American ECM LPs made of virgin vinyl?

Thank you very much for this information. I think it explains why the US ECM ´Bright Size Life´ is NOT translucent.

Can you tell me how to determine if any of these LPs have been pressed at Wakefield in Phoenix?

 

I think if it's translucent Quiex vinyl, you have a Wakefield pressing. I don't think they were using any other plant for that formulation

 

I think if you ask ChrisM, he'll tell you the W German LPs are much better. All the ECM vinyl I have is Warner U.S. They're all fairly noisy. I just wish back in the day I'd have had access to the W German LPs. That would have been my first choice.

 

I have US and German copies of Metheny's Offramp. Found the German copy for .99 cents . Did not realize it was German. I picked it up as just a player copy. Put in on and was surprised at how good it sounded. Upon closer inspection saw that it was a German copy. I've never done a compare, but I may do that tonight (as long as I can turn off the new Diana Krall cd).

 

Just checked my US copy of Pat Metheny Group and it is not translucent.

JG

 

Yes. Another proof for readingm´s statement in posting # 25.

 

Not sure if post 25 is 100% correct. My LP is not translucent. There is a symbol on the Pat Metheny deadwax which I have always believed to be Wakefield (it is circular with 3 points at the top, with the middle point being higher).

I have an article that describes both pressing plants and mastering houses (giving all the symbols), I will check later.

JG

 

Addition to above...

Not sure if post 25 is 100% correct. My LP is not translucent. There is a symbol on the Pat Metheny deadwax which I have always believed to be Wakefield (it is circular with 3 points at the top, with the middle point being higher).

I found the article that describes both pressing plants and mastering houses (giving all the symbols). It says in it that ECM/Warner had a lot of their work done here and the symbol given for recognising a Wakefield pressing is in the deadwax. So maybe not all ECM Wakefield pressings are translucent.

 

The symbol you describe can be seen on my US copy of ´Bright Size Life´ (not translucent), while the US ´Offramp´ which is translucent has some sort of interlaced ´w´s in the deadwax (one ´w´ upside, one ´w´ upside down).

 

I just checked my reference and the one ´w´ upside, one ´w´ upside down is also Wakefield.

Checking my Keith Jarrett (translucent LP) it has ´w´ upside, one ´w´ upside down, so while both are Wakefield pressings, there is obviously a difference in the pressing when the different Wakefield symbols are used.

It would be good if other posters confirmed which symbol is on their LPs.

JG

 

Polydor distributed ECM LP surfaces tended to be noisy most of the time. The Warner Brothers era LP pressings are much, mucb better. Quieter surfaces as a rule and well mastered. The West German ECM LP pressings have that little extra something sonically but WB era ones aren't to be passed by.

 

It's certainly possible that the first Warner opaque vinyl pressings were also done at Wakefield. I was just saying that I don't know of any Quiex pressings that were not done at Wakefield. Also, and I could be mistaken about this, but I believe that after they switched to Quiex vinyl, any subsequent repressings from the Warner era were also done with Quiex. So there should be both opaque and translucent pressings of some of the first Warner titles ('New Chataqua' for instance). I wish I could confirm this for you, but my vinyl is currently in storage and I can't get to it right now.

Anyone?

 

I wasn't trying to correct you, just adding to what you had already posted. I have an article from a hi-fi magazine from years ago, that gives all the symbols for mastering and pressing plants and it gives two different symbols for Wakefield. It is described in the article as...

''A superb solid-state cutting and pressing house, using all-Scully transformerless electronics. Pressing plant in-house (and attendant plating operation for acetates) results in less degradation.''

Maybe one of the symbols is for pressing only and the other for cutting and pressing (just a wild guess).

JG

 

No worries James, I was trying to clarify.

 

I have wasted 2 full batteries checking all my supposed 'virgin vinyl' LPs.

JG

 

I recently had two copies of Koln Concert, one from RL and one from Polydor done somewhere on the west coast. Both were nice clean quiet copies. I planned to sell one so I did a shoot out with the assumption the RL would be the keeper. I have to say in the shoot out the RL lost. I was surprised to say the least. I then passed the pair along to a friend not telling him anything about them, someone who doesn't even know how to read dead wax, and he too felt the RL pressing was weak, and the other had more air.

I have several RL pressings on ECM, and when I compare them to other pressings they are on average weaker. When it comes to the ECM catalogue this may be his achilles heal.

Now I know this will not be a popular opinion around here. In general I would agree with the sentiment that solar rays emit from Bob's bum, and I for one would usually take any RL pressing over almost anything else, but with ECM's I am starting to move the other way...