Few full service vinyl manufacturers 

 

Baarn

=

Philips Phonografische Industrie (28th of September 1950 - 1962)

Phonodisc B.V. (1962 - ~1980)

PRS Baarn/PolyGram Record Service Baarn (~1980 - 28th of January 1993)

at Torenlaan 17, Baarn, the Netherlands

 

Established on 28th of September 1950, became operational in late 1951 and was Philips' most important vinyl manufacturing plant in Europe for years. A Joint venture with Siemens eventually created Phonodisc B.V., later renamed to PRS.  

 

A big pressing plant in Holland with VERY close relationships to PRS Hannover and PRS Langenhagen plants in Germany: many of the records pressed at Baarn were cut in Germany either at Hannover or Langenhagen plant and many of the records cut at Baarn were pressed in Germany either at Hannover or Langenhagen plant. Active at least to the early 90s, supposedly closed in 1992 or 1993.

 

Many Baarn made records seemingly always contain stamped runouts that contain not-so-well organized mother, father and pressing plate numbers. Records pressed at Baarn tend to sound stuffy and bassy like the ones pressed by Philips UK plant as well. Their record sleeves always seem to be glossy, are made of relatively thin cardboard and sometimes contain embossed oval PRS Baarn logo on the back cover. At least since the late 60s until the closure of the plant their center label area had clearly raised wide ring of vinyl material near the edge of the label, a clearly identifiable feature to at least three Philips plants (Norway, UK and Holland).  

​

If the record was cut at Baarn there is 670 or 6 70 stamped on the runouts. 12" stereophonic records pressed at Baarn also often include 1Y on A-side and 2Y on B-side of the runouts though these markings can also be found from German Philips pressed records.

 

 

CBS Canada

=

Columbia Records of Canada Ltd. (1954 - 1976)

CBS Records Canada Ltd. (1976 - 1990)

Sony Music Entertainment (Canada) Inc. (1991 - 2004)

Sony BMG Music (Canada) Inc. (2004 - 2008)

Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc. (2009 - )

 

Canadian branch of CBS/Columbia. They had a vinyl pressing plant in Don Mills, Ontario from 1971 - August 1988 and made a lot of very good quality Canadian pressings. 

 

Their pressings are characterized by heavily bassy sound (some even to the point of distraction, which IMHO lowers the quality of their records a lot) in addition to the low surface noise. Pressings from the Don Mills plant are identified from the DM or Dm followed by a stamper number either hand-etched or stamped on the runouts. The DM/Dm is not to be confused with Direct Metal Mastering (DMM). The Don Mills plant was used by many other companies in one or more steps of the vinyl manufacturing so the DM/Dm alone does not mean the record was pressed at the Don Mills plant. 

​

Stopped pressing vinyl in August 1988 and contracted vinyl pressing to Cinram which makes the Canadian pressing of Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son LP one of the last LPs they pressed and also a very rare item. After the Don Mills plant was closed only Cinram is known to continue to press vinyl in Canada for a few years longer.

​

Shorewood Packaging Corp. Of Canada Ltd. manufactured their sleeves, often identified from the 'SPC logo' or 'Litho In Canada' on sleeve/spine. 

​

 

Celebrate Records GmbH

 

German vinyl manufacturer started pressing vinyl in 2002 for their own label and later for other customers.  

 

Their earlier records seem to have more manufacturing flaws than records made by many other plants but it seems to me they are getting better and better all the time. For instance, all the copies of their Nightwish's Wishmaster LP I had had small bumps on the records surface which made the records unplayable in the first two tracks of each side (I bought 5 sealed copies of that LP from different sources and the same flaw is more or less present in all of them) and the copy of their triple red AC/DC live vinyl I had had HEAVY surface noise from the start (I only bought one sealed copy and didn't like the noisy red transparent but neat looking vinyl at all). On the other hand I like their Hurriganes LP reissues a lot despite the poor quality remasters they were cut from. If their records have no manufacturing flaws they are of VERY good quality.  

