Pressing vinyl is pretty much a 3rd world process. It's not that tricky. The process is Masters, Mothers, and Stampers. The Masters are cut on a lathe using audio tape as the source in the old days.
how were copies of vinyl made in "third-party" countries
I have some LPs from the former Yugoslavia, Holland, Hungary, Russia (bought them way back when in bulk) and now I wonder what the process was and how close they are to the original?
I assume they weren't digitized, they were released in the 70s and early 80s. Anyone knows what they would receive from the recording studio/company/warehouse? Tapes, the "negatives"? Are there copies considered better than others?
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If you run the Stampers or Mothers too long, don't watch your vinyl temps carefully, or run substandard vinyl, quality can suffer. Cutting the Masters is done early in the process and unless it's a bootleg, it's as good as it gets. |
With all due respect, it is not just masters, mothers, and stampers. The first step in making LP’s is for the mastering engineer to cut a lacquer from whatever the source is. From the 1950’s onward that source was most commonly a tape copy (hopefully a 1st-generation, but not always) made from the 2-track master mix tape, in the record industry called a "production" master tape . The lacquer (a "positive") is then plated (and now referred to as the "metal works"), and the process of making fathers (a negative), mothers (a positive), stampers (a negative), and finally LP’s (a positive, of course) begins. A google search will lead you to deeper details. A production tape sent to a foreign country will be used to cut a lacquer by whatever company has the rights to manufacture LP’s for their region of the world. So the same LP title can be manufactured from dozens of different lacquers, and fathers, mothers, and stampers, and of course pressing plants. Look through all the listings of the different versions of LP’s for any given title on Discogs. With some titles the numbers are staggering. |
+1 @bdp24 |
"A production tape sent to a foreign country" OK, so if it was 1s generation, then it was "original", with 2nd generation, was there a loss? Would they have to send it back to the owner of the tape? And the owner would trust x number of countries with it? (Back then, the record companies in Eastern Europe were state run.) Also, could they have also sent the mothers, stampers? |
I could be wrong, but the master tapes are not going anywhere. The master disc is made from a lathe cut lacquer and they can make a few masters if needed. I think I said it wrong earlier. The record stamper company would get a master disc. I wasn't in the industry so if I'm wrong I'm willing to be corrected. |
in any case, how do they sound? Content/artists you enjoy, original recording originally done, If enjoyable? involving? well done!!! There is always the potential for a company to license content and them ,improve' it, 'enhance' imaging, .... Again, if enjoyable, nothing 'odd', there you go. Or, what did they do? Something wonderful, perhaps research and find original issue, see if importantly better. If so, then replace other favorites. IOW, unless a professional perfectionist, search for just a bit better can be distracting, finding other wonderful content would be my approach. |
An example, that is not necessarily correct, but illustrates how it may go: EMI/Harvest, in Canada VS the USA. Back in the pure analog days. EMI makes a copy of the master, and then uses that to make copies for the various areas they market into. Or, they use the orignal copy of the master to make the copies. This creates one possible generational difference. Could be 2nd or 3rd. depends. When the copies (2nd or 3rd gen) reach the USA, the copy is then copied (3rd or 4th, already!), the orignal copy put in storage, and this new gen down copy set is distributed to the multiple record pressing plants in the large USA market. Then the record goes through the regular process or making the lacquer, mother, stampers, etc, at each pressing plant. OR, it might have lacquers/mothers/stampers (the best scenario) made from that single copy and each plant gets it’s own set of mothers or just stampers, etc, for pressing. Depends. Possibilities, not facts. It can go whatever way is cheaper or easier, quicker or more expedient, overall. If the hardware is not the same at each plant, that issue may be sidestepped by sending tape copies and the entire mastering to lacquer might take place at each pressing plant, or just some pressing plants. Again, depends. This is all about expedience, get the records to the fickle emotional buyer now, with that new hot album from that new hot artist. This is ground up meat or salami, it has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with selling sausages to the masses. This is not art as a business. it is entirely the opposite. Maybe an individual in the given system may care, but they may not be able to do much. This is about money and viability as a business, pure and simple. The customer is third in line, if they are lucky. Usually they are further down than third in importance, like 5th or 6th.
