![]() Columbia's ring is 69mm, while Capitol's is 39mm.Ĭolumbia's 69mm pressing ring runs through the bottom of the WB logo at the top of the label. Even if you didn't know that, you could tell by looking at the pressing rings. ![]() Little Feat's The Last Record Album came out in November, 1975, and was released with a Columbia pressing (top) and a Capitol pressing (below). Then, beginning in late 1975 - early 1976, Warner moved their pressing to Capitol. From 1963-1975, Columbia pressed all Warner albums. From 1958-1963, most Warner albums were pressed by RCA at their Rockaway and Indianapolis plants. Like Atlantic, Warner Brothers did not press their own records. MCA and United Artists had two plants each. ![]() Capitol had four plants in Scranton, PA, Winchester, VA, Jacksonville, IL, and Hollywood, CA. RCA had three plants in Rockaway, NJ, Indianapolis, and Hollywood, CA, (although Rockaway and Hollywood both closed in the 70s). And just by the way, LondonJazzCollector has a terrific post about the history of the Columbia label. I live on the east coast, so most of my Columbia albums are from Pitman. Columbia Records, for example, had pressing plants in Pitman, NJ, Terre Haute, IN, and Santa Maria, CA. In order to cut down on shipping costs, most major labels had pressing plants in different parts of the country - typically on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and on the West Coast. In the heyday of LPs - the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the vast majority of US releases were pressed by plants owned by the major labels such as Columbia, Capitol, and RCA, or by the major independent manufacturers such as Specialty, Rainbo, Monarch, and Presswell. Luckily for us, many of the major record manufacturers have different sized rings, which often allows us to figure out where a record was manufactured even if there is no indication in the dead wax. The size of the rings depends on the size of the die that the pressing plant used to hold its stampers in place. When record presses squeeze a biscuit of vinyl, they create a pressing ring (or rings) on each side of the label. However, even if they didn't put the code on the label, we could probably figure out the pressing plant anyway, either by looking for MR, PR, or PRC in the dead wax, or by checking the size of the pressing ring - as long as you know that the pressing rings for Monarch, Presswell, and Philips are 73mm, 32/70mm, and 70mm, respectively. That indicates that the three albums were pressed by: Monarch Records, Los Angeles Presswell Records, Ancora, NJ and Philips Recording Corp., Richmond, IN. If you click on the photo above to enlarge it, you can clearly see that the codes on the three copies of Deja Vu from left to right are MO, PR, and RI. Pressed by Philips Record Corp., Richmond, IN ![]() With a number of new pressing plants coming online and a big increase in the number of albums being pressed in Europe, I thought it might be useful to look a little deeper at what the pressing rings can tell us. I mentioned that the size of the pressing ring can also be a good way to help determine which company pressed an album. In my December, 2016 post, I wrote about how to decipher some of the information in the dead wax in order to figure out such things as which version of an album you have, who cut the lacquer, where it was mastered, and which company pressed the LP. Corrections or additions are gratefully accepted. I have added dozens of new plants, updated lots of operating dates, added more deadwax markings, added explanatory notes for certain plants, corrected numerous errors, and grouped some major companies' pressing plants so that it's easier to identify their various plants. NB: This is a major update to my master list of pressing ring sizes.
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