TCS 18018 sounds like it is an American mastering and pressing of a Telefunken issue originating in Germany.
Telefunken in the USA, during the late 1950s through the 1960s, was issued by the Decca Record Co. (UK) whose American subsidiary was better known as London Records. While most London classical issues were imports from the UK of superlative quality, with London labeling and London numbers (at the time, Decca USA was a separate company), most other London products such as their pop records, the budget classical Richmond line and the Telefunkens, were pressed in the USA, and those pressings were on inferior vinyl, often tending to be noisy. Inside the cardboard jacket, they came in paper sleeves which seemed to have been resurrected from a former life as flour sacks.
I have owned from brand new (that's longer ago than I want to think about), Telefunken TCS 18003, the Beethoven Symphony No. 3, the Hamburg State Philharmonic conducted by Joseph Keilberth. It is a fine performance but the constant surface noise was so annoying that it was difficult to listen to it all the way through. After many, many years of playing it with the latest audiophile super cartridges that would track at a minuscule weight, I finally had at it with a Stanton 500, with a genuine Stanton spherical stylus in white, marked only "DJ." It was specified at 2-5 grams. I washed the record, then gave it all five grams (with a 0.7 mil spherical there is no fear of record wear) and the surface noise was lessened by about 80%; meanwhile the amount of junk that the stylus dug up was astounding. I repeated the washing and played the second side, the same way with the same result. A second playthrough of the whole record dug out even more junk. Now, finally, it plays quietly.