 

They use etched matrices in the format ######YYZZ where 
– ###### is their internal manufacturing code. Apparently they started from 100 000 and use the number consecutively meaning it can be used to deduce the

   manufacturing year of the first pressing. 
– YY contains the side identifier letter with additional number, usually A1 or B1 for single vinyl releases. The number might be a cut number (1 = first cut, 2 = second cut, ...)

   though I haven't yet seen higher number than 1 myself. 
– ZZ are the initials of the mastering engineer. FK stands for Frank Kirschner, KM for Kati Müller (later KW due to surname change) or JP for Julia Pampel (not the same JP that

   works for Optimal Media, I've compared some of their etchings which are clearly made by two different persons), LS for Lukas Santoso or DR for Daniela Riedel.

 

 

 

Cinram 

 

Canadian media manufacturer nowadays based in Toronto, Ontario. Established in 1969 by Isidore Philisophe and Samuel Sokoloff as 8-track and cassette manufacturer in a basement of a commercial building in Montreal, Canada. 

 

Vinyl manufacturing in Canada was given up in late 1991 and, at the time, they were supposedly the last Canadian vinyl manufacturer still operational. Nowadays known as optical disc manufacturer with plants most notably in North America and Europe. Their French plant, the former Universal M & L French plant Cinram bough in November 2000, was closed down in September 2012 ending 55 yers of media manufacturing in Louviers. In 2003 they acquired WMME Alsdorf, previously known as Record Service Alsdorf, and the plant in Alsdorf, Germany, is still operational though they don't manufacture vinyl anymore (based on the box I got with few Iron Maiden 2014 reissue singles the vinyl production seems to have been outsourced to MPO). One of their US plant is the former Specialty Records plant in Olyphant, PA, which they bought in October 2003 but the plant hasn't made vinyl at all during the time Cinram has operated it.  

 

Their old Canadian vinyl is most often of excellent quality and has VERY low surface noise in addition to the identifiable soft and bassy sound. 

 

Most often identified from the stamped CR in a circle on the runouts, etched CR on the runouts or CR printed on the center labels.  

 

 

EMI

=

Gramophone Company (1897 - 1931)

The Gramophone Company Ltd. (1931 - 1973)

EMI Records Ltd. (1973 - 2012)

Universal Music Group (2012 - )

 

The history of EMI and it's predecessor The Gramophone Company dates back to 1897, when Gramophone Company was founded, and is tightly bound to the famous trademark His Master's Voice (HMV). Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) was formed in 1931 with the merge of The Gramophone Company and Columbia Graphophone Company though the company's official name ramained as The Gramophone Company until 1973. The EMI label was officially launched as a record label worldwide in 1973. 

 

The Gramophone Company/EMI Records Ltd was a UK company with a enormous pressing plant in Hayes, Middlesex. The plant moved once in the early/mid 70s but still remained in Hayes until its supposed closure in 1999 though based on the UK records I have I believe the plant wasn't closed until the very early 20s.

 

The building of the first pressing plant on began in 1907 on a 50-acre site and went to operational in 1908. EMI moved from its original plant site at Blyth Road to a new plant at Uxbridge Road in June 1972. Nowadays the only UK vinyl pressing plant, The Vinyl Factory, operates on the EMI's plant site but the scale of the operation is only a VERY small fraction of what it once was.

 

The second plant was built few miles away from the first plant at Uxbridge Road at the place of an old rubber factory in the early 70s. Manufacture was transfered to the new plant site in the summer of 1972 after two years of preparing the new plant site. This second plant was the one supposedly closed in the late 90s. 

