Vinyl Gurus Please Help

[Trakworx]

Originally Posted by GeorgeZ

Hello guys,

I sent my reply to the Trakworx's private email 3 weeks ago, but forgot to mention it here:

-------------------------------
I 'm sorry for any complications and problems caused to you or your customer by GZ or PP. I am just a premastering engineer and I am able to write more in-depth only about premastering/mastering/cutting.

However, a link to that topic and request for an explanation have been sent to all responsible persons -to the head of our customer service department, to the head of our pressing department and to the boss of Pirates Press.

It seems to be three problems here:
1. A pressing problem with the humming sound
2. A quality control problem when sending 3 times! those faulty test pressings. How this can happen???
3. A communication problem somewhere (our customer service girls and ladies are not native English speakers and trying to explain problems to PP brokers... )
I hope that only misunderstandings have happen and not lies :-(

If I will be allowed to publish more details, a solution or other official statement of GZ, I will do it in that topic.
-----------------------------------------------

The official statement from the head of our customer service department sent to me on August the 2nd and translated by me is something like this:

"We know about this uncharacteristic problem, it was thoroughly analyzed for several weeks and finally a solution has been discovered. A communication with our customers affected by this problem continues and any misunderstandings are being clarified."

I can only add info that this was really a pressing problem and we cut several DMM test plates and lacquer foils for our QC staff to prove that the problem wasn't in the mastering/cutting process. There were no strange sounds neither on the copper plates, nor on the lacquer foils, nor on mother plates.

We know that this strange sounds problem can lower a reputation of the factory, but all pressing plants have some good and some bad days and with an old and complicated pressing equipment it isn't an easy task to produce records. No new record presses have been built since 80ies and all factories have troubles with maintenance of the old ones, with spare parts and all components around.

I know cases where workable or repairable presses are auctioned (bought at an auction) by a pressing plant and then immediately scrapped without even moving them to a new location to save money for transport and to avoid a possibility that a competitive plant can buy them. This is the evil way leading to slow end of record pressing...

Regards,

Thanks for posting this in the thread. I appreciate your honesty.

I accept your explanation that this was a pressing problem, and I'm sure making vinyl is indeed very challenging. Anyone can make a mistake, and mistakes can be remedied. Nobody's perfect and I accept that.

The main problem I have is with Pirates Press repeatedly claiming that this was some rare anomaly, a "ghost problem" they called it, when in reality it has been going on for some time as evidenced by the reports from others in this thread as well as a couple of already-released records I found that have this same problem. If I can quickly discover several cases of this, then who knows how many more there are? Certainly more than Pirates Press has been willing to acknowledge, and I don't for an instant believe that they were unaware of it. I feel that it is their responsibility as a broker to ensure that some QC is in place, and to own up to any inherent potential issues with the pressing process they have chosen to use. Had they been straightforward with my client, I certainly would have more respect for their business ethics, but they chose to pretend that this was some fluke and let it drag out for several weeks. As it stands now, they have a busy ME located right in their back yard who will be asking every future client who they plan to use for vinyl pressing. Nice job guys.

In addition to the complaints from my clients, it bothers me that my name is on these records and any listener (who might be a potential client of mine) has no way of knowing that these extraneous sounds were not caused by me. I would think that Pirates Press should feel the same way and strive to make sure that it doesn't happen before even forwarding a test pressing to any client so no one will think it was caused by them either. Leaving it up to the client to discover a flaw is not a valid approach in my opinion.

I realize that I'm being pretty hard on Pirates Press right now, and I'm willing to eat my words if they have some compelling response they would like to make. Best,

[Virtalahde]

And here's another sample coming from Pirates Press, cut at GZ if I'm not mistaken. Quite familiar sounding howl right there, before the guitar intro.

[Trakworx]

Disappointing...

What did Pirates Press say about it this time?

[Virtalahde]

[QUOTE=Trakworx;8237169]Disappointing...

What did Pirates Press say about it this time?[/QUOTE

To tell you the truth, I have no idea. I told my customer the pressing is not of greatest quality and that there is a lot of noise in the background. The sound is OK-ish, but the noise..

[Yann Dub]

You can find this kind of hum / noise in the lead in and lead out of a lot of records
The motor of the main screw is going faster , and you can hear it ... solution ? new rollers can help ...

[Thomas W. Bethe]

I like this place for vinyl pressing. They do GREAT work and are easy to work with.

Gotta Groove Records | Record Pressing and Short Run Vinyl

for a Cutting Engineer I prefer Paul Gold at Salt Mastering - Mastering for CD and Vinyl - Brooklyn, NY

[shmasterer]

I know the Grandaddy "Sophtware Slump" re-issue was pressed at CZ on Universal, has anyone heard it?

_sh

[Trakworx]

Update: A client of mine was recently informed by a Pirates Press sales rep that the pressing issue was resolved in December. "Rest assured" he said. Just wondering if anyone involved in this thread can verify. GeorgeZ?

[GeorgeZ]

Originally Posted by Trakworx

Update: A client of mine was recently informed by a Pirates Press sales rep that the pressing issue was resolved in December. "Rest assured" he said. Just wondering if anyone involved in this thread can verify. GeorgeZ?

Hello,

coincidentally, I asked our pressing department boss several days ago about the humming sound problem and whether it reappeared again after that long time or not. He told me that all the pressing moulds were carefully repolished (I hope it is the right English word for that operation) by our tooling specialists and that the problem almost completely vanished. He told me only about two or so cases in the last several months, which needed to be repressed due to this humming sound.
It was a wear problem of old moulds. Our pressing team must take care about their condition more, test them regularly and repolish them if necessary.

[Trakworx]

Originally Posted by GeorgeZ

Hello,

coincidentally, I asked our pressing department boss several days ago about the humming sound problem and whether it reappeared again after that long time or not. He told me that all the pressing moulds were carefully repolished (I hope it is the right English word for that operation) by our tooling specialists and that the problem almost completely vanished. He told me only about two or so cases in the last several months, which needed to be repressed due to this humming sound.
It was a wear problem of old moulds. Our pressing team must take care about their condition more, test them regularly and repolish them if necessary.

That's good to hear. I hope they stay on top of it. Thanks!