what in the WORLD is this clicking noise on 'rocket man' on my US gr hits LP????

Yep...and as I reported earlier, I have the same thing on a vg++ of Honky Chateau I just brought home from the record store...not on Greatest Hits.

 

I read an interview with Gus Dudgeon where he said that the clicks on "Love Song" were Elton's foot tapping, and that they mic'd it.

 

Just like Paul's foot tapping on the Beatles' "Blackbird".

 

ahhhh, cool, never read that! guess he had to do something on that track musically since he was only singing!

 

The 2m blue on my thorens is less than a month old. Sounds exactly the same on my dual w 2m red. I've also posted a sound file of the 45rpm

 

The 45 is definitely going to be cut louder and the grooves wider apart... Any difference in the mastering may be enough to not cause the required features on the record surface for the clicks to occur. I think the best thing we can do is play the clicking copies with a microline stylus and see if they still occur. Also, to note the info in the deadwax and see if it is the same as the other clicking copies.

 

Deadwax info for my
copy is in one of the first posts. Maybe others with clicking copies can post theirs (both GR hits and honky chateaus)

My UNI honky chateau doesn't have the clicking.

I don't think anyone has mentioned clicking on first pressings of HC have they?

 

You are not crazy, and it's not your setup.

It's there loud and clear on the US Greatest Hits LP but I've never heard it anywhere else. I noticed it back in 1974 when I bought the album. It's also on a second copy that I acquired. It's not on my US Honky Chateau LP or any CD mastering that I have heard.

 

If that's the case, how could something this offensive get through QC?

 

Mike -

MCA made awful low quality pressings of records in the late 1970s
- and there were lots of "after hour" pressings on large selling titles.

 

This one is '74 and it's definitely low quality if it made it through QC w these clicks!!

 

In the US these mega selling LPs were being made by the hundreds of thousands, millions even, and shipped as fast as they could be made.

QC ? C'mon folks add it up.....

fwiw I had this very album myself but don't remember any obvious clicking.

 

Yeah I'm sure they were churning that one out. I don't remember my childhood copy having it either

 

Awesome backing band. Glad others here appreciate them!

 

I am playing this on my tinny laptop speakers. But to me it sounds like clipping of a trebled-out KICK drum. Is it possible that there's a very low frequency kick that is usually filtered out, playing those beats? And it is overmodding on that LP, causing a high frequency click?

 

As a drummer, it sounds like double tracked drums right before and during the chorus to me. He's hitting a tightly closed hi-hat in straight fours at that point along with an overdub of his ride/ping cymbal and then moving to a slightly open hi-hat, still hitting in straight fours but not quite in perfect synch. If I listen "below" the ride/ping cymbal during the chorus, I hear quite clearly he's hitting a tightly closed hi-hat. It wasn't unusual back then for bands/drummers to double their drum track and slightly alter what they were playing to "beef up" the sound to give it more texture. At least that's how I hear it.

I admit I'm listening to only CD versions ATM, my vinyl is somewhere else right now. If it sounds odd on various pressings, aside from the couple of different mixes of the tune out there, maybe it's EQ choices and/or cutter head ringing/resonance interactions during a particular mastering?

 

OK, thanks to your acute ear and experience, I can hear it too this way, now.

On the other HC problem tracks though, like "Slave", "Hercules" and mostly "I think I'm Gonna Kill Myself" (BEFORE the "tap dance" coda), the clicks seem to be triggered by something else. Perhaps the rhythm guitar on the right; it seems to follow the strumming, then the arpeggios bit...

 

I am a drummer and listened to bigmikerock's sample. It certainly sounded like a mechanical click generated by a vinyl mastering error as a few people have suggested, not like anything that could have come from Nigel's kit. The clicks were also too loud and on the beat to be a click track leaking into a mic as one person suggested.

 

I must not be hearing what you guys are talking about. I am going to go back and re-listen to the sample on a better system.

 

If you're listening to the cd versions and not to my clip, there's not much use in commenting. The clicking on my clip isn't on any of the cd versions

 

The CD versions don't have the clicking, neither does my Australian DJM LP of GH I bought on Sunday. Mastering glitch with the MCA Sloppy Quality Control of the day on their LP output.

 

My only LP of this comp was the MCA LP and I got rid of it in favor of the MCA CD of the comp. The MCA CD of this compilation sounds great.

 

Its the sound of money dropping into EJs bank account.

 

You are absolutely right. I was at work and couldn't download your clip, but I did when I got home and it is pure record damage from mistracking.

I hear this kind of damage all the time in my work. In my own personal record collection, this kind of damage shows up most on (of all things) Christmas records that feature bells and chimes that I've bought from thrifts or yard sales. It's the result of being played repeatedly (or even once) with a stylus that could not track the transients the cymbals presented. It's a perfect example of the "tire blowout" analogy Shure used to use in their ads way back when explaining what mistracking did to a record long-term.

The record sounds pretty well played, so I'm not surprised to hear artifacts like that. What kind of system did you have at the time it came out?

 

do you have a way to post some samples of this clicking on some of your christmas records?

this record was given to me, i was 2 in 1974. the fact that this clicking is only on the one song, for the entire song, then totally disappears at the end of the song would make it hard for me to believe that it is just damage to this record (as opposed to a mastering SNAFU). also the fact that so many others in this thread are finding copies with the same problem