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AUDIO FORUMS >> Vinyl >> Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
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Message started by Dominick on 01/05/25 at 19:22:06

Title: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by Dominick on 01/05/25 at 19:22:06

Fellow vinyl lovers,

So I’ve recently gone done yet another audiophile rabbit hole with vinyl pressing plants. This all started with my seeking out an audiophile copy of the Empire Strikes Back album with John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. As I searched Discogs….I found the same album pressed at different plants here in the US.

I found this thread on the Hoffman Forums that goes into more detail and figured I would share. Going forward I hope this thread serves as a springboard for guys to post any related info on pressing plants, and any experience they have with an album they own that came from a specific plant.

In this instance I actually decided to move towards a Japanese pressing of this Star Wars album due to lower production numbers and better quality of the material used make the album. I am a actually targeting a promo copy that is said to be even more rare due to it being pressed very close to the original stampers.

Here is the link to the Hoffman forum that talks about the different pressing plants.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/pressing-plant-difference.835250/

FYI……Page 2 was vey informative and where I originally landed.

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by LiquidBlue on 01/05/25 at 21:21:31

Great info Dominick. I find there is no consistency though across specific pressing plants and which copy sounds best, especially with audiophile type recordings and very good reissues. The Hoffman forums and YouTube reviews from reputable sources are a good place to start with finding opinions of best pressings of a particular title and from which pressing plants. Also, there are differences with date of pressing too. For example, I prefer first run Monarch pressings for the early Led Zeppelin albums, but find the '77 Piros cuts to be a very good sounding alternative as well, if I can't find a reasonably priced first pressing in excellent shape. Once I determine what pressing I'm looking for, the hunt is on. I'll often look on Discogs for a NM copy or VG+ at worst. I'll ask if it's been play tested for best reliability. I'll avoid sealed copies, as there is no recourse once unsealed and you find it is noisy as hell or badly warped. Been burned on that before. Popular audiophile recordings like Steely Dan Aja may have excellent options other than the AB1006 first pressing. I have a NM Santa Maria first pressing that is excellent, but the Cisco is supposed to best it and the recent UHQR I got is really something else and highly recommended! Probably the best sounding copy of this recording, if you're ok with 45RPM.

It's been a fun rabbit hole to have gone down! Good luck!

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by Dominick on 01/06/25 at 03:11:14

Yes anything from UHQR that I have gotten has been excellent. Don’t have any from Monarch, but I’ve read that they are great as well. When I buy from Discogs I only buy VG+ at a minimum.

So I pulled the trigger and bought the Promo copy. The seller also had it listed on eBay, so I opted to go through through them instead of Discogs.

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by CAJames on 01/06/25 at 17:30:52

Good stuff Dom. My experience with Japanese pressings has been uniformly excellent. One of my top demo discs is a 200g Japanese Sony pressing of Toto IV that I got for 2 bucks back in the 80s. Of course 2 dollars was a lot of money back then

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by Lon on 01/06/25 at 17:56:24

Man, one can spend a lot of energy and time researching pressings and plants and different issues. If I weren't expending time and energy elsewhere I would be inclined to indulge in thise efforts as well.

When I gave up turntables in the early eighties I entered a few decades without listening to vinyl and sold the best items I had (couldn't believe some of the offers I had!) Now on my second wave of vinyl listening, on about my fourteenth year or so, I find I really like to have albums from the late fifties--they just tend to sound so so good. And that I like reissues of pre-tape jazz (from the 'teens through the 'forties) on LP as they sound really good often besting even the most meticulous cd restoration--they had more original parts and better existing 78s then and had more of a sense how the originals were envisioned to sound and engineers familiar with transfers and mastering this material. So when I get the urge to buy records those are my first targets, and then there are a number of jazz LPs that have not made it to cd from the 'sixties and beyond that I look for good copies of. I don't really delve into different pressings etc. as most all vinyl sounds really good in my system, and as it's only about 5 percent of my total listening experience I don't fret too much over fine details that I might find from different releases. (And reading this I realize I'm only interested any longer in jazz releases.)

But boy do I understand the interest and effort.

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by Dominick on 01/07/25 at 02:48:33

James…now that Toto IV album is a great album; and I’m sure it sounds great as a Japanese pressing. I concur……all of my Japanese pressings are truly great sounding. Here’s two pics of the album that I bought…should be here in like 2 weeks. Like I said….I opted for this copy because it was a Promo copy. My research indicates that with the Japanese pressings, promo copies are supposed to be pressed before the rest of the albums. This would mean that it’s an earlier pressing, hence closer to the original stampers. I cross referenced the OBI strip…and the word Roadshow written on the top does mean that is was a promo copy.

Lon…from what I’ve read…vinyl after the 60’s don’t have the same quality control as vinyl in the 50’s. Companies started to cut back on spending and cut corners to save money.

There are so many aspects of the whole process surrounding the making of vinyl albums….that at this point, I tend to be more selective. Talk about OCD at its finest.

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by CAJames on 01/07/25 at 16:14:38

Quote:

Posted by: Dominick Posted on: Yesterday at 18:48:33

…vinyl after the 60’s don’t have the same quality control as vinyl in the 50’s. Companies started to cut back on spending and cut corners to save money.

I'm in no position to dispute that, but if you're buying a 60ish year old album today it is almost certainly used and the details of its life history (how it was played and stored) are probably more important than the quality control of the original production. I did most of my LP buying in the 80s when those albums were 20 or 30 years old and my experience is a lot of the older ones, even the ones that looked pristine, weren't that great even after a thorough wet cleaning. Not as good as obviously cheaper made LPs from the 70s into the 80s. Just one (recovering) vinyl addicts story, YMMV as always.

Title: Re: Vinyl Pressing Plant Info.
Post by Dominick on 01/08/25 at 00:45:36

Quote:

….. if you're buying a 60ish year old album today it is almost certainly used and the details of its life history (how it was played and stored) are probably more important than the quality control of the original production.

I concur wholeheartedly! I do try and limit buying used albums to a degree, but I just depends on how badly I want an album from an artist I love and that it’s just not available in a modern day pressing …..unless of course it’s taken from the original analog tapes.

I do enjoy flipping though the used album section at the local record shops, but if I pull like 5 albums, I’ll wind up only coming home with like one or two just because of the overall quality of the vinyl…it must have zero or only one or two very minor surface scratches. Not going to jeopardize messing up my needle to save a few bucks on an album.