@grislybutter
I have many LP’s from the countries you brought up as examples….Yugoslavia, Holland, Hungary, Russia.
Holland? Philips manufactured in Holland. Some of the best recordings and pressings you will find consistently.
Hungary? Again, some of my best recordings and pressings by Hungaroton
Russia? Мелодия. Again, one of the best recordings and pressings you will find.
I will throw Czechoslovakian manufactured LP’s in there as well, Again, very well recorded and pressed.
These countries really care/cared about the quality of their reproduced music. In general, much better than what was manufactured in the USA overall.
In terms of ‘third party’ pressings, I have no idea. But in general, these countries have produced some of the best.
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@bkeske
my Russian LPs are way worse than the rest. And the Hungarian ones after 1985 are way worse than pre1985
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@grislybutter
my Russian LPs are way worse than the rest. And the Hungarian ones after 1985 are way worse than pre1985
Could be, I’m only speaking to the record companies I have and familiar with. My point was that some manufactures in these countries are more than capable. There are bad pressings from many countries (including the US)…..and good ones as well in most. I would say I’m probably unfamiliar with the selections you are speaking to.
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@bkeske yes I am sure it varies within a country, a factory, a time of day, as I am learning here. I probably wouldn't play my russian copies much these days anyway.
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The most enjoyable thread I’ve read here.
More posts/stories please.
Edit: typo
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@steve_wisc
I enjoy it a lot too. I learned way more than if I had googled it for hours. Some of these commenters are the coolest, most knowledgeable people!
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So @steve_wisc @grislybutter : one way to start is to put into a good search engine "best vinyl pressing of"____ [name of album]. If it is classic rock, you will get hits for the Hoffman forum, in other cases, hard to predict. (I buy a lot of jazz from the ’70s). You’ll start to see the crowd-sourced aspect to building the knowledge base. There is no one book (though there are numerous labelographies and books about record companies or artist output). There are pretty big divides between classical, rock, prog rock and jazz, among other genres. I have a blog which I am terrible at updating these days, the London Jazz Collector is very very good, and there numerous other sources. Ultimately, you try to get to the source: that is, the artist. Short of that, even if the person is still alive, some representative. I’ve done numerous deep dives to satisfy my curiosity and you’d be surprised at the replies. At one point I was bitching about a Janis Ian reissue, and Janis joined the forum to respond. This is all in your hands. Use your power wisely. :)
Bill
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@whart definitely reminds me of the movie "Juliet, Naked" - the getting in contact part.
What you are describing is somewhat blurred to me by the MoFi story.
Is this a fair assumption? >>
old LPs (pre 90s) may be inferior quality but likely made from better source (and definitely analog) )and "suffered" from less steps in the process
newer LPs benefit from better technology and would have higher quality but the source may not be the original and analog?
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@grislybutter - I don't want to sidetrack this discussion with the MoFi situation but there are bad sounding all analog records and good sounding records that used digital processes. I have a thing for post-bop "spiritual" or "soul" jazz from the '70s and those records now command money. Some have been reissued. The reissues are OK but often not as compelling as the original pressings even though those were pressed during a low point in vinyl quality in the States.
It is very much a case by case, record by record process if SQ is the issue. I tend to like "less produced" sounding records but you'd be surprised- one engineer said you'd be surprised how much artifice and studio manipulation (post production) goes into making something sound "natural." There are certainly labels that had some great output- Warner Bros, during the "green label" era released some great material- they were an artist friendly label and had very astute in house producers. Some of those records were very popular and sold in large quantities at the time of release and could be found in used bins in record stores for little money. (Used records have gone up in price in the last five plus years).
In some cases, the original records are simply hard to find now in good condition. Alice Coltrane's Ptah, the El Daoud was last pressed in 1974. It is going to be reissued and I believe the reissue will come from a digital source. Will that be a lower SQ end product? Maybe. But you would have to be patient, lucky and probably pay several hundred to find a decent original today. So, you pay your money and make your choice. (I found a copy from its original owner from the year of first release- it wasn't cheap at the time, but the price of that record has easily doubled or tripled since I bought it).
I'm not someone who buys as an investment. I buy the records I want to listen to and treat the whole thing as a process of discovery. I did just get in Chad's reissue of Tull's Stand Up and will be curious to compare it with my UK first pressing. That can be fun too. FWIW, quality control is also all over the place- you hear horror stories of new, expensive records that come out of the shrink with fingerprints, or worse, irreparable damage due to bad pressing.
