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Re: [ARSCLIST] LP pressing question



Why couldn't anyone else match RCA's manufacturing? As I said earlier, Mercury never got near the quality level in their own plants until Philips took over, and this the Mercury Living Presence records were manufactured by RCA from pretty early in the mono days until after my mother retired in 1964. How come the Euros could generally make good LPs and RCA could do it here but others seemed to have trouble? Was there really a deep secret sauce to a decent vinyl biscuit or was it just shoddy procedures and corner-cutting?

By the way, speaking of all this, Pablo used RCA also at least part of their time from around 1972 until Fantasy bought them. The RCA-manufactured Pablo LPs are generally quite good, in my experience. Fantasy-made Pablo records are like Fantasy's own Original Jazz Classics series -- thin vinyl and usually shrink-wrapped too tight but if there's not a QC problem the records play well and are relatively quiet for $10-priced mainstream products. At least that's been my experience.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Olhsson" <olh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] LP pressing question



-----Original Message-----
From Tom Fine: "how many cutters were there at Motown and what was your
system?"


We had a Neumann ES-59 half speed mono system and finally added a stereo system in 1968 when the superb Neumann SX-68 cutter came out.

For the most part we were cutting master prototypes that Randy Kling at RCA
in Chicago had to match using their Scully/Westrex systems for the
production masters. We only cut production masters when there wasn't enough
time to go the RCA route. Typically this happened when an artist got offered
a last minute Ed Sullivan Show appearance.

We preferred RCA production masters and plating because they could fix any
skipping problems in a day rather than the week it would take using indi
plating plants. In the pop music business timing and the ability to put your
ducks in a row is frequently the difference between a hit record and a
stiff. In the mid '60s RCA was pressing more Motown singles than RCA
singles. And that didn't include the reorders which were done by three indi
plants, Monarch in LA and two others which were half-owned by Motown!

Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com



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