LOCAL PRESSINGS

[esi]

Vinyl lovers...an esteemed colleague and I had a long chat on LOCAL PRESSINGS the whole nine yards. The following questions were left unanswered:
1. How many record pressing plants were there in the Philippines?
2. Did each of the companies have their own? which would explain the difference in quality of the vinyl used, quality control, etc.
3. Was MARECO absorbed by one of the companies?
4. Did the local pressing plants use the MASTER TAPE or COPY of international artists? ( This is because the Pre PARI JO Stafford pressing rivaled the original.)
5. Why did the most if not all, PARI pressed LPs significantly deteriorated in quality?
6. Where are these pressing machines now? (I read somewhere that QRP restored and modified old machines which they use now)
7. Is / Are there Filipino record pressing engineers who are still active and living to shed light on the history of Records pressed in the Philippines?

Am sure there were more questions unanswered...but these were the ones i remembered. Can any of the WS gurus pitch in? If the MARECO pressed LPs were of world class quality then...with the right push and budget we could make it here still to keep the LP prices down.

[jtgf1966]

As far as i know, there was sonic, vicor pressing plant, hidcor, mareco, alpha and dyna (which also pressed wea's lp's) From my (user) experience, dyna pressed its own so the quality was quite uniform, except in instances where they would use a foreign master, as was the case with a lot of polydor, emi and warner (with dyna/wea had the license to sell here) and it's quite easy to spot a locally cut dyna pressing and one wherein the foreign master was used, you can see it in the dead wax. This would more or less answer question #4, wherein some dyna pressings (in the dead wax) would have their imprint and some foreign artists' albums would have been mastered using orginal metal parts. For example, i could say with certainty that ABBA's "Arrival", "The Eagles "Hotel California" and Chicago's "Gold Edition" (or is it Gold Record) were pressed using the foreign masters. As far as the PARI seal is concerned, the deterioration of local pressing quality had more to do with the period these records were released; and not the "seal". I bought a lot of albums that had the pari seal that and locally cut were pretty good like Frida's 1984 "Shine" lp (locally cut, dyna/polydor) or 10cc's "Windows in the Jungle" (pressed using polygram metal parts). Then again, dyna's locally cut "vitamin z" was crappy. Octoarts pressings was sad to say consistently spotty and used different pressing plants like mareco, sonic and presswell EVEN IF the company used original columbia masters, for example: Billy Joel's Greatest Hits. Orignal masters nga, pangit naman ang vinyl. Or the octoarts edition of "The Best of Earth Wind and Fire". Noisy due to poor quality vinyl. By the late eighties, everyone was already starting to produce shitty lp's. One possible reason why the Jo Stafford local version rivalled the original has nothing to do with the pari seal. It's most likely because the company which issued the lp used foreign masters (as in yung stamper galing sa mother company). From my own experience, the early mareco pressings were pretty good and the later ones, especially towards the late 80's was crappy, example: Rick Astley's first lp.

Nowadays, when i have no choice but buy a locally pressed vinyl (didn't have the money to all those that i wanted when i was a kid haha), i'd go by the period in which these were released; not for its pari or non pari status. For some reason, i wasn't able to buy Madonna's "Like A Prayer" lp; after looking at a friend's well cared for local album, which used original metal parts tapos dmm pa(!) the surface itself looked like it was pressed on crappy vinyl, so i don't want to buy that album's local pressing. By that time, dyna's pressings were no longer as good as it used to be.

Anyway, just my 10 cents worth, based on my experience as a collector

[romeobabao]

there were at least 9 vinyl pressing plants locally from the 70s to the late 80s as mentioned above...sad to say when the CD came most companies(due to the losing sales of vinyl,caused by the popularity of the more portable cassette and the incoming CD) shed and sold its pressing equipments off...to this day the last pressing equipment from the VILLAR family sadly is ....gone too.
as an insider,there were a lot of albums locally that were pressed using the foreign sent masters...a few dyna and wea local albums come to mind...later with the advent of betamax and later VHS tapes the mother companies started using them as the master for which we make local masters to press.the record companies didnt look too deep and the loss of quality that were evident in a lot of later presses esp.ones from vicor and octo...most cost cutting measures like these were the result of the crash in income from 1979 in the US recording industry...it was also the date where PAYOLA ruled in the continental USA ,the budget loss was very dear indeed.

[romeobabao]

also PARI is just the record association overseeing the control and copyright controls for every record companies.PARI had nothing to do with wether the pressing is better than the other etc.every recording company becomes a PARI member to take advantage of copyright control then and the yearly statistics for the record sales.PARI then enforces the control over tape recording pirates who use vinyl as masters long ago...if you look at japanese presses you will see a logo similar to PARI ,called JASRAC ...its an identical regional association as PARI...if you look at your local record collections ,you will notice a few with no PARI logos...they are non PARI members labels distributed by PARI member companies who accept distribution deals with them.there is also a financial cost to being a PARI member too.

[jtgf1966]

I was at the clear out of alpha records around three years ago, and the engineer there, whose name i had forgotten, told me that the machines have been sold for scrap and at that time, they were selling off the metal stampers. he said that those that get unsold will be sold as scrap...

[Q-Lazzarus]

sayang, wala bang investors na puwedeng bumili ng pressing plants to lower the prices. sayang yung mga dati.