JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Disc Makers? Who do you prefer?

I'm looking to glass master duplicate my upcoming CD in the most professional manner, but also the most inexpensive way I can;)

Have you worked with a company you think fits this discription? How about small orders like 500? Who do you recomend?

Thanks!

Ordered 300 from disk makers.They did a great job and the art work color was perfect.This is my 2nd cd using them.I did 1000 on my first cd.Mention your with bmi and you get a 10 percent discount.You can see the covers here http://www.mjmrecords.com/news.htm

I used Disc Makers out of NJ. The whole process was seemless and easy from my point of view. I did my own art work and uploaded it to my account at DM. I ended up placing an order for 300 Digipaks + they provided the barcode. They looked amazing and I received an extra 101 Digipaks from overuns and the 60 yr anniversay special. For me. 401 cds was more than enough for my needs. I will use them again.

If you are a ASCAP member, you can get a nice discount as well.

Best of luck with your project.

Kaika

If you don't need someone to hold your hand through the process, I would recommend Groove House. www.groovehouse.com

They are eco friendly too. As much as a production reseller can be. Plus they do direct to glass master, no interim step like most places.

Bryan is the guy to talk to, tell him I sent ya.

Jody

Don't forget to ask for the JPF Disc Makers discount as well. There's a special going right now for and new replications for $50 dollars off just for metioning Just Plain Folks. They are also JPF Community Partner sponsors of our awards and roadtrips! In 9 years we've never received a single complaint about Disc Makers and their services which is why we hooked up with them as partners.

Brian

Yep, Disc Makers. Pennsauken, NJ plant. But I guess they are all run the same. Efficient, complete, cost effective, options, mastering, artwork, ect. Brian and many others seemed to like our 1999 CD. Had two singles done there as well. Everything went smoothly and as expected, from start to finish. Three projects.

Actually Disc Makers does everything, start to finish, in house. All the art work, printing, glass masters, actual mastering studios, replication etc. Unless they are somehow way higher on price, I can't imagine not using them for a CD project. And even if they were 10% higher, I'd still use them because they will always get it right and even if some problem developed, nobody is better prepared to fix anything (your problem or their own) than they are. I took a tour of the plant and I was truly blown away by the operation and the amazing care they were taking with every single CD project that came through. Whole teams of people worked on every one of them. It was impressive as hell. If you're ever in the neighborhood, you should take the tour. You'll learn a lot about all of this stuff that you never knew.

Brian

With DiscMakers, what you send is what you get. We went thru stacks of CDs looking and listening to the finished product when deciding on a duplicating company. When asking the musicians we knew personally, the most professional looking and sounding ones were almost always done by Discmakers.

Good to know about Groove House, too. It never hurts to investigate, but it seems there are a lot of happy DiscMakers customers.

Good luck,
Brenda

Like the posters above said...Discmakers is a JPF partner and is a great company who gives some discounts to us. They also just advertised a great special for a 1000 CDs, some posters and some T-Shirts too.

One detail from Autumn's post though is that .... I don't think anyone does short runs of glass masters..... I think short runs are pretty much CDRs.... could be wrong...but you may need to get 1000 to get the glass

Another company my cd design clients up here in the Northeast use often is Nimbit. They do a good job and are inexpensive. I don't recommend their other services, but their duping is good.

I've done three short duplications runs through Discmakers. The first one, with slim cases, I was pretty happy with, but 6 or 7 of the cases arrived broken. Second printing was OK generally but it didn't seem like the insert properly fit in the front of the case. Third printing there was an error on the cover even though they were using the same art as previous ones. I also don't like that they use the solid trays rather than transparent ones. So, unfortunately, I will probably be using OasisCD for further projects.

Hey Zircon,

Did you contact them about these various problems and if so, what did they say each time? Believe it when I say we've never had a complaint about them in 9 year (and that's when people complain about just about everything on the planet). I am really shocked to hear you had 3 problems in a row and I'd like to contact Disc Makers to find out what happened, but it won't do me any good if you didn't let them know.

