We've been getting a lot of excitement and questions about the new Third Man Record Booth, as you can imagine, so we wanted to answer as many additional questions as we can. The Record Booth is not just for Record Store Day. It is going to be a permanent installation at Third Man's Novelties Lounge in Nashville, but due to the possibility of long lines for several things on Record Store Day, we are making arrangements to have a separate entrance and location for the booth alone to keep the flow moving in the store.

The recording process runs on the Third Man tokens you see Brendan Benson using in the video, and yes, shockingly it will not be 35 cents anymore. Things have changed since the 1940's. The materials involved and the process and labor are very expensive, but worth every penny to us (and we hope to you as well). The stamp and envelope also involve the weight of a blank vinyl and cardboard, so it costs more to mail than a standard letter.

We also have some future upgrades up our sleeve for the booth, so watch out in the coming months. Just like the Scopitone, which has been running elegantly in the last few months, to which we've added viewing windows for people to see the inner machinations, we have some ideas for the record booth as well. Some of you noticed in the video that the sign reads "you have 65 seconds to record". That was true for a 6" record at 78 speed, the original speed for the booth in 1947.  Our brilliant Third Man family engineers (Josh Smith, Kevin Carrico, George Ingram, and Ross Blomgren) have modified the motors to run at 45 speed, expanding the recording time from 65 seconds to 111 seconds, making it much easier to play on modern turntables that might not have a 78 speed option, with little loss in fidelity. Instruments will be available next to the booth to use for free and we are currently looking into ways for different machines in the novelties lounge to not play music at the same time, but for now people will just have to be polite while someone's recording in the booth and not blast a Scopitone video simultaneously.

All of the records recorded in the booth will have Third Man Catalog number "333" and the uploads that fans will send to TMR for our page of recordings made in the booth will appear in that catalog location. Users of the booth write their recording info on the labels themselves, pen provided in the booth of course. The fidelity of the booth will be better than it ever sounded in its day, but the process uses a cold needle, not a heated needle as in modern acetate cutting. Because of this, the volume is not as loud as a modern vinyl due to the way the groove is cut, but the playback amplifier in the booth compensates for this as will your home stereo system.