let me put my boner up in your grandma's face.
first of all, who the fuck are you? have you made any records? i've done several vinyl as far back at 1995. unfortunately for you i know what im talking about, and i shouldnt even really make this post and let ppl be in the dark about it because you are a snarky guy. but i shall explain:
archer and dosado are about the only US plants i would go with atm to get stuff done with any normal wait time. imo, you run the risk with united, rainbo, musicol, lucky lacquers, palomino (once they get back in the game, the guy who ran the company recently died and they are restructuring) and other bigger joints with your wait times because its the summer, also because a few of the bigger plants like eks and recordpressing.com (previously pirates' press) have shut down, as well as the problem with palomino. when you take some of the most reputable plants out of the game, especially in summer when people are trying to print more stuff, everybody ends up waiting longer. ive been hearing from people who are even using overseas plants like steve moore and ceephax that there are wait times that are substantially longer than usual. steve had to wait for over a year to get his latest 12" on future times out.
eks was set up with a new buyer for the place and ran up until the last minute and couldnt complete the deal, so a lot of the other guys are getting way overbooked with jobs. you can take a risk with int'l spots like mobineko (a taiwanese company with a uk office, and a shop in germany, no thx), 2208 (local to mpls, does lathe cuts tho), prarie cat (seems to be getting rave reviews), or use a combination of vinyl printers and get your jackets done seperately by a spot like imprint or a to z media.
as far as actual sound options on vinyl, heres a little information of how the color of vinyl will affect the sound quality:
SOUND CHARACTERISTICS OF VINYL COLORS*
(surface noise: 1=quietest, 8=noisiest)
1. standard black
2. transparent colors (blue, green, clear, gold [orange], transparent red, coke clear, fluorescent colors)
3. non-mixed opaque colors (pink, red, yellow, violet, brown)
4. white
5. opaque mix (mixing opaque and translucent colors in particular; and also tend to have visible staining after a few hundred records, which can be seen in certain light).
6. random color / recycled color shades
7. split color / splatter color / other hand-made colors
8. glow in the dark
*every record runs differently, and generally speaking, the louder the recording, the less noticeable any surface noise will be. also, there are tons of each of these colors in the marketplace, and many people do not seem to notice/mind the differences.