In Canada, with 10x less customers, so 10x less need for quick simultaneous pressing (like the larger market USA requires) of records..the 2nd or 3rd gen copy of the master goes right to the single pressing plant, and one or more lacquers are cut from the master copy (2nd or 3rd gen from EMI/Harvest), and then the mothers, stampers, etc. What this means is that the Canadian copies of all analog older EMI/Harvest records can be and sometimes are one generation closer to the master tape, vs those from the USA. Simply due to Canada’s market size not requiring so many lacquers/mothers, etc needing to be made, for simultaneous/parallel production, in order to serve the market in a timely manner. But, was the hardware and the people involved, all up to snuff on that Canadian copy? Generally, people do pretty good, attend to their jobs, have good hardware and good days... and the Canadian copies of older EMI/Harvest show themselves to be that 'one generation better sounding' than the USA copies of EMI/Harvest, regarding the purely analog LP years.
Each country is different and all of it is up in the air, can change at any moment, and can be difficult to find information about. Some companies may only ship stampers, etc, and never ship a master copy. It depends. This is all a grey area from our perspective, in the vast number of cases, regarding publicly shared data...
Hence the audiophile record pursuit and business. Where the providence and path to getting to the LP record in your hands is explicit stated and known. But that is still subject to error and issues. As any audiophile record buyer soon learns. This is part of why the white hot stampers record buying website exists. No the only reason, mind you, as the whole process of making a record can go good or awry at any given stage, and it’s all a bit of a fog from our buying perspective... |
From my experience I can tell you that every LP I’ve listened to from the former eastern bloc (USSR, Czech, etc.) is awful. The only reason I bought them was to listen to a performance by historically important musicians, who were among the best in the world; unfortunately, their recording process was among the worst in the world. |
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It’s a mirror, son. Stop stabbing at people and you won’t get stabbed back. Fixing it involves dealing with yourself, first. Come back when you find your humanity. Thanks. OTOH, we would not understand who and what nice people are, if you did not provide perspective. So there is that value. For whatever it is worth. |
That's a lot of awesome info! I wonder if there is any processing data anywhere on the sleeve or the LP, like abbreviations for the manufacturing steps. I will definitely look for Canadian prints. I have a lot of Russian records, they are awful. Yugoslavian records: flawless. In the 70s and 80s, there was no competition in Eastern Europe. Every company (other than hairdressers and mechanics) was a monopoly in their region. They could make horrible or flawless quality products, it did not make a difference to them. The biggest factor was the culture and the heritage: e.g. Hungary was a science and math oriented country, full of nerds, which showed, musicians cared about quality in every sense, and they couldn't (I assume) cut good copies just for themselves - if they wanted a good LP, they had to have a good all around process.
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Generally, as you have found ..original copies from the smaller orignal country can sound quite amazing. Mostly due to the possibility of the shortness and simplicity of the tape-to-LP path. Regarding EMI/Harvest analog originals...those from Great Britain (smaller home town advantage) can many times sound the best. Eg, you generally wanna consider buying early Black Sabbath as a British pressing, if you can find a mint one. And the same for a few hundred other artists from GB. Good luck with that.... the trick here, is that the Canadian copy generally sells right along side the US copy, on ebay.com and ebay.ca... and all things being equal, like price/costs (which they are not always), the Canadian copy can be better, more often than not. but, a thousand other un-researched situations exist, so..it is what it is... The desired abbreviations may be on the lacquer and sometimes are. but deciphering their meaning is not easy as the language shorthand is their own internal company language and each is different. |
A lot depended on how many units they thought would sell. If caught short they may run the stampers longer or make new masters.
