[78-L] UNIQUE BIX BEIDERBECKE 1927 OKEH METAL MOTHER!

[Michael Shoshani]

On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 15:39 +0100, Han Enderman wrote:
> A general question about mothers.
> When the negative father was produced, did they keep it in the archives to produce mothers in the future,
> or did they make immediately one to several mothers, depending on expected sales, and recycle the father?

In US terminology, the negative is actually called the 'matrix', and
there can only ever be one of those because the original master
wax/lacquer recording is destroyed by the process of plating and peeling
the matrix, due to the soft consistency of the surface of the master.

However, one matrix can spawn quite a few mothers; in general practice I
believe the matrix and at least one mother were kept on file. It's the
mother that is plated to produce the stampers.

MS