First Pressings, Label Variations, and Scribblings in the Dead Wax

Part of the fun of collecting LPs is learning more about the history of each album, including information about the musicians who played on the session, the name of the producer(s) and engineer(s), who cut the master, which company pressed the vinyl, and whether the album is an original pressing or a re-issue. More often than not, you can find basic information on the back of the album cover or on the dust sleeve. But in order to get the full story, you usually have to dig a little deeper.

The first thing I generally want to know is whether the album is a first pressing or a re-issue. Collectors will pay huge sums to get their hands on an original Lexington Ave. Blue Note or a Beatles first Parlophone pressing. (An original stereo copy of the Beatles' Please Please Me, in decent condition, will easily fetch $5,000.) These albums are often valuable because they didn't press many copies of the first edition. And most are so old that's it's very difficult to find a copy in top condition. Many collectors and audiophiles also believe that earlier pressings sound better, since they are closer to the original master tape. You can find plenty of discussion of these topics on the internet.

I'm not usually interested in having a first edition just for its own sake. I collect music, not albums. And given the prices that original pressings command, I'd much rather have 10 or 20 later pressings for the same price as one original copy. In the case of the Beatles, for the cost of one original Please Please Me, you could buy both the recent stereo and mono remastered box sets, and have enough money left over to fly to London and take a photo of yourself in the crosswalk at Abbey Road. 

Bop Till You Drop

I'm also not a stickler for analog-only LPs. There are vinyl collectors who refuse to purchase an LP if there was a digital conversion anywhere in the processing chain. If a digitally-sourced album is well mastered and well pressed, it still sounds better than the original digital source to my ears. That said, I have a number of digital albums from the late 70s and early 80s (when the labels proudly promoted the fact that their LPs were "Digital") that sound terrible. I remember buying Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop LP when it came out in 1979. It was the first digitally-recorded LP released by a major label. At first, I thought it sounded amazing. It had a clarity and sharpness that was very different from normal LPs. Very quickly, however, that sharpness became tinny and incredibly annoying. Digital has come a long way since then, and well-produced LPs from digital sources can sound fine. 

In order to find out whether you have a first pressing or later release, the first place to check is Discogs. Though it is crowd-sourced and has some errors, it is still the biggest and best on-line database of recorded music. When you search for your LP, Discogs will show a list of releases and re-releases by year. For popular albums, it's not unusual to find more than 100 different versions, including different formats, re-pressings, and international pressings. For our purposes - vinyl - the differences in the releases can be very minor, such as a different pressing plant. Or the changes can be major, including a different title, different art on the label or jacket, the addition of bonus tracks, or a remastered version.

Because of all the different releases, it is often difficult to tell exactly which pressing you have. Helpfully, most Discogs entries have photos of the jackets and labels, which can narrow things down considerably. Changes in label design are a pretty reliable way to date your album. For example, Warner Brothers used a green label with an orange and blue WB shield logo from about 1970-1973, and then switched to what's known as the "Burbank" or "palm tree" label from 1973-1978. Lots of popular albums by the Doobie Brothers and Grateful Dead (just to name a couple of bands) came out originally on the green label, and were repressed on the Burbank label. However, it's not always so simple. There are entire books written about the minute label changes for Blue Note Records. 

One of the best sources of information about label design is the blog 
LondonJazzCollector. They guy who runs the site has posted great guides that document the changes in label design over the decades for most of the important labels. (LJC is also a gold mine of information about jazz LPs in general. The forums feature contributions from people who are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about jazz recordings.) Still, even after you've identified your particular release, you'll often need to examine subtle changes to the label and check the information in the dead wax to find out more. 

Bell Sound Mastering Lab, New York.
The f at right indicates that the engineer
was Sam Feldman.

When I first began to look at the information in the dead wax at the end of the album sides, the stampings, symbols, initials, numbers, letters, and scratchings seemed like a foreign language. Or maybe better, a kind of code. After years spent trying to read and decipher these markings with a magnifying glass, I started to keep a list. I also scoured the internet for clues. Discogs has an active and lengthy list. There are also dozens of topics about deadwax notations on the Steve Hoffman forum. I copied every source I could find, added dozens that I was able to figure out by checking the album credits, corresponded with a few mastering engineers to ask questions (in my experience, they are extremely kind and willing to respond) and now have a list of deadwax abbreviations and symbols that is 18 pages long. Some of the stamps and markings show up fairly regularly and are easy to identify. Others are initials or little drawings inscribed as a signature by the mastering engineer who cut the lacquer or as identifying marks for the mastering house or pressing plant. Even with 18 pages of notes, I still find new markings all the time.

