Clint Holley has always had a thing for vinyl. “I bought my first record around 1979 or 1980,” he recalls. It seems you always remember your first. “It was Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album.”
Clint says his parents were big flea market people. “They used to get my sister and me out of bed at 6 am to drag us to flea markets.” During those flea market forays, Clint discovered he could buy stacks of records for ten and twenty-five cents each. “I started buying records in the 1980s when CDs came out. Everyone was eliminating their record collections, and I started buying them.”
He got into sound engineering by working in the historic Beachland Ballroom and Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio. “I ran sound for the bands that played there,” he says. “I learned on the job.” He spent a decade running audio at the bar during the 2000s. In 2009, someone opened a pressing plant for vinyl records in Cleveland. “His name was Vince Slusarz, and he put a help wanted poster up in the bar where I worked. I applied for the job, but he didn’t hire me. But because I had an audio background, Vince invited me to go with him to a studio that owned a machine called a mastering lathe.”
Clint went home and told his wife, Bonnie, about the machine. “She told me I should buy one of the machines, and that started a year and a half odyssey to find out more about the machines, including their history, who owns them, and who sells them.” People had destroyed much of the equipment from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Most of what was left was mothballed in warehouses, and most were in bad condition.
His quest led him to a man in New Jersey who had stockpiled the mastering lathes when the record companies got rid of them in the 1980s. “His name was Albert Grundy. He was 82 at the time, and he had bought a lot of machines that he restored and sold. He called one day and told me he had one for me. He made me a deal on a Neumann VMS-70 lathe system, and I brought home my first machine in 2010 and set it up in my mother-in-law’s garage.” With Grundy on call as a mentor of sorts, Clint taught himself the craft of cutting records. “He talked me through a lot of things. It put me in touch with an older generation and a new one, too.”
“I think there is a kind of bond that can’t be broken when people enjoy the experience of listening to music,” says Clint. “There’s something special about listening to an album and looking at the cover art and liner notes. There is a stronger connection with the music that way.”
Clint established his business, Well Made Music, in 2010, where he serves as the Chief Mastering Engineer. “Back then, it was manageable. Now, it has exploded. “I would say it was an industry that wasn’t ready for its own success,” Clint explains how Covid hurt the vinyl industry to a certain extent due to supply chain issues. But it also helped. “People had more time at home to listen to music, and many used their stimulus checks to buy records. At the same time, artists weren’t touring, so they had time on their hands to create more music, which increased the demand.”
Clint pressed mastered his first album 14 years ago. “It was a local Cleveland band called The New Lou Reeds.” He earned GRAMMY Awards as a lacquer-cutting engineer for Bobby Rush’s Porcupine Meat (2016) and Otis Readding’s Live at the Whisky A Go Go (2016).
Dave Polster joined Well Made Music in 2014 as a Senior Mastering Engineer. He learned the craft of vinyl record manufacturing and has spearheaded the digital mastering services at Well Made Music. “We are privileged to work on Grammy award-winning projects,” says Clint. Dave was the lacquer-cutting engineer for Billy Strings’ Home (2020) and Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s Crooked Tree (2022).
The clients for Well Made Music range from independent artists to record labels and pressing plants. “Each has their own challenges. Working with artists is more personalized, I suppose. I like to invite them in so they can see their record being pressed.”
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