TjB Singles pressings differences

beatcomber

Well-Known Member
It was an often used technique in 45 mastering to juice up the record a bit for mono AM stations to give it a bigger sound. This was accomplished by techniques of audio compression and a bit of reverb.

On a related note, I recently had the opportunity to compare a west coast Monarch 45 pressing - which would have been likely cut from the 1st generation master - of the TJB's "Flamingo" and another pressing that I can't recall the details of (Columbia?). I was surprised to find that the Monarch 45 was cut much hotter, with gobs of tube compression, whereas the other 45 was way cleaner sounding.
 
Fascinating!

I have a number of "Flamingo" 45s around here and decided to check this situation out. There's one really clean Monarch in the bunch and then there's another bunch of Columbia Terre Haute pressings, one of which was clean enough for a good comparison.

Unfortunately, my singles sound nearly identical. At one point, I thought there was just a little more of the sleigh bells in the Monarch cutting, but really, I couldn't say for sure. Other than that, they sounded identical.
 
Would it matter with original vs. reissue pressing? I probably have one single of that tune here and never play it (as a rule I never play 45s, nor even buy them), so can't help with a comparison unfortunately.
 
It might. Don't know how I'd identify an early Monarch vs. a later one. Same with the Columbia's as wekk.
 
I was thinking of the reissue series like the Forget-Me-Nots. I know with some record companies, though, they would often reuse those masters, so it was kind of neat to discover that a reissue 45 from the 80s used the same metal parts as a single from the 50s. Knowing nothing about the run-out numbers or codes, though, I'd have no idea where to look for any of it. I'm thinking all pressing plants received the same mix, so whatever differences might have cropped up would have been due to whoever cut the tape to lacquer.
 
I had a hard enough time figuring out that four of my five were Columbia Terre Haute pressings, but once I recognized the "T" in the runoff area, I knew what they were. The delta figure and circle MR make ID'ing Monarch pressings easy.
 
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