how were copies of vinyl made in "third-party" countries

@grislybutter - I don't want to sidetrack this discussion with the MoFi situation but there are bad sounding all analog records and good sounding records that used digital processes. I have a thing for post-bop "spiritual" or "soul" jazz from the '70s and those records now command money. Some have been reissued. The reissues are OK but often not as compelling as the original pressings even though those were pressed during a low point in vinyl quality in the States. 

It is very much a case by case, record by record process if SQ is the issue. I tend to like "less produced" sounding records but you'd be surprised- one engineer said you'd be surprised how much artifice and studio manipulation (post production) goes into making something sound "natural." There are certainly labels that had some great output- Warner Bros, during the "green label" era released some great material- they were an artist friendly label and had very astute in house producers. Some of those records were very popular and sold in large quantities at the time of release and could be found in used bins in record stores for little money. (Used records have gone up in price in the last five plus years).

In some cases, the original records are simply hard to find now in good condition. Alice Coltrane's Ptah, the El Daoud was last pressed in 1974. It is going to be reissued and I believe the reissue will come from a digital source. Will that be a lower SQ end product? Maybe. But you would have to be patient, lucky and probably pay several hundred to find a decent original today. So, you pay your money and make your choice. (I found a copy from its original owner from the year of first release- it wasn't cheap at the time, but the price of that record has easily doubled or tripled since I bought it). 

I'm not someone who buys as an investment. I buy the records I want to listen to and treat the whole thing as a process of discovery. I did just get in Chad's reissue of Tull's Stand Up and will be curious to compare it with my UK first pressing. That can be fun too. FWIW, quality control is also all over the place- you hear horror stories of new, expensive records that come out of the shrink with fingerprints, or worse, irreparable damage due to bad pressing. 

So, I'm not sure you can make general assumptions across the board for older v newer records. I'd focus more on what music you like, which artists or supporting artists seem to appear on the records you like and research what other records they appear on- for example, there is a bassist from the period--Cecil McBee-- who did a huge amount of work in the '70s and appeared as a side man on a lot of records. I'll buy pretty much anything McBee played on. 

You find your own path, compare notes with others, learn and keep learning....

@whart 

cool, thank you. I am amazed by how different they sound and how my rating in the store fails me. I only buy records for myself and I only buy used and these pointers are very useful. Now I have to see if I can apply it :)

@teo_audio I was interested to hear your comments on Canadian pressings. My brother and I both grew up in the UK and bought records there. He moved to Canada in 1978 and I followed him in 1985. I now have all his LPs, and so there are several where I had bought a UK pressing, while he had bought the Canadian version. While my purchases have been, probably, more carefully handled and played with better styli, I often find his Canadian disks just sound better than the UK versions!

It just goes to show you that things had to be analyzed carefully.

We don’t know how the UK worked their pressing plants. Did EMI/Harvest handle their own pressing plants the same way they handled Canadian or US pressing plants? Or where the pressing plants owned and run by private concerns, outside of the property holders?

This information is, generally, very difficult to find.

Your experience, seems to indicate that some UK labels did the same as they did when dealing with the huge US market. It might be that proximity to the EU, for UK property holders, may have caused them to adopt a single/common strategy, overall, that caused the Canadian pressings to be among the better out there.

Or that all I'm speculating in this post is completely misplaced and the reality was something else altogether. Ie that the hardware was not as good, or badly run, or that vinyl pellets were hard to come by or that the UK plants tended to use more recycled material in their pressings, and so on. Lots of details to try and find.

@teo_audio - you aren't off the wall on this. Discogs has pretty detailed info about EMI pressing plants and also covers the Philips/Phonodisc plants. 

I know from the history of Island Records (which did own a pressing plant at one point that was previously owned by EMI) that Island did use Phonodisc/Polygram and switched to EMI at around the same time that the pink label changed to the pink rim. (You can tell by the deadwax but it's not definitive since in the UK some older metal work was still in use- thus, UK pink rims with Phonodisc/Polygram nomenclature). I know Island UK also used Orlake for some of the pink labels- yet again different nomenclature- an independent plant as far as I know. As to ex-UK, a whole other issue. 

There was also a thing about getting early UK Harvests without the EMI logo- I have a few of those. 

The relevance of this was that when the "youth explosion" really took off- no more Perry Como, but post-Monterey Festival-- Island, a small independent label was eating the major labels' lunch. Chris Blackwell had an ear and was tuned in. The big labels needed to create imprints for this more "progressive" (as used in the past, not all "prog rock" as we know it today). Thus, Deram (Decca), Harvest (EMI Group), Vertigo Swirl (Philips),among others. 

For me, this is constant, ever continuing learning experience.