vinyl pressings from different countries

Song4uman

Well-Known Member
This may be a dumb question..

Do vinyl pressing of the same album sound different when pressed in different countries? I recently found a Carpenters (1971) album that was pressed in West Germany. I was listening last night and it seemed to have much more reverb than my US pressings of the same album....I haven't listened to them in a while.....but it was almost reminding me of some of the later CD versions where Richard had gone in and added reverb.

Also, at the end of each album, the part towards the lable was much wider than almost any album I own...like maybe an inch wide.

Jonathan
 
There are many, many pressings of LPs from many, many countries. Some are considered "better" pressings, others not-so-much. One of the ideas floated around A&M Corner from day one is that it's generally a better idea to grab a copy of an album from the country that the artist calls home - in other words, the country of recording.

Back in the days of LPs, physical copies of masters had to be shipped around from the home country to the country that was to do a pressing. So in the case of say, South Africa, an analogue master was copied, adding another generation onto the tape, and sent to that country. Same for Germany, the UK, and Japan, and wherever releases were to be pressed.

So, we believe that's why people flock to original British pressings of Beatles records. That's where the real masters were housed. In the case of Carpenters, the masters were in the US, so theoretically, US pressings would be closer to the real masters.

Foreign pressings are often a fun collectable. Some use slightly different artwork, and some use very nice quality vinyl. And there could indeed be some masterer somewhere who decided to add a touch of reverb on his pressing. We've encountered that phenomenon before.

As for the grooves being concentrated on the outside of the record, that was done to try to avoid inner groove distortion. It was theorized that grooves toward the outer edge sounded better than grooves toward the center hole, so by cutting the album so that most of the tracks were nearer the outer edge, they'd avoid the dreaded inner-groove distortion.
 
I'd say the British pressings of Carpenters albums sound better, infact I remember Richard use to buy his Records when he was in the UK because according to his ears they sound better than the US pressings (something about a vinyl materials shortage in the US during the 70's?)
 
I'd say the British pressings of Carpenters albums sound better, infact I remember Richard use to buy his Records when he was in the UK because according to his ears they sound better than the US pressings (something about a vinyl materials shortage in the US during the 70's?)
Considering there was the gas shortage of the early 70’s it might had an impact on US vinyl since oil is part of vinyls mixture.
 
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