Everyone should know that audio quality and vinyl weight are not causally related, not that you would guess that from the volume of “180 gram audiophile pressings” burgeoning record shop shelves. The depth of groove is determined during the lacquer master cutting process, and produces the same groove depth pressed into wafer thin or jumbo-thick vinyl. That is why Japan’s Toshiba and King could produce such great sounding Blue Note pressings on 120 gram vinyl.
Vinyl weight fell by over fifty percent in the decades between the rise of Bebop and the “demise” of mainstream vinyl as it became replaced by The Evil Silver Disk. As a result, vinyl weight is a very useful forensic marker, a proxy for approximate date of manufacture, independently of labels, addresses, covers, and all the usual paraphernalia for establishing or confirming authenticity. I have a supposed Lexington which has every mark of authenticity apart from, intuitively, its weight. You can stick a Lexington label on any piece of plastic, but you can’t disguise it comes out of a pressing run at 160 gram. I wondered if the same might apply to those controversial Blue Notes without ears?
We know from experience when we handle records that some are heavier than others, but there seemed to me a lack of objective science in these matters. The availability of inexpensive (less than $10) accurate digital scales today means it is easy enough to add this knowledge to your armoury of detective skills.
As part of a major housekeeping exercise which has kept blogging light for the week, my thousand record jazz collection has been put on the digital scales as part of my collection database update, a painstaking process which has brought me to shame for such sloppy housekeeping for some years now. Records unable to be found out of order on the shelves, new purchases not added and disposals not deleted from the database, wrong information punched in, sheer laziness. A good opportunity to sort out the collection, and bring some scientific rigour to my hypothesis about dating records.
An overview of vinyl weight
First, the overview of vinyl weight distribution as found in my 1,000 jazz records. I confess have previous professional experience as a data analyst and in database management but have never applied this to records, so a learning curve here, and challenging!
The bottom of the dregs are those anorexic Prestige OJC reissues at below 100 grams in some cases, and the featherweight Fantasy 10th and Parker Prestige catalogue reissues. However there were a lot of surprises along the way. I could have shortcut the process and just weighed the Blue Notes, but the broader context seemed worth establishing more baselines. How do Riverside shape up? Does Prestige follow the Blue Note curve, or did parsimonious Bob Weinstock cut corners from the very beginning?
As I am sure followers of this blog appreciate, there was a lot of chaotic practice in the commercial and physical production of vinyl. What seemed missing was a proper taxonomy – “what you call things” – and some stable definitions, particularly applied to the wonderful world of Blue Note collecting. How to classify a record with a Lexington label one side, an NY label on the other, but no ear?
LJC Principles in dating records
What I settled on is not a strict Cohen-bible of 1st pressings, too small a sample in my possession at the end of the day, but a grouping of probable date of manufacture using label and catalogue number as a rough proxy for time, well aware that includes some pressings out of chronological sequence. The absence of the “ear” is an overriding marker for vinyl pressed prior to 1966 (whatever the bloody label says). Mixed labels are assigned to the most modern one, hence a Lex/NY combination is an NY record (unless you think they had a time machine!) The whole crossover between Blue Note and Liberty is mapped through those earless ones, then the emergence of proper Division of Liberty. United Artists follows the same logic of approximate time periods which applied to label variations.(Japanese and other non-US pressings are excluded throughout).
I identified a set of nine US-pressed cohorts, which have more in common with each other and difference with the other cohorts, and calculated average vinyl weight in each cohort in my personal collection of around 250 US Blue Note pressings. The result is, I think remarkable:
The earless ones (column number 4 above, average 149 gm) are clearly different for the Plastylite-pressed records whose NY label they bear (average 165). You can’t hide the pressing plant standards that were in use in other plants in other times and how they differed from Plastylite NJ between 1962-6. Want to check a BINO (Blue Note in Name Only)? Stick it on the scales. Sure there is individual variation around the average, no system is perfect, this is trying to bring order out of chaos, but you have in the weight an indication of probability of origin.
Blue Note internal history
Getting away from the Blue Note/Liberty quandary, there is the business of first and second pressings on Blue Note’s watch.There were dramatic changes in vinyl weight between the different label addresses under Blue Note management. First the golden years between Lexington and 47 West 63rd Street NY. There are many records floating around with earlier labels than their actual date of manufacture. I have only 34 records I can confidently place in the 1956-61 date of manufacture – here is how they shape up on the scales, using catalogue number as a rough proxy for time.The four monsters in purple on the left are my Lexingtons. OMG, they are heavy (though not as heavy as some of my early Esquires). The trend is downwards over time.
Next, into my sixty-four NY label pre-66 original Blue Notes of which I am confident, having thrown out the earless ones into the later Liberty manufacture period, and letting in the mongrels with mixed labels of which one is NY (with ear, of course) A bigger sample, lots of individual variation, but nevertheless average of 165 gm weight, and a trend toward shrinking the vinyl biscuit over time. Makes sense to me, supported by physical measurements rather than opinion.
The Liberty and United Artists Years
As the cohort chart shows, the Liberty years 1966-70 Liberty-owned All Disc NJ pressed around a 145 grams, less for some West Coast variants, with the BINOs at the upper end. By the time United Artists and Transamerica accountants had their way, pressing fell into the 135 gram bucket.
As noted at the outset, vinyl weight is not causally related to audio quality, however it is a useful shorthand indicator for a thousand other things detrimental to audio quality that came into play in those decades such as the shift from analogue to digital equipment. No matter, the worst was still to come: EMI, Evil Music Industries…More themes on vinyl weight will be draw from the database in future.
