I can imagine your getting confused here as there is some misinformation.
A cut out is not a store play copy but overstock that is sold in bulk at a low price to resell to stores. The mob pretty much controlled this business to the extent I worked in a store in NYC (owner by some guys that worked at Strawberry’s, Morris Levy's Boston chain) that had set up an operation to press cut outs. In other words, bootleg the remaindered records as once it was a cut out no one noticed if someone was making more of them. Since some of them sold pretty well it was like printing money. Cut outs are cut so they can’t be returned to the distributor.
Records that also have a cut, or a hole punched through the bar code are promos or store play copies. These are indeed the first albums off the stampers and can sound better then those from later in the run.
In the old days stampers would press 15,000 copies before a new set was made from a mother. These days they rarely press more then 3000 before replacement. In the old days also way overstocked records would be ‘reground’ that’s is melted back into being vinyl ‘pucks’ to make new records from. When they did this the labels were not removed. After 30 years or so of regrounding vinyl things were getting pretty noisy.
A cut out is not a store play copy but overstock that is sold in bulk at a low price to resell to stores. The mob pretty much controlled this business to the extent I worked in a store in NYC (owner by some guys that worked at Strawberry’s, Morris Levy's Boston chain) that had set up an operation to press cut outs. In other words, bootleg the remaindered records as once it was a cut out no one noticed if someone was making more of them. Since some of them sold pretty well it was like printing money. Cut outs are cut so they can’t be returned to the distributor.
Records that also have a cut, or a hole punched through the bar code are promos or store play copies. These are indeed the first albums off the stampers and can sound better then those from later in the run.
In the old days stampers would press 15,000 copies before a new set was made from a mother. These days they rarely press more then 3000 before replacement. In the old days also way overstocked records would be ‘reground’ that’s is melted back into being vinyl ‘pucks’ to make new records from. When they did this the labels were not removed. After 30 years or so of regrounding vinyl things were getting pretty noisy.