$400-600 per LP? The Electric Recording Co. releases, already out and upcoming...*

If you believe the last statement you will believe anything, he may well offset the costs of his gear against the income from selling records, but if he was accounting like the rest of us he's likely in the top 50 most profitable labels in the UK, pretty much all the small independent labels would kill to have his turnover and margins.

 

Besides, it’s straight BS that economies of scale aren’t possible. Like, if the albums cost $375 or so to make (even factoring in amortization of sunk costs) Pete is doing something very wrong.

 

For me the lack of quality control on each and every record they press is critical, at such a price level. I really do not get it.

Imagine having paid 2,500 GBP for the Mozart Box (still in stock with them), receive it in a big carton box, fully protected, get immersed into the the lavish book and ... after putting the needle in the grooves, having pops and clicks just as in a common 10 dollar record.

 

I fail to understand why this is a bad thing. Maybe the other independent labels in the UK should up their game to his level. This guy had a vision of perfection that, as we see in this thread, many people dismiss out of hand as looney tunes, but he’s actually realized it and made a success of it. Would the naysayers be happier if instead he was now bankrupt?

 

I have to assume that it's only one or two titles such as the Rollins that have had QC issues, to be honest the cost of the press is negligible, if it was my business I would have hopefully spotted the issues with playing the TPs and or a random sample of finished products and redone the press, even if I hadn't spotted the issue until after records had shipped I'd have shipped everyone a replacement record in a plain sleeve, that's what Analogue Productions did when I had an issue with one of their Blue Notes. Although pressing quality can vary it's perfectly possible to get excellent quality on standard records so for the price there is no reason they can't guarantee perfectly quiet records.

 

There are plenty of labels producing excellent quality records, properly transferred, well mastered, excellent pressing quality, well designed and properly printed sleeves, it's just that most don't make a fuss about it or try and charge 20 times the price. There are also labels that go above and beyond to produce superb records, Disc Union Blue Notes, Tone Poets, Sam Records, none of them charge anywhere near the premium, yet all have to pay for licencing and we don't have to pay for Kevin Gray's equipment, imagine adding $100 on a Tone Poet because Kevin needs new cables, it seems like that's what ERC are doing, for me they are profiteering.

 

Do you own the Mozart box?

Last night I listened to the One Step pressing of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, pressed on SuperVinyl or whatever the latest MoFi vinyl formulation is, and, while, it is astonishingly quiet, I still heard the occasional pop or tick. Much of that may be down to the fact that I’m listening on an entry level Rega RP1 with an entry level Bias 2 catridge, I’m sure a better table and cartridge would produce better results, and I hope to upgrade my vinyl front end soon to achieve just that improvement in playback, but pops and clicks are part of the vinyl experience, they always have been. The higher up the food chain you go as far as buying audiophile albums and more expensive turntables and ultrasonic record cleaning systems, the more you can reduce pops and clicks, but you’re never going to eliminate them. If you insist on listening to music without ever hearing pops and clicks, you should probably invest in an SACD player and be done with vinyl.

 

Daft title to do when I expect most fans have a number of previous versions. Can he actually improve it much over the Mo-Fi and Rhino versions?

 

This guy isn’t trying to charge 20 times the price, he is charging 20 times the price. And selling out pretty much everything he puts out except for the Mozart box. I assume many of his customers are repeat customers. I have a lot of the Music Matters 45 rpm Blue Notes. If I had been unhappy with the first one I bought, I wouldn’t have bought a second one. If the Electric Recording Company albums were not all that, they would stop selling, I’m sure.

As for this guy “profiteering” to pay for his silver cables, that’s how businesses work. They’re in business to make a profit. No one is being forced to spend $400 on one of his albums. If you think it’s a rip off, spend your $400 on a dozen of the Tone Poet albums that you find to be a better value for the money.

 

Actually that is one record I don't remember hearing a single flaw. You are liable to get one or two clicks no matter how good the cutting and pressing chain is. Do Electric Recording have their own presses because I can't think of any plant that won't introduce random flaws into their carefully cut records?

 

Disk Union Blue Notes were digital.

Many Tone Poets have speed problems.

Other than that I take your point.