 

At least since the 60s the Hayes plant is known to have used the same stamped matrix scheme:

- pressing plate (or stamper) code at 3 o'clock

- catalog number with cut number at 6 o'clock

- mother plate (or a mother stamper) number at 9 o'clock

- some older records also contained a price code at 12 o'clock 

The pressing plates were "numbered" with GRAMOPHLTD scheme where

G=1

R=2

A=3

M=4

O=5

P=6

H=7

L=8

T=9

D=0.

Higher pressing plate numbers were achieved by combining, i.e. GG would be the 11th pressing plate and GDO the 105th pressing plate and so on (the only problem is to find the correct order of these markings when reading the runouts). That means the very first pressing plates made from each lacquer would have

- G at 3 o'clock

- 1 at 9 o'clock

and any record with these markings would definitely be the first pressing.

Few example:

 1  EMC 3330 A-1  G (first mother, first stamper A-1 = the very first pressing of the first cut)

 4  SHVL 795 B-5  HT (4th morher, 97th or 79th stamper of the fifth cut)

The UK Decca used a very similar matrix scheme on their records.

 

Based on the releases I have the matrix scheme above was phased out of use in the early 80s during few years period and a new one introduced instead. First only the GRAMOPHLTD scheme disappeared in '80-'81 and numbers appeared at the place of the stamper letters but everything else remained the same. In about '82-'83 the numbers at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock disappeared as well and the whole matrix changed to 6 o'clock. The most common matrix scheme since that time until the selling of the plant was in the format:

[cat#] [side ID]-[cut number][U if the cut was made externally]-[#]-[#]-[additional markings, usually numbers, sometimes letters, not always present or sometimes very faint]

for instance 

EMA 800 B-2U-1-1-2

EMD1017 A-1U-1-1

The letter U was already used in the 70s after the cut# if the cut was made externally. Few other letters are also known to appear.

 

Some sources:

http://www.theoldvinylfactory.com/the-history-of-old-vinyl-factory/

Billboard magazine, 1st of September 1973

 

 

Finnvox

at Arinatie 8, 00370 Helsinki, Finland

 

Finnish studio and production company founded in 1965 by Erkki Ertesuo in collaboration with the multi-field company Lejos Oy. They are nowadays best known as a recording, mixing and mastering studio but they also had a vinyl pressing plant between 1966-1995 and they did vinyl cutting and cassette duplication between 1974-1998. According to Finnvox's website they are the longest standing institution in Finnish music business. 

 

Most of the old records cut at Finnvox were cut by the grand old man Pertti "Pepe" Hohtio, a well known Finnish cutting engineer who also trained his follower Mika Jussila for two short days. Nowadays Mika Jussila is probably the best known Finnish mastering engineers still working for Finnvox, he started his career at Finnvox supposedly on 29th of October in 1984 as vinyl cutting engineer and cut vinyl for 8 years. During this time he cut about 2000 LPs in addition to the uncountable amount of 7" singles and EPs. He moved to a full-time CD mastering engineer in the early 90s and has mastered around 3500 CDs up to date. Jussila himself thinks he must have some kind of world record in mastering and he does keep a good record of the CDs he has mastered and all his other masterings, they can be found from his personal website http://www.mikajussila.fi/fi/musiikki but his vinyl masterings are not yet listed there. 

 

Records cut or pressed at Finnvox carry hand-etched Fx or Finnvox on the runouts. It's not yet known for absolutely sure whether the hand-etched Fx or Finnvox means the record was cut at Finnvox or pressed at Finnvox or both but if there are mastering engineers initials, most commonly MJ standing for Mika Jussila, on the runouts the record was definitely cut at Finnvox. Considerable amount of 80s records with Fx or Finnvox on the runouts are pressed off-center, which is the biggest reason I'm not a huge fan of their records. In addition, I've never liked much of the records cut by Mika Jussila in the mid 80s, especially some of his early cuttings are of poor quality (understandably since he was still learning) but he seems to have gotten better and better all the time. In fact, many of his later cuttings from the 90s are actually of VERY good quality, a lot better than many of his CD masterings nowadays.  

