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Dead wax and stamps on vinyl run-off

Big Tabs said:
I can easily believe that I have got this all wrong, it happens a lot to me.
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LOL....
@Tony L will have a far better grasp than me, but the long list - Barcode and Other Identifiers - refers to variant 1, variant 2 etc. I EXTREMELY strongly suspect that that whole list is nonsense insofar as it is unconnected to the LP for sale, but reflects lots of LPs of that pressing that have been listed over time.

There were two mint LPs for sale, one at £45 and one at £50 (£49.90 or some such, I believe, to be nearer to being precise).

The string of numbers - the catalogue number is no more than that - they can trace what something is without having to play it and for any single mastering, issued by any one label, I assume it stays the same across the world. The "typical" information in the run-out would be something like XY2437597/2 A1, with the other side just differing by having B1, or whatever, rather than A1. Any stamper of ny number may never be seen as sometimes they are not good enough to use to make records, or get damaged, or whatever. I have no doubt that there are pressings where no A1/B1 records were ever sold because of faults with the first stampers with both sides. It is not unusual to get records with matrix numbers of something like A2/B7, for instance.

Matrix numbers can be hard to find and I am certain that some LPs do not have them, most especially recent releases. But they tell you details of the actual pressing that you have in your hand in that they tell you where, in sequential order, the stamper was made from the metal mother, so A1, was the first stamper made from a particular metal mother for side A. A12 is the 12th stamper made, etc. All else being equal, the 12th will be worse than the first, because the metal mother deteriorates each times it is used to produce a stamper.

So far as I could see, neither of the two mint copies of Hounds of Love on Discogs, gave matrix numbers.

If you look at the various numbers again, most include some variant of 2403841, some with added spaces, which will be some kind of catalogue number.

Ignoring long lists of apparent nonsense, you can get a good idea of what everything means by spending a while on Discogs, looking at the separate listings - date and country where pressed - for the same release; in your case, the 1985 LP release in different countries.
 
@Vinny

I don't want to buy one.

I am trying to make sense of all the matrices.

Some have to be made before the others? So a matrix can indicate when it was made in terms of pressing the vinyl?
 
Big Tabs said:
I don't want to buy one.

I am trying to make sense of all the matrices.

Some have to be made before the others? So a matrix can indicate when it was made in terms of pressing the vinyl?
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Vinny has this right IMHO. To put it simply there are two different things, the ‘cut’ which produces the acetate from which the first generation of stampers (plural on large pressings) are taken from, and a load of really boring stuff to do with stampers and mothers etc etc. With EMI these tend to be positioned away from the matrix at 3 o’clock, 9 o’clock etc. I just ignore them to be honest.

From an audiophile perspective we are interested in the cut. This is the point someone threaded up the master tape, stuck a blank acetate on the cutting lathe and made any decisions to do with level, EQ, compression etc. This is where the magic happens. In most cases this is identified in the run-off as the A1, A2, A11 or whatever you’ll find at the end if a matrix number, e.g. ABC12345 A1 is almost certainly the first cut for that title using the most commonly used format, though there are others, e.g. on Polydor, Vertigo, Philips etc it is usually something like ABC123 //A1 678-6 or somesuch guff, and the thing of interest there is the number immediately after the ‘//‘. To emphasise the point the difference between say an A1 and an A2, A3 or whatever can be very visual, e.g. a noticeably different amount of run-off, let alone a vast difference in sound quality.

Not all records have a A1/B1 released into the wild as the artist may hear it at the test pressing stage and reject it for whatever reason. My suspicion is Kate Bush is the type of artist very obsessive about her work who may have rejected several pressings, though it is only ever worth viewing discogs as an incomplete resource. It is only the subset people have gone to the trouble to add, on multi-million selling titles like HoL there will inevitably be more. There is also a very real problem of data error on discogs where folk add a matrix to the wrong country, cover variation or whatever. As such the list can look bewilderingly complex, though I suspect in many cases it is not telling the whole story. My guess is variation 3 is the first press, though I am in some doubt as the B side is quite high and the A1 lacks a ‘U’ which was typical of EMI at the time. When I’m trying to establish what a potentially valuable record is there are often many other clues and really I can only do it with the thing in front of me.
 
