The quest for the hot stamper or is it a myth
Yeah. Like all you have to do is find a copy from the same pressing run. Like its that easy. That was my hope too. Eagerly writing down every detail, trying to take a picture (etched in glossy black, next to impossible), convinced this was all I needed. Then I pulled out my very average sounding copy. Every little detail. Exact same. In fact I am dead certain if I handed any one of you both copies you would all pick the crap one. Because they look the same, except one is all scratched up, and you would never guess the one with all the scratches sounds the best and by a margin that varies from large to impossible to believe until you hear it. Good luck with the wax guys. Total waste of time but good luck. Anyone really determined to waste their time and money chasing the wax theory even after its been debunked by my exact same pressing reality, here's how easy it is to start throwing your money away. Simply go here https://www.discogs.com/Fleetwood-Mac-Fleetwood-Mac/release/12774916 With that you can throw money at even more identical looking but worse sounding pressings! There's probably even more. Discogs has them all nice and organized but you are kind of at the mercy of sellers bothering to look at such details. Still, there's no shortage of people willing to take your $30 or whatever. The link above is just one of many. Don't forget you want the POGO heart thing, which looks incredibly Dan Brown-y, you just know its gonna lead you to audio fortune, maybe even a monstrously global conspiracy. Or KENDUN which is stamped not scribed, got to be Davinci Code for sure. But no, there's a million of em. I knew the wax thing was a non-starter from the start. All you have to do is know enough about how these things are made to know its a non-starter. The marks in the wax only tell enough to know who did what with which equipment. If that's all that matters then my old copy would sound as good as this White Hot Stamper. After all they are the same according to the wax! But in reality? In reality you have vinyl plugs. Nothing in the wax about the plugs. Which can come from any of who knows how many suppliers, and even if you track that down no guarantee all the pressings from a given stamper were from that supplier. Or that the supplier didn't change something. But let's say you track that down and its all the same. Then the plugs have to be warmed to a temperature range in order to flow properly. What's the ideal temp? Does anyone even know? Not until you in your best Tom Hanks chasing the grail impersonation track it down and decipher it. So you do that. Then it probably had to come off the first few pressings when the faintest squiggles in the stamper were still nice and fresh. Probably. Unless that's when its not so good because there's also the mold release that has to be sprayed on, and who knows maybe it takes a while for the process of stamp/clean/spray/stamp to reach a sort of equilibrium of chemicals that magically results in the perfect pressing. When the vinyl is just right. And the temp. Oh, and the pressing rate. How its handled when it comes off the press. Warehouse temp and humidity. Good luck with all that. http://danbrown.com/the-da-vinci-code-young-adult-edition/ |
Kent Duncan was a mastering engineer, he didn't press records. I think better US pressings of that Fleetwood Mac album were done by Columbia's Santa Maria plant, before Warner-Reprise shifted to Capitol for pressing. Also FWIW, that Discogs link miller carbon posted is a little wacky- it shows a US pressing by Orlake- which was a British plant. Some early Island pink labels were made by Orlake- they are very visceral sounding- tend to be noisier than the Polydors or later EMI pressed copies. |