 

Finnvox is still the best and most legendary recording studio in Finland, pretty much every well-known Finnish artist has recorded something at Finnvox.  

 

www.finnvox.fi

 

 

GZ

=

Gramofonové Závody (from 1948 to 27th of October 1999)

GZmedia a.s. (from 27th of October 1999 to 17th of January 2000)

GZ Digital Media, sometimes credited as www.gzvinyl.com on the runouts (from 17th of January 2000 to 1st of January 2014)

GZ Media (since 1st of january 2014)

in Loděnice, Czech Republic

 

Czech shellac record manufacturer since 1948 and vinyl record manufacturer since 1951 though the history of the company can be traced years back. Vinyl manufacturing in Loděnice runs continuously since 1951. 

 

One of the worlds biggest and most popular vinyl manufacturers. Their gatefold sleeves are nowadays a lovely sight and usually very sturdy but on the other hand nowadays their vinyl rarely fits well inside the gatefold sleeve. In addition their vinyl are very easily scuffed (even a carbon fibre dust brush can do it easily!) and easily highly statically charged, which are ONLY two reasons why I'm not a fan of their vinyl. I've seen and heard a lot more various flaws in GZ made vinyl than in vinyl made by any other plant (bowl-shaped vinyl, warped vinyl, inner-grove distortion, poor quality cuts, poor overall sound quality, soft vinyl that peels off in playback, non-fill, horns, fingerprints and scratches in new vinyl just opened from shrinkwrap and even in records just arrived from the plant to the record label, ...). GZ pressed vinyl usually don't have problems with surface noise but some of their vinyl colours are of really poor quality. They can do excellent quality pressings if they are provided with excellent cut, like the 2013 European Slayer reissues, but since their vinyl material quality is not the best possible and due to the lack of quality control (and therefore the existence of various flaws in their records) I'd go for another factory pressing if possible. 

 

They always leave their clearly identifiable stamped markings to the runouts of the vinyl they press and especially in the 20s sometimes along with an additional www.gzvinyl.com stamp. Some pirate pressings pretending to be a GZ pressing are known to exist but they are easily identified from the significantly bigger stamps on the runouts and from the cutting, vinyl and center label quality. 

​

A GZ employee has confirmed that the standard stamped GZ markings mean the record was definitely pressed by GZ but they don't mean the record was also cut by GZ because GZ in-house mastering, just like many other mastering houses, leaves no additional markings to the records they cut. Any hand-written markings mean the record was cut outside GZ. 

 

http://www.gzmedia.com/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFNhp53xS_U 

 

MPO

=

MPO, in Averton, France

 

Has been pressing vinyl since 1957. Based on my experience with MPO pressed records they can make excellent quality records and if you can find a perfactly flat copy then it's of very good quality but it seems to me a VERY high amount of the records they press (well over 20%) are more or less warped or pressed off-center. A good example are the 2014 Iron Maiden European single reissues, I preordered every single and bought additional copies from different shops afterwards but all of them were more or less warped when I got them and many of them are also pressed off-center.  

 

Most often identified from the hand-etched MPO on the runouts though I know few MPO made LPs that do not carry this signature on the runouts and from three pressing rings (most pressing plants use only one or two pressing rings, three pressing rings is VERY rare). It seems MPO started using the three pressing rings in about 1985 as there exists several UK Music For Nations releases with only one pressing ring pressed by MPO in 1985 or earlier, Slayer debut album Show No Mercy and Metallica's Creeping Death single are two examples I have.

 

http://www.mpo-international.com/?lang=en

 

 

MTV

 

Originally founded as Oy Mainos-TV-Reklam Ab in 1957, nowadays called MTV Oy (not to be mixed up with the US television channel MTV, Music Television), a Finnish television network that is still operational today and is the third oldest commercial television network in Europe. They had a cassette duplication and vinyl manufacturing plant in Finland. Their vinyl manufacturing plant was founded sometime in the early 70s and supposedly closed in the early 90s. MTV doesn't currently have any media manufacturing capacity of their own.

