Westminster Laboratory Series - Early Example of Audiophile Vinyl

There was a golden period in the early to mid 90s when everyone was busy replacing their LPs with CDs when you could pick up a box of classic rock LPs at a yard sale for a dollar. I even took advantage of a few Freecycle offers to nab entire collections for the price of hauling the boxes out of someone's basement.

Nowadays, because of increasing interest in vinyl, not only are the dollar bins picked over, dealers and thrift shops are carefully checking their stock for jazz and classic rock titles that they can sell for much higher prices. The chance of coming across a mint Blue Note or first edition Pet Sounds for a buck is rapidly approaching zero.

However, one area where it is still possible to find really good deals is used classical records. In the first place, there aren't nearly as many collectors. And more importantly, most used record dealers and thrift shops don't specialize in classical titles and don't have the time to investigate the value of used classical disks.

Among my 3,500 or so LPs, about 500 are classical. I've gone through phases when I listened to a lot of classical music, but must admit that nowadays about 90% of the time I'm spinning jazz or classic rock. Nevertheless, when I stumble on a nice stash of classical titles for cheap, I always grab them.

A couple of years ago at a library book sale in Arlington, VA, I was going through five or six boxes of used LPs, up for grabs at a dollar each. The rock records were mostly the usual worn out copies of Linda Ronstadt, Andy Williams, Barbra Steisand, John Denver, and Loggins and Messina.

But there was one box with 25-30 classical titles all in NM condition. Flipping through them, I found a mix of Angel, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA, London, Philips, and other quality labels. Many were open but still in the shrink wrap. I didn't bother checking the titles, but just carried the box to the cash register. When I got them home and started going through therm, I found something interesting. There were two albums enclosed in thick plastic covers with metal zippers. When I tried to extract the albums, I
discovered that the plastic had fused to the jackets. Not sure what I had, I carefully worked the plastic off and removed the jackets.

Inside were two albums pressed by the Westminster Hi-Fi label. The first (the green one above) was a recording of Prokofieff's Classical Symphony in D major, Op. 29, by Artur Rodzinski and the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London. The second (the purple one to the right) was Respighi's Feste Romane, performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra of London.

There were several unusual things about the albums (other than the plastic zip covers.) First, the jackets were printed on a very cool metallic foil material (which makes them very hard to photograph.) Next, the jackets didn't have pockets, but were simply hinged boards with a record inside. In addition, each album included a thick, 32-page booklet (in matching colors!)

What the heck? First a quick check of the vinyl. They both appeared to be unplayed. The jackets, except for discolored strips on the right front side where the plastic had adhered, were also nearly mint. I checked one of the booklets and noted that it was written by C.G. McProud, who is identified as the Editor and Publisher of Audio Magazine. The booklet is dated 1955, making the recordings 60 years old. In the booklet, McProud presents a 20-page "Engineering Guide to the Westminster Laboratory Series." He spends the first five or six pages explaining why a high-fidelity recording should only be made with one microphone. As he explains it, multiple microphones will smear the sound of the individual instruments since the recorded sound arrives at each mic a split second apart. Other topics that McProud covers include "Inter-Groove Echo," "Equalization," "Dynamic Range," and "Harmonic Distortion." He makes a compelling case for why Westminster Lab series recordings are superior to any other LPs (at least in 1955.) The last 10 pages of the booklets are detailed track notes by James Lyons. A web search turned up a James Lyons who founded the Monterrey Jazz Festival and was important in promoting West Coast jazz, but his bio doesn't indicate any particular involvement with classical music, so maybe it's another James Lyons.

While I was Googling, I did some digging for info on Westminster Records. Wikipedia says: "The label was founded in 1949 by the owner of the Westminster Record shop in New York City, James Grayson, and conductor Henry Swoboda. Its trademark was Big Ben and its slogan was "Natural Balance," referring to its single microphone technique in recording music, similar to Mercury Records' "Living Presence" series."

Note the futuristic logo of an atom superimposed on an audio wavelength. The Big Ben "Natural Balance" logo is at bottom. It's a little hard to see (click on the photo to get a larger image), but also note that the music band stops about halfway into the side. 

On an online audio forum I found more info: "Westminster put out a "Lab" series of recordings, characterized by pressings which were not allowed to run over 15 or so minutes per side. The main "playing" groove stopped about halfway into the play area of normal LPs, though the runout groove continued to the center of the record. The idea was to eliminate the end-of-side distortions that plagued many records that ran all the way to the label and were the bane of many a hi-fi fanatic. The albums were sold at a premium in spite of offering less music, but the sonic clarity was a significant selling point to their demographic."

I was able to find a price list for LPs in a 1956 copy of Billboard magazine, and it shows that the retail price for the Westminster Laboratory series was $7.50, while standard issues from the big labels like RCA and Mercury were $3.95 or $4.95. In this regard, Westminster was apparently a forerunner of premium labels like MFSL or Analogue Productions. A review of the Prokofieff title in the March, 1956 Billboard magazine notes: "What justifies the heavy price here is the already substantial market for the plastic-zippered Lab packages, and the assurance of finicky and accurate engineering they have come to represent. Of special interest is the orchestral transparency captured, each part clear and in eminent balance."

I can't comment on the quality of the performances, but I do agree with the reviewer that the sound is fantastic. The vinyl is dead quiet except for one or two ticks, and the recordings are detailed and dynamic.

I wasn't able to find a list of all the "Lab" series albums Westminster produced, but did find about 20 different titles on Discogs, Rate Your Music, and Ebay. The first review I can find in the Billboard archives is December, 1954, for the second release in the series, catalog number 7001. The highest catalog number I can find is 7056. And the last Billboard review I can find is in the October, 1957 issue. Assuming they didn't skip catalog numbers, a rough estimate is that Westminster produced 57 titles in a little less than three years. I'm not sure when they stopped selling the Lab series, but the Westminster label shut down when it was sold to ABC in 1961.

As for my one dollar investment, I found one of my two albums listed on Ebay with an asking price of $100. Of course, there is no telling if anyone will pay that, but I certainly got more than my money's worth. And in any case, I'm not interested in selling.

Enjoy the music!