SH Spotlight 'Does anyone know where Brian Wilson mastered PET SOUNDS in 1966?" Info is here...

My thoughts too. What purpose is served by closing these insightful threads to begin with? This forum has such a wealth of information going back over a decade and it's frustrating when you search an old thread (like this) only to find it closed. While I'm here, who decides to close a non-controversial thread like this? Can you simply leave them open permanently?

Does anyone have pictures of the cutting room and equipment described earlier in the thread that etched the numbers into the dead wax?

 

Wonder if the WT alluded to in the beginning of the thread as a engineer is Wally Traugott? Plausible perhaps.

 

Why the Scranton pressings have lower matrix numbers than Los Angeles pressings? It seems that the East Coast set was cut before the Los Angeles set.

Scranton: F17-G18-F19-G20-F21-G22-F23-G24; Los Angeles: F25-G26-F27-G28-F29-G30.

 

This.

(Disclaimer: for those who are uninterested in the trivialities and minutiae of the original '66 Pet Sounds pressing details, you may want to click the "back" button and move onto another thread.)

With that out of the way, I have 4 nice original mono copies of Pet Sounds that all sound about the same; that is, not great for critical listening but fun as hell for playing on an old tube dedicated mono system. My idea is to pare the 4 down to 1. Of my four, one is an LA pressing and the other three are from Scranton. Of course I like the West Coast pressing for sentimental reasons, but I am determined to go with whichever of the four has the "earliest" matrix numbers.

From monitoring sales on the popular auction site, each and every LA-pressed promo copy offered over the past year or so has had -G28/-G30 stampers, just as my own LA non-promo copy does. It would seem logical that the -G28/-G30 would thus be the earliest. Why, then, are all the other matrices lower than that (i.e.; -F17 or -G26)? Yes, I understand about the "F" being the master Scully and the "G" being the slave, but what I'm not finding anywhere is info as to the rhyme or reason behind the matrices. Why are the PA numbers lower than the Los Angeles numbers, and why are the promos always -G28/-G30?

I will now go back to hanging upside down in the closet while I await your responses. Thank you.