how were copies of vinyl made in "third-party" countries

@teo_audio 

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.

@lewm @drbond 

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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Ah, the joys of the Analog era! I won’t be shedding any tears!

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.

To add:

If one wants a good analog 70s LP copy of let say, any 70's Pink Floyd... and is perusing eBay, look for EMI/Harvest in mint shape from Canada, instead of the  USA.

That kind of thing. Do yer research, if so inclined.

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.

Why do you use the term “third party” with respect to Holland, Russia, Hungary, Yugoslavia? All those countries had great orchestras iand first rate recording and record manufacturing facilities in the 80s and beyond.

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...

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.

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. 

@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?

+1 @bdp24 

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.

The process may not be 'high tech' but it very much is tricky

thank you all. I guess now that I know more, I feel way more ignorant than this morning. 

...if it's not that tricky why are there so many versions rated so differently?

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. 

The pressing plants probably received a 1/4" dub off the mixed master.  In the 80s, that's also what studios received to edit music videos.

@russ69

if it's not that tricky why are there so many versions rated so differently? And people paying 100s for a specific copy? I am just curious. 

What tapes is the question. And if far enough into 80s the next is did they use a digital delay to create the preview path. Your ears will probably tell you

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.