 

They did a lot of Finnish vinyl pressings in the 80s and also licensed pressings of well-known foreign artists like the Finnish pressing of Metallica's Ride the Lightning. In addition they also cut most of their records.

 

Identified from the hand-etched MTV on the runouts, the etching sometimes accompanies a year and very rarely a date but it usually accompanies with two hand-etched letters that are most likely mastering engineers initials. MTV/MB or MTV-MB seems to be the most common etching and MTV-JL the most rare etching. I've only seen JL in two Eppu Normaali LPs, the other one of them is also the only MTV pressed record I've seen with etched date on the runouts. 

 

They usually did VERY good quality pressings (never yet seen any off-centered or warped vinyl pressed by MTV) but their records usually sound stuffy like the 70s pressings usually do. 

 

 

OM

=

Optimal Media Production (1991 - 1st of October 2011) 

Optimal Media GmbH (1st of October 2011 - )

at Glienholzweg 7, 17207 Röbel/Müritz, Germany

 

Started off in 1991 as Edel AGs media manufacturing company with plant in Röbel/Müritz, Germany. Nowadays one of the worlds leading full service independent media manufacturers.

 

Most often excellent quality vinyl with great quality covers. Their coloured vinyl is never steady, if you look at them closely or against a bright light you can see small or sometimes HUGE fluctuations in the colour pigments. Their black vinyl is of excellent quality but their coloured vinyl is most often not, the vinyl colour sometimes affects a lot to the sound quality and some colours are of really poor quality but luckily they take themselves seriously and some colours, like dark blue and gold, have been developed. They employ two "old regular" (MK and HL) and few other mastering engineers (KR, KL, JP, AM). MK seems to be doing most of the cuttings though I sometimes like more of the records cut by HL. The first cut by KR I played (D side of Nightwish's Once 2LP reissue) sounded lovely, VERY smooth, but I like very a lot more of the TML cut GZ pressed black vinyl reisseus of the three Slayer albums than their corresponding KR cut Optimal Media pressed green Nuclear Blast exclusive editions. 

 

About the cutting quality of known Optimal Media mastering engineers: 

MK: Usually excellent quality cuts though I often get bugged about the distortion which is the heaviest among OM engineers.

        It's funny to notice the most heavily distorted MK cut LPs are also those crammed to the full and should have been released on double LP instead of single LP.

        MK has rarely cut singles or 45s in the past, for instance the original 2004 vinyl edition of Nightwish - Once (picture disc + black vinyl) had one side cut at 45 but there

        were no initials of MK on that side, based on the earliest MK cut 45s I've heard it may have been better that way. Nowadays he seems to cut OK sounding 45s. 

        Has been at Optimal since their beginning.  

HL: Smooth and most often excellent quality cuts. IMHO fits perfectly to some metal albums especially when there's a lot of distortion in the first place. 

       It seems to me that for a long time HL cut most (if not all) of the Optmal Media's 45s and singles. Has been at Optimal at least since 1998.

KR: 70s styled stuffy, smooth and bassy cuts though at a bit lower volume than MK and HL cuts. I sometimes find them clean and dull sounding but still clearly better

       than JP's cuts. The biggest thing wrong with KR cuts is they most often produce very high frequency sound in playback that makes my ears bleed easily.

       Has been at Optimal at least between 2001-2003 and again since 2013.

JP: Clean, somewhat stuffy and somehow dull sounding cuts. The more I listen to records cut by him the less I like his cuts. Was at Optimal from 2013 to 2016. 

AM: I've only played one AM cut 2LP (Amorphis - Under the Red Cloud). A wrong cartridge azimuth angle seems to affect his/her cuts a lot more compared to the cuts of

        the other Optimal Media engineers. Began at Optimal in 2015.  

