread, but I found some interesting information about the plant:

It was originally a DiscoVision plant! According Blam1's DiscoVision history site, it was built from a closed furniture factory. It must have been established around 1977/8, because:
[*]MCA was still working on test discs at their Torrance laboratory in early 1977
[*]Universal-Pioneer, which was established in late 1977, used information from an operating Carson plant to establish their Kofu plant.
[*]The first commercial discs went on sale in 1978

On January 25th, 1981, DiscoVision Associates announced the plant was to close by the end of February that year (NY Times & Billboard Magazine).

DiscoVision, which had 1,000 employees at the time (LA Times), did apparently another plant in Costa Mesa where they were headquartered (New Scientist). According to the New Scientist article, this was a plant of "appaling" quality, with apparently nine-in-ten discs being faulty.

Starting in February 1981, DiscoVision Associates negotiated a sale of DiscoVision to Pioneer. I say "starting", because the deal as of the Feb 13th Billboard article and the actual deal don't seem to line up. Billboard said "A new Pioneer software plant is being targeted for California next year but not at the Carson site since the physical assets of DVA are not included in the buy." However, the LA Times article said that in 1982 DVA ended up selling everything but the patents. (That article was written in 1989, when IBM and MCA did end up selling DVA to Pioneer; by that time they had just 16 employees left).

Regardless, some way or another, the plants got sold to Pioneer. According to another page on Blam1's site, the Costa Mesa plant was shut down, but the Carson facility went through an extensive re-tooling, and re-opened as the new Pioneer plant, which the magazine shows.

An apparent address of the Carson Pioneer plant was 1041 E 230th St., Carson, CA 90745. (See this website.) I looked in Google earth, and it seems like it was demolished in 2005.
Here are some aerial photos of it from Google Earth (it's the bottom building):
Image

However, it is possible that building was only some kind of warehouse. In those satellite images, I can't spot the four acrylic silos shown on the first page of the OP's article - nor what look like train tracks. Maybe the plant itself was somewhere else in Carson, and that was a distribution point.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 02 Jun 2022, 14:14 
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Because I'm local, I decided to go check out the site last year while I was working at the Soccer Stadium nearby. Nothing to see. Only industrial buildings and trucks.
Attachment:
Pioneer LDCA July 2021.jpg
Pioneer LDCA July 2021.jpg [ 115.35 KiB | Viewed 2836 times ]
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 02 Jun 2022, 17:29 
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Not sure what you were expecting to find.
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 02 Jun 2022, 22:55 
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takeshi666 wrote:
Not sure what you were expecting to find.


I'd expect to find a huge load of trashed LD's in some corner or something else awesome :P
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 Post subject: Re: Pioneer Pressing Plant Tour Article
PostPosted: 02 Jun 2022, 23:14 
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greenlaser wrote:
I can't spot the four acrylic silos

I see them in the top left corner of the building in the 1994 photo. They look to have been there from ~1992 through 1999.

Here is a photo of the Discovision recorder:
Attachment:
Recorder.jpg
Recorder.jpg [ 75.02 KiB | Viewed 2805 times ]
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