Allen Zentz Mastering
 Lacquer by Brian Gardner

Until recently at least, mastering engineers tended to work mostly in the background, cutting lacquers for LPs in quiet anonymity. These unsung heroes often carved their initials or other markings to indicate who was responsible for cutting the lacquer -- that is, transferring the sound from the tape (or digital file) by cutting the groove in a lacquer disk. (Which is not nearly as easy as it sounds. If you're interested in the process, there are some fascinating videos online about how LPs are produced.) And while the listening public was usually completely oblivious, producers and artists often insisted on using favorite mastering engineers who could make their music come alive. One of my favorite signatures are the bird wings used by Brian Gardner (above right.) Gardner, who worked at Alan Zent mastering (hence the AZ) also sometimes scribed a small flower instead of the bird wings. Chris Bellman, who remains active today and is one of the most sought-after mastering engineers in the business, uses a simple CB (below right). However, the tricky thing is that the markings are tiny, and if you didn't know that the initials below were CB, you might easily see a number of other different possibilites. 

Mastered by Chris Bellman

David Turner

Another one of my favorite signatures are the eyebrows used by David Turner (above, and not to be confused with Gardner's bird wings.) Many of the most active and well-known mastering engineers used their initials, and if you go through a stack of albums you're almost sure to find some with signatures by RKS - Ryan Smith; RL - Robert Ludwig; LH - Lee Hulko; KG - Kevin Grey; BK - Bill Kipper; GK - Gilbert Kong; GP or Porky - George Peckham; RJ - Ray Janos; or Wally - Wally Traugott. If you're really lucky, you might find a classic jazz album cut by RVG or the great Rudy Van Gelder. If you do, by the way, buy it!

Mastered by Robert Ludwig,
Pressed by Allied Records,
Hollywood, CA

Mastered by Ryan K. Smith
 at Sterling Sound, NYC

Artisan Mastering

Of course, there are lots of other squiggles in the deadwax besides the initials of the mastering engineers. Nearly all mastering houses and record pressing plants used markings to indicate who cut the lacquer and where the album was produced. Above, next to Robert Ludwig's initials, is the Q-shaped stamp used 

Specialty

by Allied Records, which pressed albums in Hollywood, CA. In the middle above is the very common stamp used by the mastering house Artisan Sound in California. There are a lot of different descriptions of what the symbol is, but the correct answer is a drafting compass on top of a record. The compass makes an "A" for Artisan. Further down below left is the U in a circle which is the mark used by United Record Pressing of Nashville, TN. And also further down you can see a triangle stamp with the letters IAM inside, which indicates that the album was pressed by Capitol Records at their Scranton, PA plant between 1963-1973. IAM stood for the International Association of Machinists, the union representing the workers at that particular plant. The big record producers like Columbia and Capitol had pressing plants in different parts of the country to facilitate distribution. If you live on the East Coast, as I do, the vast majority of LPs that you run across will have been pressed in Columbia's Pittman, NJ plant (indicated by a small stamped P which is often very faint and is usually on one side of the catalog number) or in their Terre Haute, IN plant (represented by a T on one side of the catalog number.) Most of the Capitol releases I find are from their Winchester, Virginia plant which used an etching that was meant  

Monarch Record

to look like a Winchester rifle like this:  ----<. In addition, there were dozens of independent record producers like Specialty Record Company in Olyphant, PA (a large S with a small R and C in the curves, above left) and Monarch Record Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles (an MR inside a circle at right) that pressed for nearly every label. And of course this barely scratches the surface (get it?) of the hundreds of different markings that appear on records. 

At this point you may well be thinking, who cares who mastered the album or where it was pressed? The answer is that knowing that an album was mastered by Robert Ludwig or pressed by Quality Record Pressing in Salinas, KS (for example) almost guarantees that the disk is going to sound great. So all things being equal, if you can snag a pressing by a well-known and respected engineer, that's half the battle. I'll sometimes buy an album that I'm not all that interested in or that I may already have a copy of if I see that it was mastered by one of the greats. If I'm going through the $1 bin and see a copy of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly mastered by Robert Ludwig or a Led Zeppelin IV mastered by George Peckham (AT/GP in the deadwax), I'll buy it even though I already have five copies of both these albums.

Mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Mastered by Wally Traugott

United Record Pressing,
Nashville, TN

Pressed by Capitol Records, Scranton, PA

Another interesting way to identify which plant pressed the record is to check the size of the pressing rings on the label. The pressing rings are the indentations made by the particular pressing machines when they flatten the vinyl disk and apply the label. Even if you can't find a letter or other identifier for a pressing plant, if you know that Specialty Record Company's pressing ring is 70mm, or that Monarch Record has double 35/72 mm rings, it can help you figure out by whom and where the LP was pressed. I've got a two-page list of pressing ring diameters that I consult regularly.

And finally, knowing how to decipher the deadwax information or gauge pressing rings will mark you as a knowledgeable collector, which is certain to impress your friends and your local record store dealer.

Enjoy the music!