shawnwes wrote:
I've just recently got back into making frequent purchases of new sealed vinyl. Each of the last 3 lps I've purchased has some form of pressing defect. None of these were re-issues from 3rd party labels such as Wax Time, etc. These were all produced by the original issuing label and cost me almost $100 CAD total for the 3 of them. The sound is excellent on all 3 records but they each have pressing defects that probably wouldn't have been there 20-30 years ago when I was paying about $13-16 each. I don't think I encountered 1 in 30 issues with purchases back in the 80s & 90s when I was purchasing most of my material.
Here's the 3 new sealed lps I purchased this week and associated issues:
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Sony Legacy 180gm) - a dozen or so ticks & pops on track 1 side 2.
Barney Kessel: The Poll Winners (Contemporary Records OJC-156 180gm) - last track misc right channel chirps during the last minute.
Bob Dylan: Shadows In The Night (Columbia Records 180gm) - lots of ticks and pops side 1.
Is QC really that bad these days with even the major labels? If so I might have to cut down on the # of purchases and just migrate to the audiophile labels for the "I must have" recordings and just buy a used CD for the rest or go without.
That's my rant for the night. Thanks for listening.
What's your experience been recently for new sealed vinyl?
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I have an original first gen pressing of the Count Basie album in excellent condition and I too always attempt to get an original pressing. However, some of these reissues sound great, Examples, XTC Skylarking and English Settlement box sets sound great. The Stones In Mono, both Bowie Box sets, Beatles Mono (possibly the best sounding Beatles on vinyl ever released), All The Jethro Tull Reissues, Acqualung, Thick As A Brick, Stand Up. The Faces box set is great, The Grateful Dead Warner Brothers (first 5 albums) is very good. Mobile Fidelity's reissue of Duke Ellington's Anatomy Of A Murder is great. Some of the Dire Straits reissues. I've heard many of the new Bluenote jazz series reissued recently sounds very good. The Smiths Hatful OF Hollow was mastered very well for a reissue. Some of them despite being master at the very end of the process at least, from a digital file source, can sound quite analogue like when it's done right.
Sometimes the original mastering of an album was just ok and the reissues gives the labels (Universal, Sony, there's only a handful left) away to get it right and resell it yet again to a buyer that likely already has the record. The Pink Floyd reissues are very good. Elton John's full catalogue up to and including Blue Moves or A Simple Man will be reissued. If Gus Dudgeon (original producer of most of Elton's output up to and including Capt Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy if memory serves. Blue Moves is a great under-rated album. I have a British pressing of that one, sounds superb.