The answer is no but I always looked for coarse grooves. That shows they were changing the pitch for more dynamic range but there are good sounding records that show even spacing also. |
I agree with the terrible quality of pressings which came from Russia and Czechoslovakia, same with their CDs. I also look for the country of origin of the band and it's record label. There are so many UK albums with good SQ. I have also found that many German releases are superior to US, maybe it's better QC or they don't have the philosophy of cranking out product. One more thought; I've found Decca pressings to be outstanding. I have an issue with the budget Angel releases, they sound like they were made with inferior masters. No resemblance to Decca or London. |
With the exception of some knowledgeable record collectors/archivists/mastering engineers in the past (decades ago), I think a lot of the learning about records occurred (at least for me) after the Death of Vinyl.™ The market turned from mass produced, fungible product that was churned out in the millions of copies (remember those days?) to used records, older copies and trying to sort through a lot of information that wasn't generally available to consumers. Thus, differences in pressing plants, decoding deadwax and trying to match up information about specific pressings with sonics, most of which was anecdotal. In some cases, with popular records, there could be hundreds of different pressings to choose from. People construct general rules about source country- where the record originated from, where it was mastered, etc. but sometimes the "rules" (which are more like guidelines) don't apply in reality (there's the subjective element too). For example, Patto's first album on Vertigo is a UK creation but the US pressing is more bombastic and a fraction of the price (I have both). Sometimes, UK labels like Island used Sterling in NY to master -- so you may hear differences in the vinyl compound or the care with which it is pressed. For a lot of the "big" classic rock stuff, I accumulated multiple pressings and each one is different- among the better sounding ones, it is just different shadings of the sonic truth. Sometimes, there is a dramatically better sounding one--for example, Jeff Beck's Truth on the UK EMI/Columbia blue black label (first press) sounds remarkably better than any other copy I've heard, including the UK second press and any Epic copy I've had or heard. (I have not heard the MoFi re-do). Assembling this information requires some research- the Hoffman forum is great for classic rock but you have to find threads where people are comparing pressings and their merits rather than just pronouncing X "sounds great." And their experience, as reported, is like data points that you line up-- if you are looking for bargains where an original pressing is expensive, I've found some old hard rock/psych/prog that is typically tres cher on a UK pressing that is cheaper and pretty close in sound coming out of Australia or NZ- the issue there is simply far fewer copies in circulation from the period. I don't know anybody that knows it all. There are certain pockets of deep info that get accumulated for specific genres, or labels or bands. Some of the post-bop jazz I like was produced in such small quantities that there are no alternatives except the original small or private label pressing and perhaps a reissue (often of questionable sourcing). UK Decca were generally superb- from recording to mastering to manufacture. My depth of knowledge in classical is limited though I bought thousands of classical records back in the '80s when they were supposed to be disappearing-- old RCA doggies, the Deccas, Londons, Lyrita, EMI ASD and lots of boutique stuff. Hardly listen to any of that these days, but still have 'em. It is fun to go down the rabbit hole on this stuff, the chase to acquire can be exciting and if you are lucky and careful, you can land some pretty nice records. I do think the market is inflated right now, grading is not consistent (was it ever?) and some stuff has just gotten astronomical. For that, a good reissue if available, may make sense. Call me an interested enthusiast with a genuine desire to learn, no guruism on my part- I have several people with whom I share and get info from. And buy from all over the world. DHL Express is a godsend if you have a vendor with an account. Cheap and fast, reliable. |
Me too! |
To add to Bill’s (@whart) as-always excellent comments, consider this: When the LP’s Bill referred to were being produced in numbers ranging from tens of thousands to millions (and that’s just in the U.S.A.), production master tapes were sent to numerous pressing plants throughout the country. Each pressing plant made their own PVC (LP’s are made of poly vinyl chloride, not "vinyl"), the PVC being delivered to the plant as small pellets in a big bag (like cement) or barrel. The same album---made from "identical" production tapes---can sound somewhat different depending upon at which plant it was manufactured. This topic is a main one on the Hoffman Forums, and sometimes opinions vary about which pressing plant made the "best" version of a given title. Pressing plant info (as well as the identity of the mastering engineer who