News

When a copy of the new Roy Orbison box set arrived in the mail the other day it was cause for celebration for this big Roy fan. The box includes Roy's first three Monument albums that I already had, both original Monument pressings and Classic Records' reissues, superbly remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original tapes.

But this box had a fourth album, Oh! Pretty Woman that no one had because it had never before been released. The story behind that record's release will be in the upcoming full box set review.

The story here is about the pathetic pressing quality of this RTI-pressed set. As you can see from the photo, the record is seriously scratched. This is an abrasion type defect almost certainly caused by sloppy post-pressing handling.

RTI's SMT presses deliver the finished records onto a spindle that can hold dozens of pressed records. The press operator is supposed to place a blank onto the spindle after a specified number of records have been deposited onto the spindle, until the full amount has been deposited. The stack is then carefully removed to another room where they are allowed to fully cool before being hand-inspected and placed in sleeves by hand.

All four records in this set had been seriously abraded. So much so that it doesn't appear to be accidentally or even sloppy. It appears to be industrial sabotage. That said, I've gotten a few other RTI pressed records with visible and audible signs of abrasion so there clearly is a problem there, perhaps caused by the time crunch caused by their inability to complete orders in a timely manner. Or as some have suggested, perhaps it actually happen in shipping if records are loosely packed and have a chance to slide around in the sleeves but that sounds far-fetched to me.