Neil Young's S/T LP - Haeco-CSG

Hello,

I have a copy of Neil Young's first LP. It must be a second pressing because it has his name on the cover but it has r:w7 2-tone labels. Inside the gatefold cover it says Recorded using Haeco-CSG.

Does anyone know whether the 1st pressing or subsequent pressings of this LP also use Haeco-CSG? Is there such a thing as a non-Haeco-CSG version of this album?

Scott

 

Don't know the answer to your question. I also have a non-first pressing and it states the same thing. Now, does anyone know what "Haeco-CSG system" is?

I have seen first issues w/o the name on the front cover, but have never looked closely for the Haeco-CSG on the inside cover.

 

CSG stood for Compatible Stereo Groove, and was developed by Holzer Audio Engineering Corporation (from whence HAECO). It used a complex phase manipulation to reduce the effect usually encountered when a stereo record is played monaurally, where the sounds panned to the left and right channels drop in level, but the centre-panned sounds stay the same level, making vocals seem too loud in relation to the rest of the mix, etc.

Some Atlantic and Atco records of the era (1969 generally) even state 'CSG PROCESSED MONO MASTER', which leads me to think what was done was a fold-down of the stereo master mix of a song to mono by feeding it through a CSG unit, summing its left and right outputs, and making a mono cut of the result.

Although CSG was theoretically intended to reduce problems of balance in summing stereo material to mono, in practice, it generally made for headaches in the stereo cutting process, with much greater out-of-phase information being generated, and the resulting records being even worse for wear if played on older mono equipment.

It didn't sound very good either. It is my understanding that a few albums in that era were actually mixed to stereo through a CSG processor, as opposed to simply mixing to stereo in the conventional manner, and cutting the master discs with the CSG. So thus there are some CDs that have the CSG processing on them. (Although in some cases, methinks the record companies on occasion just couldn't be arsed to make a non-CSG master for CD issue; I'm thinking of the old CD issue of THE ASSOCIATION'S GREATEST HITS on Warner Bros, which was a CSG album and had the CSG processing on the CD edition as well.)

 

Look for RE - 1 in the dead wax. If it has it, it's a second pressing.

Don't have my LP handy to check for HAECO.

 

Thanks for the response and explanation. Looks like you are just up the highway a bit from me.

 

My original makes no reference about this csg process. It is on the 2-tone reprise, seven art's label and the cover is the original portrait cover (no Neil Young).

 

Looking for a decent playing copy of this record, without needing to sell a car to do it.
How are the early-mid 70s pressings with the W bubble on the rim?

Anyone have a good example of one from that time frame?