Big Tabs said:
Some have to be made before the others? So a matrix can indicate when it was made in terms of pressing the vinyl?
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In terms of what? 0600 4th June 2008 as opposed to 1030 4th June 2008, or June 2006 as opposed to August 2011?

If the former, only if they change the stamper between 0600 and 1030. Any single stamper may make few or many records (I've no idea of a maximum, but it is probably online somewhere).

If you mean the latter, the more recent will be a re-issue and have a different cat. no. - find that/them on Discogs. Don't forget printed information on the paper label as well, which will at least tell you where it was made/pressed, and usually the cat' no.

Yes, there are mistakes on Discogs, but there isn't another easy option.
 
Very interesting to read these posts, this is an area in which I have an interest (@kensalriser 's 'excessive geekery') but also perhaps in which a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Let me clarify my understanding when making my original post. Each record title has one or more catalogue numbers (depending on releases, countries etc). Each physical disk also has a number in the deadwax which, like a 'batch code', can theoretically be used to establish which pressing plant and what date the record was physically made (together with a batch of, say 1000-10000 others). The deadwax numbers/batch codes are specific to the item and its manufacture. Earlier pressings are sometimes considered desirable, and because each matrix is unique to a batch, each physical disk within a batch is likely to be of similar quality to the others in the batch.

However some albums in different countries appear to share the same matrices. Using the UK first press of Abbey Road as an example, I don't have one (yet - thanks @twotone but I'd probably prefer a NM or VG+ as my motivation is sound quality), but Discogs says the only numbers on the run-off (I take these to be the matrix numbers) are:

Matrix / Runout (Side A Run Out): YEX 749-2
Matrix / Runout (Side B Run Out): YEX 750-1

The Australian Abbey Road has identical ID numbers (though different catalogue numbers).

I'm assuming (maybe wrongly, @Vinny) that these numbers link the production of the record to a time and a place and as the numbers are the same, to the same time and place. How can the number associated with the UK first pressing (associated with first pressing from presumably a UK plant) also be on the Australian disk? I'm guessing either the records were exported to Australia (with a different catalogue number), having been made in the UK at the same time as the UK run for the Australian market or, as @mondie says, the machines were moved out there later. If the matrix numbers are the same and show a link to production machinery, the machines would have to be the same machine, moved to Oz, hence there is a belief that the Ozzy version (in this case) might be a cost effective of getting the quality associated with a UK first pressing. If it was a different stamper (from the same mother/metal/whatever) it would have a different number, and the presumed uniformity in quality (as claimed because the UK first pressing and Australian disk have the same matrices) is gone (which means the suggestion of buying a cheaper UK first pressing by the back door is erroneous). If these are not matrix numbers at all, of course all bets are off, though in this case Abbey Road's first pressing would appear to have no matrix number.

By the way @Big Tabs I feel your pain with that long line of numbers and trying to find the first pressing. I have experienced the same. And while 'look on Discogs' is fair enough, sometimes it's not that easy. In that regard, can someone confirm my Noddy assumption that when you click on (eg) a UK release and 35 copies of a vinyl LP come up, pressings are chronological, so the first pressing is top left (there might be variants within that, as in the Hounds of Hell example), and you would read left to right and then downwards for subsequent pressings, until you find the most recent at the bottom right corner?
 
Vinny said:
You have misunderstood something entirely here. There is no way at all to know what number any record is off any single stamper. That being so, it is a lottery whether you have the first or the one hundred, or one thousand, and first off any particular stamper.

All of the stages wear/deteriorate with use. That is inevitable, life is like that.
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It was exactly my point that there is no way to tell if a record is first or last off the stamper.

Tony is right about the cut but what I don’t know, never having been directly involved in large selling titles, is how many final pressings a cut is good for. Even then, why would a first cut be better than any other? It’s the first stage of manufacture.
 
Big Tabs said:
If anyone can tell me the matrices for Kate Bush album 'Hounds Of Love' U.K. first pressing 1985?

I would be grateful.

(not the european pressing)

there is no A1 B 1 listed.
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I bought Hounds of Love on release day. Side A is A-1-1 -1, but side B is B-6U-1-2. Both sides have a Townhouse marking. There had been a lot of pre-release hype about it being a stunning album I seem to remember.
 
kensalriser said:
Even then, why would a first cut be better than any other? It’s the first stage of manufacture.
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It is an odd thing. My best guess is the first cut tends to be done by a high-profile mastering engineer. e.g. George ‘Porky’ Peckham, Robert Ludwig, RVG or whoever and gets approved by the artist and/or artist management, then when that eventually wears out on a big-selling title the record label just get some random corporate blurt to supervise a recut. It is very common not to see the credible mastering engineer’s mark that was present on the first press on represses, reissues etc, and so often they sound lazy and gutless in comparison to the real deal.

