Manufacturing of "record club" vinyl records

I was thinking about BMG/RCA and Columbia House Record Clubs. I never bought a lot of records from them, mostly cassettes back in the 80's. You could always tell the cassette were made by Columbia House because they had that pink line on the spine (and CRC for Columbia Record Club):



In the 90's I ordered TONS of CD's from both clubs on numerous occasions. But rarely did I ever buy vinyl. Fast Forward to 2012 when I start buying vinyl again. I have several "Record Club" editions that I have picked up around town or on eBay. This leads to my questions: Did the Record Club(s) press their own records? What type of vinyl did they use? What weight did they press vinyl?

I never thought too much about it but I have more than one copy of a few albums. Upon inspection I am finding the record club version to be a lighter weight vinyl. However, I have two copies of Styx - Kilroy Was Here (yeah I know, I hear you snickering now, I admit I am a sucker for Styx). The copy made by A&M Records is the thinner copy. In fact, if you take an LED light and shine it from the back side the light shines thru the vinyl. On the RCA Record Club version the vinyl is a bit heavier and you cannot see light pass thru the record.

So did the clubs use different weights? Some lighter than others? My Boston "Third Stage" from RCA is pretty thin but it plays fine. Maybe someone from Terre Haute has some insight on this. I know many people thought of Record Club vinyl to be inferior to the actual vinyl pressed by the labels. I know the cassettes (as pictured above) had worse album art and not as good sound.

 

The thinness or thickness of vinyl has absolutely nothing to do with sound quality.

The cutting lathe nor the stylus tracking the grooves could not care less about the thickness of the vinyl.

The question that should be asked is, Did the Record Clubs use different or inferior masters compared to the major labels and that will answer the sound quality question.

 

Interesting, thanks for the reply. I don't have many duplicates but the ones I do have I cannot tell a difference in the sound. I wonder what type of Masters the clubs used.

 

It varied. Sometimes they cut their own lacquers from whatever source the label gave them. Sometimes they used the same stampers as commercial pressings. The deadwax will tell the tale. In the case of Columbia House, I'm pretty sure all lps from Columbia/CBS family labels were identical to what you'd buy at a record store.

 

Same here in Canada. CBS pressed for several other labels too.

 

It's interesting because I get the impression that most people think that that record club pressings are inferior.

 

I have a double sided Sterling RL Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy with CRC on labels. It sounded great the last time I listened to it. I haven't compared it to my UK Sterling RL version, yet. Label states "Record Club of America 1st Pressing from 1973 with "1841 Broadway" on labels". Even though I think this sounds fine, I usually avoid record club pressings.

 

I've got a kick-ass Record Club Physical Graffiti.

 

A friend of mine gave me a BMG pressing of Iron Maiden's Live After Death. Sounds pretty good to me.

 

I actually like finding record club editions on vinyl, as they usually aren't as expensive and are in better shape than usual (possibly they forgot to decline the "selection of the month" or just ordered up a whole bunch and didn't care for it). I also find they typically are the same as what was released in stores. They just aren't as valued by collectors - and that's fine by me.

 

I don't agree with that. Many things impact the ultimate quality, and there are good and bad pressings at various weights, but in my experience the really thin stuff often does not sound that great. Whether this has to do more with the oil crisis of the 70s and lower quality formulations more than the thickness itself I do not know. I also tend to find if pressed flat, thicker vinyl stays that way if handled well.

The thickness of the vinyl seems to resist resonance/vibration during playback much like thicker groove walls (more widely spaced grooves) tend to. By the same token, you could say the stylus tracking the groove couldn't care less about the wall thickness, but that doesn't actually seem to be the case, either during playback or during the cutting process where transfer through the lacquer is certainly a real effect (hence pre/post-echo).

That being said, pressing heavier weight vinyl "just because it sounds more gooder" is obviously bereft. But high quality vinyl pressings are not snake oil.

 

If I had the choice between a 200 gr or 130 gr of the same pressing , I'd probably pick the 130gr. I've received more warped 200's than the lighter pressings.

My opinion is the 200gr records are snake oil.

 

Towards the end of the Lp era they were using inferior slicks for some catalog items. My copy of Back in Black is on white card stock with the front slightly overlapping the back side. Interestingly, it is embossed. The record sounds ok, though. I used to have a non gatefold Aqualung that was the same way.

 

I have a Record Club Sticky Fingers and it sounds darn close to my Monarch copy. Plus it's dead quiet.

 

You can't really pigeonhole the record clubs pressings. I was in Columbia for most of the 70's into the 80's, and RCA FOR 5-6 years. The pressings are all over the place, good, band and in-between. My experience led me to believe Columbia probably had the edge in quality.

 

We need a return of the record club

 

My brother bought a Columbia Record Club version of Duran Duran's Rio, one of my favorites that I search endlessly for the best sounding copy (there's so many versions). His is the best I've heard. I was really shocked. He won't sell it to me.

 

I beg to disagree. All my 100gm thin LP's of the late 70's and 80's sound magnificent. Examples are the Beatles, David Bowie, Ultravox, John Foxx, all the 4ad vinyl releases and the list goes on and on. They also hardly ever had any pressing faults or warps.

These are mostly UK pressings where have always been better than their US counterparts.

I have 1000's of thin vinyl played on 4 turntable's and NONE of them suffer and resonances. Something ug with your setup dude. If your platter is ringing, perhaps use a clamp, a better record mat that damps your platter. Dished 180gm pressing cause many more issues on vinyl playback.


Thicker vinyl does not mean less resonances, that comment is plan comical and factually incorrect. The vinyl's depth is constant and 100gm or 200gm vinyl does not make those grooves deeper. Comparing this to groove spacing is incorrect. Wider spaced grooves are used for louder dynamic parts, hence 12 inch mixes of tracks have a limit of around 12 minutes a side.

I have so many more warping/dishing issues with 18gm vinyl now than I ever had with thin 100gm vinyl. Let's not even discuss the pressing faults we see with 180gm vinyl these days, as pressing quality is poor out of a few factories.
For the uneducated, the music industry seems to try and equate sound quality with heavier 180gm vinyl. Something most music lovers know is crapp as the original pressing almost always sound better.

It is the inferior mastering / digital mastering that is causing most of the issues.

 

So, basically, you agree with much of what I said, and disagree with a bunch of silly things I didn't say.

 

I think this explains his point.

 

In regards to Led Zeppelin, I read somewhere on this site (from a tenured member) that Atlantic records used the same stampers and matrices as regular pressings for their record club pressings.

 

No.

 

After going through numerous US pressings of various vintages, I found my go-to copy of After The Gold Rush in a BMG Record Club edition. It's as thin as an early '70s Dynaflex, and it sounds wonderful.

 

At one time I avoided the record club editions, I have since out grown this impulse.

 

Atco/Atlantic and affiliated labels are mostly (all?) stock commercial copies. They simply switched the labels for ones marked 'record club.'

Other labels like Dunhill / ABC, A&M, Mercury, etc. had record club pressing made by RCA. So during the Dynaflex era (1971 to '73 or thereabouts) people would get a dynaflex record club pressing. With ABC / Dunhill etc. labels.