Brian

It's funny, I mispelled the word 'authorized' on the back of my CD is miniscule type where all the legalize verbage was found. The QC department at DiscMakers found it and left me a voicemail on my cell, emailed me, and left a message for me at work. They wanted to make sure I knew about it prior to pressing the CDs. They offered to fix it for $50 since it was my artwork and my mistake, but I passed. Nobody reads the legalize verbage anymore. They will become collectors issues when I'm famous.

Clam,

That's the type of service I've always heard about from Disc Makers. We were endorsing them years before they were JPF Sponsors. Oasis is another great company, but Disc Makers goes another step beyond by helping make JPF even possible. We run all this on almost no money and without Disc Makers support we couldn't do the awards or roadtrips. So why not help those who give back to our community?

Brian

I didn't contact them because I didn't think there would be any point - in all three cases I was on a deadline of some kind so I really couldn't wait to send back the order and have it re-printed, plus I anticipated that they would probably charge me for that kind of service. Just to give a general timeframe, the first run was October 2004, the next was June 2005, and the next after that was about September 2005.

Now, in all fairness, this WAS the short-run duplication service, NOT the large-scale replication. Perhaps they give more care to the larger orders, but again, the fact that they use the solid cases instead of transparent is a letdown (Oasis uses transparent).

Zircon,

No offense guy, but you can't trash a company and support another based on reports of problems that you never made any effort to solve. The broken cases are not their fault, it's the shipping companies fault, but I am betting they would have replaced them anyway. If the insert truly didn't fit in the case, I KNOW they would have fixed that problem for sure if you had let them know. (I can't imagine a standardized process could let that happen in the first place though.. you should really send them an example of the problem). And the Graphics problem also makes no sense. If they messed up a graphic, it's illogical you didn't have them redo it. Are you sure the issue could not have been on your end?

We've had a good relationship with Oasis for many years as well. At one time they sponsored the JPF awards and a huge Roadtrip. They are certainly a valid option. But this post reads pretty unfair. If the issues weren't important enough for you to attempt to fix or resolve, in my opinion it's not valid to trash them for it. And if it was their fault, why use them 3 times in a row? And if you wanted a different type of case, I believe they have all types you can imagine. Did you ask them for the other type of case you wanted?

You're free to endorse anyone you want, but don't do it at an innocent companies expense. If Disc Makers were responsible for any of those problems, they would have made it right if given a chance. 9 years of unanimously glowing feedback indicates that.

Brian

Having worked at Disc Makers and having many, many friends at Oasis, I can tell you they are both top-notch companies. They are both ALL about customer service and bend over backwards to make the best products possible. If you're doing your first project, Oasis seems a little more hands-on and can walk you through the whole process. Also, Disc Makers always sweeps the SGIA Golden Image Awards for excellence in on-disc screen printing - last year I think they took the top prize in every category! Both companies are First Class!

Brian; it's not that the issues were not important, but that I couldn't foresee any kind of resolution that WOULDN'T involve delaying things. In all three cases I had to have the product in my hands as quickly as possible and out to the public. Let me take the graphics problem on the third run for example. This was another order of "Impulse Prime" because the first printing sold out, and both local fans and CDBaby were clamoring for more copies. Discmakers had every single thing from that first printing on file, including the art templates. I simply asked them to give me the exact same order I placed before, and to not change anything. When I received the discs, the error was there. Even assuming they would have been willing to send me a new printing at no charge, I simply did not have the time to wait another week for it.

I don't think I'm being unfair in my description of my experiences here... certainly not intending to trash them. In fact I still personally recommend Discmakers to most people that ask me about CD manufacturing services. I also will not contest their customer service - I am sure everything said here is 100% true. However, that does not discount that in all three cases there was some sort of problem with my order, and for those things to be remedied, it would have delayed my deadline. No matter how good their service is, if I receive an order on June 22nd and I need to release it to the public on June 23rd, they can't conceivably fix a printing error or send me more copies by the 23rd.

All this being said, after hearing your evaluation of the company, I am willing to give them another shot for the (significantly larger) run I intend to do next - IF they can provide the aforementioned transparent cases (when I asked a few years ago, they said they didn't do that). I won't be on a strict deadline for this next one so I can take my time with it.