"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.
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@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.
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Yeah, Lynne sure has a "signature" sound. Every album he produces ends up sounding like an ELO record! The one album he did that I love is the little known Something Peculiar by Julianna Raye.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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