As ever it is a very complex subject and varies hugely title to title. Another factor is country of origin, and as a rule of thumb 1st pressing from country of artist origin is the way to go. That is the one that was signed-off. As an example I’d personally not pay huge money (e.g. >£40) for UK 1st pressings of most US jazz titles as in most cases even our A1/B1 copies are obviously from second or later generation tapes and just not cut with the same conviction. I’ve compared a few 1st press US RVG cut Impulse! titles against the UK HMV A1/B1 first issues and whilst the latter are still very nice indeed (and usually beautifully quiet pressings) they just sound like you are standing in the hallway with the door shut compared to the US pressings which are astonishingly dynamic and present.

I keep banging on about mastering, but it really is the biggest deal in the whole of audio IMHO. It amuses me when folk deep-dive so much on cables etc when the difference between say a US Impulse and a late European reissue is like going from a Rockport/Koetsu or whatever to a Planar 2 with an old M75EJ! It really can be a crazy big difference. CDs are just the same too with some awful decisions being made on some reissues.
 
Alvarado said:
In that regard, can someone confirm my Noddy assumption that when you click on (eg) a UK release and 35 copies of a vinyl LP come up, pressings are chronological, so the first pressing is top left (there might be variants within that, as in the Hounds of Hell example), and you would read left to right and then downwards for subsequent pressings, until you find the most recent at the bottom right corner?
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No, or not on the screens that I use - you are using the wrong screen in all probability. Go back to my post with links and use the links.

Despite terminology being used that implies the contrary, there is no way to determine the absolute order of manufacture of a group of records if they all came off the same stampers - stampers are just sheets of metal that get changed when deemed necessary.
 
Big Tabs said:
This thread makes my head hurt.
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Me too, just as it did a couple of weeks ago when I decided to catalogue my old Beatles albums on Discogs and was having to wade through umpteen entries to try and nail down the ones I had. A few hours in and I still wasn't certain I'd got them all right. They're inherited and in poorish nick so no issue regarding potentially diddling a buyer as they're worth the square root of Jack, but OCD and eyesight-wise it was painful.

I have a few other albums that don't match exactly with any matrix codes on Discogs. So glad that a lot of my colection is 80s and 90s stuff that sold in such pitifully low numbers there is sometimes just one pressing.
 
Can we presume a promo/white label jobbie are the first pressings,that is what I buy, if available.
 
blossomchris said:
Can we presume a promo/white label jobbie are the first pressings,that is what I buy, if available.
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No promo copies aren’t first pressings mate.

They’re pressed for promotion purposes and so aren’t representative of the actual finished record.
 
BTW OP my copy of AR sounds excellent but my listing and therefore grading is honest.

I’d doubt very much that a mint or VG+ grading sounds better, for absolute sound quality you would really need to buy an unplayed or NOS copy and even then there’s no guarantee that those will be dead quiet with no warping etc.
 
twotone said:
No promo copies aren’t first pressings mate.

They’re pressed for promotion purposes and so aren’t representative of the actual finished record.
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I am not sure they make more than one stamper for first issues.

Whatever, all the ones I have have superb sq, and I am only interested in the actual sound and quality of the vinyl and a lot of these are mint.
 
deebster said:
Me too, just as it did a couple of weeks ago when I decided to catalogue my old Beatles albums on Discogs and was having to wade through umpteen entries to try and nail down the ones I had. A few hours in and I still wasn't certain I'd got them all right. They're inherited and in poorish nick so no issue regarding potentially diddling a buyer as they're worth the square root of Jack, but OCD and eyesight-wise it was painful.

I have a few other albums that don't match exactly with any matrix codes on Discogs. So glad that a lot of my colection is 80s and 90s stuff that sold in such pitifully low numbers there is sometimes just one pressing.
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Wait till you try and list an unlisted album... took me days to do the first one, but it gets easier with practice.

Discogs is a great resource and I feel I have contributed something, even if it is just an image.
 
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