cut the lacquer) is sometimes contained in the run-out groove/dead wax (Tom Port scratches out this info on the Better Records LP’s he sends out), or even on the center label (common on some labels, one such being Asylum Records). Some old-time pressing plant employees have stated that the LP’s their machines produced early in the morning sounded different than those in the afternoon. And different plants had varying amounts of "cool-down time"---how long the pressing machine would sit idle after the top plate came down and compressed the PVC, allowing the material enough time to solidify. Chad Kassem employs an unusually long cool-down cycle time, such that the 180g LP’s made at his QRP (Quality Record Pressings) facility in Salina, KS are as flat as possible. He also installed vibration isolation material under his presses, to prevent his LP’s from being degraded by the vibration producing machines in his pressing plant. IMO, the QRP LP’s are the finest I own. Then there is the fact that each engineer who cut a lacquer for a company was free to change the sound contained in the tape he received, adding reverb, compression, frequency response manipulation, fade outs, etc. The Capitol engineer who cut the lacquers for the U.S.A. versions of The Beatles albums fiddled with the Parlophone tapes a lot, the UK and USA LP’s sounding radically different. As @lewm said, the Angel pressings of UK EMI Classical LP’s are drastically inferior. When it comes to Decca/London Classical LP’s, the London LP’s that say "Manufactured In England" came off the same press as did the Decca’s, the only difference between the two being the center paper label. The London’s can be found for less money that the Decca’s, so go for it! |
fun fact: I have buying an album about one a week from ebay, the cheap ones under $10. usually they are in much better shape than I expect it. There was one that was however a total mess, like the cat regularly puked on it and then it was used as a weapon in a domestic dispute. It sounds so clear and detailed like nothing I have ever heard. |
@bdp24 I was not aware of this. I know the engineer had free reign to make changes for technical reasons; eg, using compression so that a bass heavy passage wouldn't affect the other grooves, length of run-in and run-out grooves, limiting peaks and transients. It doesn't seem right that he could make non-technical tweaks that change the creative decisions made by the production team.
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@grislybutter (now THERE'S a handle!): I'm lucky to have two local record shops that specialized in used LP's, and one antique mall with an incredible LP booth. I regularly find LP's from the 1950's through the 80's, in from VG+ to near Mint condition, usually priced from $5 to $10. And a coupla times per year Music Millennium in Portland has a sidewalk sale, where most LP's are $2! You have to dig through box after box, but that's part of the used LP game. I bought and sold records in Goldmine Record Collectors Magazine in the late-70's into the 80's. It was a small community, the dealers very dependable as far as grading and condition. Ebay and even Discogs is very hit-and-miss, you never know what you're going to get. You would think Near Mint means Near Mint, but to some sellers it apparently doesn't. I prefer to buy in person, but there are some titles you are never going to find locally. |
@bdp24 if you are lucky enough to have big record stores in your city, you are lucky enough! I recently discovered a store in my town with 1000s of 45s in boxes. It takes 15 min to go through one. 50 boxes at least. If only someone cataloged it, or sorted at least? I guess browsing is part of the fun |
This meaningless grading of used records has only been happening since the vinyl resurgence. In the original era of vinyl, the grade of a used record meant something. There were no internet sales and used record shops knew how to grade using the Goldmine scale (or their own). Most shops would let you preview a record.
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@lowrider57: Chad Kassem licensed the rights to reissue Tea For The Tillerman by Cat Stevens, and hired Bernie Grundman to do the mastering (he has his own facility in Los Angeles). The original UK "pink label" Island Records LP has long been an audiophile grail, included in Harry Pearson’s Super Disc list. Chad got a call from Bernie, telling him he had made a startling discovery: the original Island/A &M lacquer was cut assuming the master tape was Dolby A encoded. It wasn’t! With Dolby A engaged in playback of the master tape, the Dolby equalization curve significantly rolled off high frequencies, drastically changing the sound of, amongst other things, Cat’s Ovation acoustic guitar. The Ovation has not a wooden body, but a plastic one, and is an unusually bright sounding guitar. Not on all previous LP’s and CD’s! I didn’t own a pink label Island copy, but rather a slightly later-70’s "Palm Tree" UK Island, so I assumed the issue I had with the LP---a lack of high frequency overtones in the cymbals, and a lack of punch in the kick drum (missing high frequencies rob a kick drum of it’s attack characteristics. My LP didn’t imo live up to it’s reputation)---was because