Have you ever found any of your first or original pressings on any label to be of an abnormally low weight? I recently purchased what looks like a late 50s pressing of Ahmad Jamal’s Chamber Music of the New Jazz with a black deep groove label on Argo that seems original, but weighs 133 g. It’s light enough when you hold it that you’re scratching your head, trying to figure out where and when it came from.
Yes, I occasionally come across one copy that sticks out like a sore thumb from all the other related titles, usually one that is 20-30 grams lighter. Nothing untoward about it other than the weight is “wrong” – though in your case there may be other factors.
It is odd because it is very infrequent.If weights were random, everything would be all over the place, but they are far from random. They are very quite purposeful.
The size of the vinyl biscuit and the calibration of the press are pressing plant-related variables, so it may be that a particular copy has been pressed at a West Coast plant – they always seem to be a fair bit lighter (eg Contemporary) than New Jersey output. Just another theory.
I got lots of theories.
That copy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers is a powerful record – it’s one of my only stereo LPs which gets that “hot” sort of top end sound…it’s hard to tell if its the limits of my system or a little groove wear (my guess? A little of both.)
My current theory is that those Blakey “hot” top ends are a combination of van Gelder’s choice of and placement of microphones, and the magic worked on a Scully lathe set to provide a deep cut groove – generating that extra volume.
This may be entirely wrong, but the more you find out about microphones – Neumann U47 and AKG C12 – the more they look like the source of goodness, and the masters touch at the Scully.
My BN1508 Blakey Bohemia Vol 2 Lexington (225g), despite its signs of groove wear, remains the most powerful recording in my entire collection.
I briefly had a stereo copy of Mosaic – same power on the high end with a little distortion on my stereo, but also on one of Wayne Shorter’s solos, his sax bounced from one channel to the other a few times. I sent it back…the seller said they didn’t hear the issue, but I made sure to check it out with my headphones and I know I’m not crazy. Weirdest thing.
I auditioned an original mono copy of “Mosaic” recently and there was distortion all over the place. I’m guessing it’s gonna be tough to find a copy of this without groove wear that plays well. The hotter everything is and the hotter a record is mastered, the easier it is for distortion to creep into those grooves =\ This is the great paradox of the beloved Van Gelder sound.
Bravo for stepping on the scales! To boldly go where no-one else has! (Just to be clear, my weights are just naked vinyl: no cover, no sleeve, nothing but the bare disk and its label)
I have found there is no precise uniformity in weight for a particular cohort of records, but a general pattern, with a normal distribution around the average, plus the occasional outlier.I probably should at some time calculate the standard deviations and all that stuff, but with a limited number of observations it seemed a bit shaky.
Some of your heavier NY/47W63rds are surprising. Especially that Smith/Crazy baby at 200g. My copy is 163g which is a helluva lot different. I have no way of knowing if your copy was pressing say 1962 and mine 1966, who knows. It is intruiging that the same record and pressing might have such different weight, but I don’t have too many exact doubles to tell.
With other labels Like Prestige and Riverside pressing was farmed out to different plants with different presses and practices, but with Blue Note at least we know is all Plastylite NJ, so all other variables are eliminated.
I believe vinyl weight provides a useful diagnostic tool, which adds another bit of information, but it may be a blunt knife and not a scalpel. However I know all my forty Japanese King pressings average 121g with variation max 10g in either direction. Fifties and Sixties US pressing has much greater variation, which we don’t understand.
Some time it may be interesting to pool knowledge of Blue Note weights – with many more observations come higher confidence.
I’ve been charting the weight of all my jazz LPs as I’ve been reorganizing them by label and the results really have been fascinating. I learned a lot about the likely origins of my own Blue Note LPs – things that I didn’t notice at first because I was collecting with far less knowledge than I posses now.
Forgive me if you address this, but the lack of pattern with the spikes that occur, especially with LPs that make it up near 200, is so lerplexing. i own three Lexingtons (Eminent JJ vol. 1, Cave Bohemia vol. 2, Horace Silver/Jazz Messengers) which weigh 195, 202, and 201 respectively. My other records that make it up to that territory are:
Amazing Bud Powell vol. 1 with NY USA label: 191 g
Horace Silver – Finger Poppin’ – 193 g
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers – Self titled (Moanin) STEREO with the 43 West address on the label and the (R) – 203 g
Jimmy Smith – Crazy Baby – 200 g
Both of the Donald Byrd records with voices: 193 g and 192 g
Everything else I have are generally NY USA pressings that linger around 165 as you had noticed. But the handful of pre-NY USA LPs I have weigh significantly less than the heavyweights I’ve listed above. It makes me suspicious that perhaps some of them aren’t as old as they claim to be (which is totally fine, but truly fascinating).
So far I’ve gotten through my Columbias, Prestiges, and Riversides and I’ve noticed something similarly interesting about my Prestiges (I only have 9): my two W 50th LPs (Django and Blue Haze) weigh 164 and 181 respectively. Only Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis’s first cookbook weighs less than Django, 2 are between those weights, and 4 of those NJ pressings are heavier than Blue Haze, including Miles Davis Quintet/Sextet and Soultrane which both weigh in at 200! You really do hear a volume difference and it was cool to realize that AFTER playing the LPs rather than before.
Is there a point to this comment? Yes and no. I think weight is a subject that deserves more attention but what the purpose of that conversation is I’m not yet totally sure.