 

OM is a major vinyl manufacturer in Europe and AFAIK the one with the best quality products as a whole (cutting, pressing, printing,...) at the moment though recent amount of bad pressings has made me think otherwise and, like all plants, they've had their share of bad pressings during the years as well. The tri-coloured Nightwish's Dark Passion Play LPs are the worst quality records from OM I've played, a lot of clicks and pops on the border areas of the three colours plus I went through three sealed copies without finding a playable one. On the other hand the original 2007 black vinyl pressing and the 2013 black vinyl repress of the same album are exemplary records of high OM quality. Usually the bigger the pressing run, the more pressing errors there are. Many Nuclear Blast pressing runs appear to be around 1000 records (rough estimate) and rarely contain pressing errors but for instance the Pink Floyd LP reissues and AC/DC LP reissues that are pressed in significantly larger amounts (10 000 copies or more on a rough estimate) tend to have some pressing errors, most often warped records. Until around 2011 their records were nearly always perfectly flat but from 2013 onwards I've noticed a very steep rise in warped records, I had hoped it to be only temporary phenomenon but now it seems to be normal. Also, many records pressed 2014 and onwards have been pressed on normal weight vinyl instead of 180g heavy weight vinyl which has been a standard for OM pressed records for years. 

 

Records pressed by OM usually have VERY little surface noise, which makes especially their black vinyl records one of the best quality records in the world. Their white vinyl usually sounds a bit strange to me, kind of like a DMM record but I most often like the sound quality of their white vinyl a lot. 

 

Vinyl records pressed by OM are easily identified from the long runouts that always start with the letter B (= the format identifier of vinyl). Before about 2011 the runouts were nearly always stamped if the record was cut and pressed by OM and hand-etched if the record was only pressed by OM but since about 2012 most of the runouts seem to be hand-etched. However, HL continues to use the very lightly machine stamped runouts he has been using since around 2005 based on the releases I have. The very lightly stamped runouts of HL cut records are sometimes VERY hard to read and the stamped HL on them has been mistaken as III more than once. 

 

Timeline of few events based on vinyl manufactured for Nuclear Blast:

- 2008: the start of manufacturing 180g heavy weight vinyl as a standard

- 2012 turnover from stamped runouts to hand-etched runouts for MK, occasional lightly stamped runouts do appear at least in 2013 (Nightwish - Wishmaster LP)

- 2014: adding of three extra lightly etched figures to runouts, these figures are possibly the mother plate and the pressing plate numbers with ´=´mark or

             occasionally with some other mark

- 2014: the start of manufacturing normal weight vinyl as a standard

 

http://www.optimal-media.com/en

 

 

Orlake

=

Orlake Records, in Dagenham, Essex, UK

 

Former competitor of GZ (see above), opened their first pressing plant in Dagenham in 1964 and a second pressing plant in Hayes in the 20s, closed in the summer of 2007.

 

Based on the Orlake made records I've seen they were apparently specialized in manufacturing picture discs and coloured vinyl but especially picture discs. The quality of their records dropped quite a bit in the 20s though they did some very good pressings in the 80s and few collector's gems in the 90s like the Iron Maidens X Factor clear double vinyi. They usually had their own unique plastic sleeves for picture discs probably because they were part of a plastic company for years. The best thing about their records is that they are never known to be brickwalled, not even in the 20s.

 

Based on the vinyl material quality I strongly believe Iron Maiden's Dance of Death picture discs were pressed and possibly also cut by Orlake. Along with Maiden's 2005 Trooper picture disc they are the worst quality picture discs and the worst quality records I have ever played. 

 

Usually easily identified from ORLAKE, OR or very rarely O etched on the runouts though those etchings are sometimes very hard to notice from picture discs. Another frequent feature is the use of small + marks on the runouts, for instance "BoBV+003+DPD+B OR".