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Off Center Pressings

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Yup. I saw lots of 45s that were off center. On the record shown the spindle hole is perfectly centered and the lp is nice and round but the stamper was off center and QC was on a coffee break.....
 
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Just found a like-new copy of SuperTramp - Breakfast in America in the $1.99 bargain bin.

Major hole misalignment. You can see the headshell shift in and rthen out off of normal tracking by about 1/4 inch. The speakers pump a bit when it happens on every revolution.

It was driving me batty knowing about it. Shame, the record is very well recorded too.
 
Just in the last 6 months, I've picked up original albums from the 60s and 70s that were majorly off center. Monarch pressing of Flying Burrito Bros "Gilded Palace of Sin" in mint condition -- very off center. My best sounding copy of Katy Lied was so off center I used a rasp to enlarge the hole in the correct place and drew an arrow on the label so I'd know where the spindle should touch -- crude but it works. And an original Warren Zevon "Excitable Boy" that is unlistenable until I do the same to the hole.
 
bobins08 said:
Just found a like-new copy of SuperTramp - Breakfast in America in the $1.99 bargain bin.

Major hole misalignment. You can see the headshell shift in and rthen out off of normal tracking by about 1/4 inch. The speakers pump a bit when it happens on every revolution.

It was driving me batty knowing about it. Shame, the record is very well recorded too.
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SUPERTRAMP, at least in their heyday, had enough clout that they could demand that only the best vinyl and QC be used for their releases. Alas, later pressings may not be nearly so good.

I have a couple SUPERTRAMP albums pressed on QUIEX vinyl and they are wonderfully quiet and sonically excellent. One of them is "Famous Last Words", which is a newer album than "Breakfast In America." It's an excellent record but a bit weaker than "BIA." My fav album by them is "Only In the Quietest Moments." It is not on QUIEX but it is a very early pressing and a very good one.:thmbsp:
 
It is nothing recent... Although recent QC seems fairly suspect in general. I have a few red-label Columbias, and plenty of black label RCAs from the 80's that are off-center. It kind of seems like QC started suffering noticeably during that era.

It just amazes me that in over a hundred years worth of record pressing, no one has devised a reliable system to ensure that records are centered when pressed. Is it really that complicated?
 
escobaria said:
It's a problem that's been around for many years. I have more than a few off-center 78s. :(
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What he said. I've encountered a few off-center 78s and more than a few off-center LPs. I ran into most of the latter when I was buying the core of my music collection in the 1970s. Thankfully the stores I dealt with were very good about exchanging defective pressings, so very few of these are still in my collection.
 
The problem exists because of the way records are made.

Instead of preserving the original hole of the lacquer record, each stamper needs a new hole to be punched.

This operation, AFAIK, is a manual operation where an operator, using a microscope, must center the stamper himself/herself and then punch a hole in it.

So results are diverse.
 
Seems like just about every Dunhill / ABC album I have from the 60's and early 70's is stamped off center on one side but not the other. Most of my James Gang, Three Dog Night, Mommas and Poppas and Steppenwolf albums are like that, usually it's side two that's off center but side one is OK.
 
audiojones said:
Seems like just about every Dunhill / ABC album I have from the 60's and early 70's is stamped off center on one side but not the other. Most of my James Gang, Three Dog Night, Mommas and Poppas and Steppenwolf albums are like that, usually it's side two that's off center but side one is OK.
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Yep, just picked up an Atlanta Rhythm Section - Champagne Jam on Polydor that is wobbly on side 1 but perfect on side 2.

Put the album on and thought my tt was dying till I saw the tonearm swaying back and forth a good quarter inch as the platter rotated.

I don't recall ever seeing this back in the day but apparently its not uncommon.
 
Yes, off center was a major problem when record pressing plant quality control got more sloppy from the late 1960's onward. Demand for records got really huge and the logistics of record pressing and distribution demanded product fast.
 
I think it was 26 years ago the first time I noticed the effects of a noticeably off-centered record. Since then, that's something that I don't tolerate unless it's really unnoticeable at first sight. And nowadays I consider myself an expert fixing that problem.

 
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