 

Apples and oranges. Some records are very difficult to find NM and that is a visual grading. I got tired of paying for NM records that sounded bad. Buying a reissue that has gotten good reviews here and on Discogs is a way to get a pristine record that sounds good. Also, many NM editions of popular records (and most reissues are of popular records) go for close to the price of the reissue.

 

Barometric pressure must be stable at 30.0007 millibars. Anti-magnetic field aluminum bars must be placed at intervals of 5 feet for a one mile radius of the exact listening location. All air traffic must be suspended for a 50 mile radius. Tap water in the listening environ must be triple reverse osmosis purified. And no peanut butter.

 

I have the MoFi 45 RPM Forever Changes and I am very happy with it. But, as I said yesterday, the Electric Recording Company creating 300 new copies of Forever Changes doesn’t mean that anyone is coming to my house to take away my MoFi pressing. I fail to see the harm if 300 other people in the world choose to buy the Electric Recording Company pressing. If I had the money, I would probably buy it just for the facsimile sleeve reproduction collector artefact aspect of it, which is one area where the Electric Recording Company reissue will pretty clearly trump Mobile Fidelity’s reissue of the album, even if I doubt that a single LP 33 1/3 rpm pressing, no matter how painstakingly pressed, will surpass MoFi 2 x 45 rpm pressing in sound quality. I can’t afford to indulge that whim, but I would if I could.

 

I'd love to see a video of someone who plays one of these $500 LPs... on a $50 Crosley TT!

 

As I mentioned in the previous thread I'd rather spend my £300 on an original British Esquire copy of the Jazz titles and have spent that on occasion though many would cost much less, mastered by Rudy Van Gelder at the time and decent if not superb period UK pressing I prefer my vintage Jazz to sound how it was intended with an immediacy you just don't get from a modern reissue, as for the Martzy's again I prefer the real deal with my second choice being the Coup d'Archets and I will indeed continue to spend my money on Tone Poets, it's not a case of me not being willing to spend £300 or even £1,000 on a record it's that these particular records don't represent value for money and aren't worth their price for me, you may think different.

 

Were they digital, do you have definitive proof of that and even so who cares the results are absolutely stunning, likewise many Tone Poets have zero issues, are superb pressings and come in beautiful sleeves for less than a tenth of the ERC price.

 

Electricity? Pffft.

They should go back to the way records were mastered at EMI in the 1950's.

Per George Martin [https://variety.com/2016/music/news...-producer-dead-at-90-appreciation-1201726057/]:
At one point, he began to talk about the way records were mastered at EMI’s studio in Abbey Road. Turning to me, he leaned in and asked rhetorically, “And what principle do you think governed the mechanics of mastering?” I opened my mouth but just shrugged. “Gravity,” he said with a faint smile, and then he went on to explain how simple gravitational physics were employed to run the studio’s mastering lathe at a consistent speed.

I saw him interviewed back in 2000 for the RNRHOF, and he said back in the day [in the 50's] they couldn't rely on electricity so they used a deadweight to control the lathe when they were cutting the masters....

Why don't this company go back to that technology?

 

In my view a better way to make your point would be to use companies like Music Matters and Analogue Productions as the benchmark. There you get some stuff I would describe as “stunning.”

I’m not trying to argue with you and agreed with your general point.

 

Yes they did, but AP never really get sleeves right and I guess mentioning MM and TP was a bit of Joe Harley double dipping, plus I may actually prefer the Disc Unions to AP, MM and TP.

 

Yes, the mono issues (like the DiskUnion), to me, sounds "right." AP, MMJ, TP stereo versions sound great as well, but almost too clean. Personal preference of course.

 

An expected response. I collect and live with vinyl records for the past 40 years. I know what to expect. For this case, it is inexcusable not to perform 100% QC. It should be part of their marketing tools.

 

I take it you're just conjecturing. How about looking at it the opposite way - You're getting these gorgeous sounding pressings AND not having to worry about whether there are going to be quality control issues.

 

I'd be all over an ERC edition of Hijokaidan's "King Of Noise" if they ever elected to do that title.

 

How many copies were pressed of the UD1S of Abraxas? They go for over $1200 on the open market now.