[78-L] quality control problems

[Rod Brown]

Hey 78ers,

I was digitizing a short stack of Fats Domino records for a client last
night.

(Yes, I know: "...rock 'n' roll and other children's records," thank you Mr.
Lehrer. I didn't appreciate that crack when I was a teenager. A joke which
has aged well, It's a lot funnier to me now that I'm 58.)

I was surprised by how many of these Imperial records had pressing defects.
But maybe this is typical for the genre?

There were seven of these discs, and three of the fourteen sides had to be
elevated on mats, free of the spindle, to allow for centering. On several
others, the grooves were concentric to the spindle hole, but weren't quite
as perfectly circular as one would wish. Judging by the way the cartridge
would twitch laterally as a record spun, the grooves were out of round,
evincing either a flat spot or an eccentricity. One of the records had the
correct labels, but on the opposite sides from where they belonged, a defect
I've hardly ever seen in the vinyl LP world. Come to think of it, I'm
surprised this doesn't happen more often.

I'd be interested to read about record pressing quality control. I imagine
it must have been a manpower-intensive process, back when. Are there reviews
of the topic that anyone might like to share?

Best,
Rod