Vinyl pressing faults

Every time I have a poor pressings, ie: crackling, it's always on the first outside tracks. This crackling or "swooshing" sound nearly always comes predominently from the right speaker.

It might sound strange, but if I do get a craclkly pressing, it's usually a USA one as opposed to a UK one.

Can anyone explain this, as it's starting to drive me around the bend?

 

Hello Count.....

We thought you Brit's were the only friends we had left!!! Don't go 'round the bend just yet!!!!!

Bill

 

Come on chaps, 31 views and no replies.

I've posted this on another forum and it's amazing to read people have found the same problem with USA pressings.

There must be a reason for this surface noise.

 

I found that in the mid-70s (during the energy crisis era), a number of American pressings seemed to be going downhill. Case in point... Pretty well anything pressed by Warners (Asylum etc...) seemed to be somewhat crackly like the vinyl was not as pure as it had previously been. At that time, there was often a delay in the release date between the US and Canadian issues but, I would find myself waiting for the Canadian release. These seemed to be much quieter pressings.

Cheers,
Chris

 

Motown was the absolute worst in my book--all those Stevie Wonder LPs I had to buy and return...and return........and return......just to get a clean copy is beyond pathetic. MCA in the 70's was marginally better, which means it was still cruddy. Recycled vinyl is probably a culprit in many noisy pressings. Some really bad examples may even have small bits of label in it!

 

If you want to talk about cruddy vinyl, do this experiment. Take a 45 made in the '60s. Hold it from the edge to the center between your thumb and first finger. Then, tap on the label with your knuckle. It will sound like plastic. Take another single made in the USA in the mid-70s (a Motown one would be good) and tap it the same way. The '70s one will sound hollow like styrofoam! It's more polystyrene than plastic. Those pressings were awful! I worked in Windsor at a record store that that time and the Canadian pressings were still actually vinyl and sounded much better.

Cheers,
Chris

 

I have a few disks like this. It's only a problem when they are played with certain "line contact" type styli. I think what is happening is that these styli are in contact with part of the groove that's a little nearer the surface than is usual, and so are picking up some noise that, for example, an eliptical stylus would ignore.

My guess is that it's predominantly in the "outer" groove wall, something to do with the way the vinyl is formed in the presses.

There is another sort of "groove stitching" that makes often very loud ripping noises in the right channel. This is called "non-fill" and happens because the records are pressed too quickly for the vinyl to fill in all the nooks and crannies around the stampers. It's often heard just before or after a particularly loud passage (that is, one revolution away). This is visible as sort of (often spiral) series of "pin marks" when you hold the disk up to the light.

 

The point is valid about the polystyrene, but the fact is Columbia started making these in the 1950s. It is true, though, that towards the end of the "vinyl era" more record companies made this type of 45 in the U.S. However there were *lots* of them made in the '60s.

Sometimes a given record would be issued on both polystyrene and vinyl, depending on what pressing plants they were farmed out to. The polystyrenes can sound good when new, but they are prone to wearing quickly, and very, very badly.

DJ pressings are often vinyl even from Columbia, because the polystyrene's were so prone to "cue burn" -- the beginning of the disk would be hissy where the DJ had spun it backwards to cue it up.

 

YES!!!!
I have encountered this phenomenon.
Can I explain it?
No
Sorry.

BC