i am thinking of buying a cd duplicator to basically get some cds out on my cd-r label. has anyone had any experience of these machines? what to look out for,prices to pay etc? hope someone can help me out here.

Even for a CDr pressing machine you'll be looking at a biggish investment and do you really think you'll manage to make it back by selling CDRs? With most people at most only willing to pay a couple quid for a CDR then you'd have to get covers done as well it might be a bit of a struggle to make the money back for the machine let alone all the other costs for each releases you'd be doing. If you was going to buy a PRO-CD pressing equipment and do it for your own labels releases along with starting a side business to offer other labels + bands PRO-CDs which you press for a profit that would be a better idea.

Look into this company for information on how to start and the costs around starting a business like this - http://www.copytrax.com

wee update on this,asked for advice on myspace and got a load of good feedback about this. anyway i am buying a second hand cd duplicator for £60 thats in good working order and will fullfill my needs for short run cd-r and i also got a tip for cheap reproduction done by rippingthrash fanzine and distro people. so all in all i am pretty happy with the outcome.

i have to ask...

how will you be doing the disc labels?

unless you have the ability to print professional quality disc labels you'd be better off looking at placing orders with companies that do CD replication/duplication and printing

people are more reluctant to spend money on CD-R to begin with and are really reluctant to spend money on CD-R with an adhesive label or worse... hand written

yep i know what you mean, i do know someone with a printer that can do cds so that will be a way for me to go, the other way is with coloured cds no label as such,i have seen a few smaller labels doing this as well. its another thing to look into tho.