How Do You Get a Job Pressing Records? We Asked Our Lead Press Operator

It's one of the questions we get most on Instagram whenever we post behind-the-scenes footage from the pressing floor: How do I get a job doing that?

So we sat down with Michael Potter, Hellbender Vinyl's lead press operator, to get the real answer. Here's a bit of our convo -

How long have you been doing this, and how'd you get started?

I started pressing records a while back now. I was a musician before this — playing in bands — so I already had a bit of that mindset: production, music, audio, how that stuff works. Once I got into vinyl pressing at Kindercore, I was somehow just naturally good at it.

What do you like about the job?

I really love it. I love making a piece of art in itself — making something that someone else put their heart and soul into. I try to do the best possible job I can on every record. It brings so much joy to the artists.

I know what it feels like to have your hopes and dreams put into someone else's hands. That's why I take it very seriously. I always do the best I can, for everybody, because I want them to be happy with everything.

Is there anything unexpected that comes up on the job?

With vinyl pressing, there's a lot of unexpected things. After a while, the unexpected sort of becomes the expected. You hope for the best but kind of expect the worst — I don't mean that everything's going to fall apart, but something is always going to pop up that, in the moment, you might not know exactly how to handle.

That's part of being a presser. And it's also a nice thing about it — it really works your brain. You have to figure out how to keep records pressing: whatever fix you need to make, whatever the settings, whatever else — just to keep things rolling. That's a big part of it.

People are always asking how they can get a job doing this. What would you tell them?

Honestly, I was a musician doing something similar to this, and I found an opportunity and took it.

Last one — do you have a favorite vinyl variant?

Sure, yeah — black vinyl. For decades, that's all that was being pressed. So these machines, and everything everyone knows about pressing, basically comes from using black vinyl. Now we're using all this other stuff, kind of making it up as we go, and it's good, but nothing will ever sound as good as black.

What I don't like is splatter. It almost always causes audio defects, just because of the way it's made. I get why it looks cool, though.

I really like making eclipse and swirl variants — the audio quality is better on those. But yeah, black vinyl will always be my favorite.