Diskmakers

US-based manufacturing and pressing plants, renamed from Ballen Record Co. in 1959, renamed to Disc Makers in 1989. Locations in Philadelphia and later Chicago and New York. Use only this label for releases until to 1989. For post-1989 releases, please use Disc makers. The company was founded by Ivin Ballen and in 1959 his son Morris Ballen joined the company. The company manufactured shellac and vinyl records and later 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray's. Ivin's son Harry Ballen also worked for the company. The company catered to independent artists without label support and offered all required aspects to release a record, including label printing and cover printing and manufacturing. It also pressed for other labels such as ABC Records, Prestige and ESP-Disk. It operated (in any case) Hamilton presses for vinyl record production. Early pressings featured a "deep groove" pressing ring; by the late '70s, pressing rings consisted of a two-level outer "humped" ring and a smaller inner ring reminiscent of Specialty pressings. Runouts often contain the mastering date etched in the deadwax. Runouts often have DM (narrow, pointy D that resembles a ▻ or ◅, e.g. "ᕒ ▻" or "◅ Ʃ") etched sideways, an etched "ᗡᕒ" (which resembles a small "Pac-man"), or sometimes a very small stamped "DM" which may appear reversed.