Why not copy the greats- vinyl LP question

Exactly @lowrider57, the info in the dead wax gets one only so far. That info tells you nothing about when in a stampers lifespan the LP was made.

It was Chad Kassem and his team who made the startling discovery that all pressings of Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman album---including the original "pink label" Island LP---had been made assuming the master tape was Dolby-encoded. It wasn’t! The Analogue Productions version of that album---Dolby-free----provides a huge, dramatic improvement over all previous versions, including that by Mobile Fidelity.

@lowrider57: The pertinent number is how many LP’s are pressed by each stamper. With each LP pressed, a stamper becomes a little more "worn". White hot stamper LP’s are those records made when a new stamper has been installed in the pressing machine. How many white hot stamper LP’s can one fresh stamper make? After how many LP’s are pressed does QRP change out a stamper?

I don’t know, but it’s a number lower than LP’s pressed at non-audiophile pressing plants, now or in the past. Records made by the major labels in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s may have used one stamper to make thousands of LP’s. The sound quality of the resulting records was in part a matter of how fresh the stamper was when any given LP was made.

But remember: those labels were NOT using the master tape as the source---they were using a "production" tape (also called a "safety" tape). That could be a copy of the 2-track master mixdown tape, or even a copy of a copy. Analogue Productions used the actual 3-track master tape of Kind Of Blue as the source for their new reissue of that Miles Davis album. Not a 2-track master mixdown tape, but the actual 3-track master. Bernie Grundman cut a lacquer mixing the 3-track master tape down to a 2-track mix, but without doing it to tape. He bypassed the step of making a 2-track master tape! I don’t care how fresh the stamper was that made a white hot stamper LP, it was still cut from a production copy of a 2-track mixdown tape.

Chad Kassem purchased all the Mastering Lab equipment after the passing of Doug Sax (maker of the legendary direct-2-disc Sheffield Records), and spent a lot of money building the Quality Record Pressing facility in Salina, Kansas. The presses are isolated from terra firma and from other vibration-producing machines (pumps, compressors, etc.). The complete pressing process is done with maximum quality in mind, including slower pressing and longer cooling time of the vinyl. The result is flat, quiet 180 gram LP’s. He has the jackets made by Stoughton Printing, long considered the best in the business. And every LP is slipped into a high quality poly sleeve. I consider $35 a fair price for such quality. 

Classic Records redid the Zeppelin catalog in the early-2000's, and those pressings are now worth a fortune (Classic even made them available as single-sided 45RPM LP's!). Why? Because they sound better than the originals, all of them. Hardcore collectors who own both Robert Ludwig-mastered Atlantic/Swan Song LP's and the Classic Records reissues have compared multiple copies. Classic offered the complete set in a miniature flight case, and those sell for more than most of us have spent on our hi-fi's.

Classic was granted access to the original analogue masters, from which Bernie Grundman made new lacquers. Grundman, in one of the videos about the new Analogue Productions reissue of Kind Of Blue (which he again mastered, having done the same for Classic in the late-90's), states that the idea that analogue tapes deteriorate by the simple passage of time is a myth.

QRP---Analogue Production's in-house record pressing facility---is making some of the best LP's in the entire history of recorded sound. The way the LP's are pressed, every LP is in-effect a white hot stamper record. Analogue Production's Chad Kassem is deadly serious about making the best LP's humanly possible, and the ones I own are worth every penny. Is $35 a disc too much to ask for an LP? That's a lot cheaper than the same record from Better Records. I dare anyone to compare an Analogue Productions reissue to a white hot stamper version of the same title. Go ahead---prove me wrong.