Abbey Road Mastering Engineer Miles Showell Comments on Apollo/Transco Disaster

On Thursday morning (February 6), the Banning, CA building housing Apollo/Transco Masters’ factory and storage space burned. By far the biggest of the world’s two lacquer master disc manufacturers, most of the world’s vinyl mastering facilities (especially smaller ones) relied upon Apollo/Transco blanks, as well as their cutting styli for Westrex cutting heads. Ruled a total loss, 82 firefighters battled the blaze’s toxic fumes; thankfully, there were no injuries (Banning is located in the Southern California desert, approximately 2.5 hours away from Los Angeles).