So, I'm not sure you can make general assumptions across the board for older v newer records. I'd focus more on what music you like, which artists or supporting artists seem to appear on the records you like and research what other records they appear on- for example, there is a bassist from the period--Cecil McBee-- who did a huge amount of work in the '70s and appeared as a side man on a lot of records. I'll buy pretty much anything McBee played on.
You find your own path, compare notes with others, learn and keep learning....
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@whart
cool, thank you. I am amazed by how different they sound and how my rating in the store fails me. I only buy records for myself and I only buy used and these pointers are very useful. Now I have to see if I can apply it :)
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@teo_audio I was interested to hear your comments on Canadian pressings. My brother and I both grew up in the UK and bought records there. He moved to Canada in 1978 and I followed him in 1985. I now have all his LPs, and so there are several where I had bought a UK pressing, while he had bought the Canadian version. While my purchases have been, probably, more carefully handled and played with better styli, I often find his Canadian disks just sound better than the UK versions!
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It just goes to show you that things had to be analyzed carefully.
We don’t know how the UK worked their pressing plants. Did EMI/Harvest handle their own pressing plants the same way they handled Canadian or US pressing plants? Or where the pressing plants owned and run by private concerns, outside of the property holders?
This information is, generally, very difficult to find.
Your experience, seems to indicate that some UK labels did the same as they did when dealing with the huge US market. It might be that proximity to the EU, for UK property holders, may have caused them to adopt a single/common strategy, overall, that caused the Canadian pressings to be among the better out there.
Or that all I'm speculating in this post is completely misplaced and the reality was something else altogether. Ie that the hardware was not as good, or badly run, or that vinyl pellets were hard to come by or that the UK plants tended to use more recycled material in their pressings, and so on. Lots of details to try and find.
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@teo_audio - you aren't off the wall on this. Discogs has pretty detailed info about EMI pressing plants and also covers the Philips/Phonodisc plants.
I know from the history of Island Records (which did own a pressing plant at one point that was previously owned by EMI) that Island did use Phonodisc/Polygram and switched to EMI at around the same time that the pink label changed to the pink rim. (You can tell by the deadwax but it's not definitive since in the UK some older metal work was still in use- thus, UK pink rims with Phonodisc/Polygram nomenclature). I know Island UK also used Orlake for some of the pink labels- yet again different nomenclature- an independent plant as far as I know. As to ex-UK, a whole other issue.
There was also a thing about getting early UK Harvests without the EMI logo- I have a few of those.
The relevance of this was that when the "youth explosion" really took off- no more Perry Como, but post-Monterey Festival-- Island, a small independent label was eating the major labels' lunch. Chris Blackwell had an ear and was tuned in. The big labels needed to create imprints for this more "progressive" (as used in the past, not all "prog rock" as we know it today). Thus, Deram (Decca), Harvest (EMI Group), Vertigo Swirl (Philips),among others.
For me, this is constant, ever continuing learning experience.
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And in re Canada, there's not a lot of info-- I found a scholarly policy paper behind a paywall that said Capitol EMI established their first plant in Canada in 1976. Another source on Capitol said that they used an RCA plant for pressing in Smith Falls, Compo may have pressed some- it was the largest independent in Canada, it was purchased by Decca, and Sparton, which did Capitol records before EMI bought them. The convoluted corporate history indicates that eventually the Capitol name was dropped for EMI's Canadian operations.
I saw very little to direct me to Canadian pressings of Harvest imprints. If you look at an example--Roy Harper's Stormcock- a cool record, it was not released in Canada until 1978 (UK is 1971) and says manufactured by Capitol Records of Canada. I suspect one could track down this information on an album by album basis on Discogs.
That's all I got. Phew! :)
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@whart
keep these stories coming!
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I have many New Zealand pressings of various qualities. The best are early stereo classical records from EMI made from UK stampers and have matrixes that correspond with the first pressings from Columbia or HMV. These sound amazing and the only time I've had a chance to A/B one with a UK original (SAX 2368), the NZ version sounded essentially the same but on quieter vinyl (so better). Obviously, I can't claim this will always be the case, but the thinking is that these were made in such small quantities and by subscription (so no wasted copies) they used the best vinyl and paid the closest attention possible to the pressing process. Who knows? New Zealand Deutsche Grammophon are often made from German stampers and usually sound terrible, so it's not all good news.
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@o4hc sounds like quiet a trip for the stampers!
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If you want garbage get third party.
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