of the pressing. As an illustration of why Chad Kassem and his Analogue Productions/QRP team make better LP’s than does Mobile Fidelity, MoFi didn’t realize the Dolby issue when they remastered the tape they received, releasing the album on LP and CD with therefore compromised sound quality. So Chad had Bernie cut the album "flat" (no Dolby A), and the resulting test pressing sounded very, very bright to Chad. Chad gave Michael Fremer a call, appraising him of the situation. Chad told Michael he wasn’t sure audiophiles would like such a bright sounding LP, but Fremer told him "Hey, that’s what the recording sounds like." Chad had Bernie do a cut with the high frequencies brought down in level somewhat (via equalization, not Dolby circuitry), and send both version to Fremer to listen to. Michael encouraged Chad to release the LP with it’s recorded, non-EQ’d sound. Available on a single 33-1/3 RPM LP, or in a 2-LP 45 RPM set. An absolutely incredible sounding LP! |
Jeff Lynne is well known for his love of extreme levels of compression. I love the early albums of Dave Edmunds, but what Jeff Lynne did to Dave's sound on his productions completely changed Dave's signature sound (1950's Rock 'n' Roll, Traditional/Hard Country), and not for the better. I never cared much for ELO either, but The Traveling Wilbury albums I love. |
well, I love ELO, to me they are in the top 5 influential bands ever (and that's generous, since it was all written by Lynne. He wrote and produced top hits for George Harrison, Tom Petty, Brian Wilson and more. I also love the Birmingham sound, besides ELO: the Spencer Davis group, the Moody Blues, how this bleak little town created so much in the 60s and 70s |
@bdp24 Has mentioned "cooldown time" which is VERY important. The shorter the time, as in most "pop" records back then, the worse the lasting power of the record. Longer times meant better quality, but when an album was popular, it had to be out "right away" to sell the million copies. Remember, they were $4.98 back then...or sometimes less! Cheers! |
@richopp: Yeah, in the 50’s/60’s/70’s/80’s LP’s weren’t being made for audiophiles with high end audio systems, they were being made for record changers, TV/hi-fi consoles, cheap Japanese turntables, etc. Labels like Analogue Productions/QRP, Speakers Corner, MoFi, VMP, Intervention, Sheffield, Reference Recordings, etc. are making LP’s to be played on high quality turntables/arm/cartridges, by people who are willing and able to pay $40-$150 per LP. When I started buying LP’s (1963), stereo LP’s retailed for $3.99, mono $2.99. I bought mostly mono. A dollar was a lot of money to a kid back then! 7" 45 RPM singles sold for 49 cents. |
"Apologists" for current LP prices make the case that adjusted for inflation, $35 now is actually cheaper than $5 was in the late-60’s. Is there an economist reading this who can confirm or refute that assertion? While audiophile reissues are around $35 and up (with many at $40), non-audiophile new release LP’s can be had for as low as $20-$25, which adjusted for inflation is actually cheaper than the price of LP’s in the late-80’s, if I’m not mistaken. And used LP’s can be obtained for mere peanuts, as low as $2 if you look hard enough. Even at the more common $5-$10, that’s less than many LP’s sold for new. The challenge is finding them in Near Mint/Mint - condition. I recently bought a U.S. Island Records pressing of State Of The Union by The Long Ryders (they were part of the Los Angeles-based Cowpunk movement of the 1980’s. Drummer Greg Sowders was married to Lucinda Williams at the time.). The Discogs seller listed the LP with a Near Mint grading, but when I removed the LP from it’s sleeve I found a big ’ol scratch across the first track on one side. I notified the seller that was unacceptable, and he refunded my entire purchase price ($10 plus shipping and state tax). But there was another problem with the LP, one not of the sellers making: looking closely at the surface of the LP under harsh light (my normal procedure), I could see flaws in the PVC itself, manufacturing imperfections. On one side there were tiny little "pimples", on the opposite side the same size "dimples". The little holes may have been large enough for the tip of a stylus to become lodged in, and there was no way I was going to find out by playing the LP! I went on Discogs and found a UK Island pressing, priced only $5 more ($15). The album was recorded in England, produced by Will Burch, the drummer of Power Pop group The Records. It just arrived, and is in Mint condition and free of any manufacturing defects. Another case of a UK pressing being superior to a USA pos LP. |
You always have some cool "insider" stories. The production master comes with a spec sheet which has a checklist. Maybe an oversight or the cutting engineer thought he knew better how to transfer the tape. I received a master to transfer for a band's music video. I transferred it according to the Dolby spec. When the band came to the studio to preview the video, they remarked how great the audio was, it sounded better than the album. I later called the original studio and found out they cut the record without Dolby. The album sounded very flat.
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