How to Read Your Vinyl
Making Sense of All Those Numbers and Letters on your Vinyl Albums
Now that you know where to purchase vinyl, how to care for them, and how to get setup with the right equipment, the job isn't done yet. You can also catalogue your collection.
Just like those baseball cards you collected and catalogued as a kid, your vinyl have value and not all albums are exactly alike.
With a little bit of detective work we're going to make sense of all those letters and numbers on your albums.
Suggested Equipment
Magnifying Glass (I have bad eyesight so this helps)
Well lit room.
An account on Discogs to catalogue your vinyl. (Don't worry it's completely free like this blog)
Patience as it may take time to find the correct pressing.
The Anatomy of a Record
Lead In Groove
Just like it sounds, this is the smooth groove on the outer ring of your vinyl. This gives your stylus a place to land before the record starts to play music.
Dead Wax / Run Out Groove
As with the outside smooth groove we also have an inner groove that is smooth. This is called the Dead Wax / Run Out Groove. This groove stores the second most important part of your album (other than the music). It contains the unique identifiers that will tell you everything you need to know about your album; where it was made, when it was made, and even in some cases the person responsible for pressing your album.
Matrix Number
This is the combination of letters and numbers etched or handwritten into your vinyl’s dead wax/run out label. As you can see with the photo below it starts with, ‘CBS’. This indicates the producer was CBS records. In most cases an original or ‘first’ pressing will have 1A on the matrix number. The ‘1’ representing the pressing and the ‘A’ would represent the A side of the album. When collecting the lower the number the better in terms of value and original sound.
If you manage to own any Beatles albums you will see first hand that there are many pressings of their albums and can get up to 5A or higher on the matrix number.
The ‘5205’ can be found in a few places you will notice. It is the label matrix code that is found on the spine of your album cover as well as the front and back cover.
Pressing Plant Stamps
Like anything you own such as a car, your vinyl was manufactured at a pressing plant. Some common locations in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s for vinyl pressing were Pickneyville, Sterling, Terre Haute, and Scranton. Depending on where your vinyl was pressed, this can have a great deal of impact on the overall quality.
Here is a chart of pressing plants commonly used from the 1960s to the 1980s. 1
Custom Markings from Mastering Engineers
Just like a famous artist that leaves their signature on their painting, some record producers would do the same. Cases like this can significantly increase the value of your album.
An example of this was Robert Ludwig. He was the mastering engineer for the album, Led Zeppelin II, and he created a limited pressing on the first batch of albums pressed. These ‘RL’ (the RL is found in the dead wax / run out area) copies are superior in every sense of the word. They were so impressive that one record executive brought home a copy for his daughter to play on their home turntable. The album sounded horrible as the stylus jumped up and down during playback and the executive demanded they halt production until the quality issue was resolved. Ludwig kindly informed the executive to get a better turntable and the vinyl would play just fine. To prove his point, he played the executive’s album on one of the top of the line turntables at the time and it blew everyone away (including the executive) and is widely regarded as one of the finest pressings ever. These ‘RL’ albums now fetch over $1,500 in mint condition and are considered by many collectors as the benchmark for high quality sound and music production.
Other examples of engineers leaving their mark on albums are:
MILES - Miles Showell
KG - Kevin Grey
PECKO DUCK -George Peckham
The Band Leaves Their Mark
Who says that only engineers can leave their mark on an album? The band can leave their mark as well.
In addition to creating the music some bands took it one step further and left messages for current and future generations on the dead wax, but only if the collector was paying attention.
One album comes to mind when I think of the band leaving their mark is, London Calling by The Clash. If you read the dead wax it says, ‘TEAR DOWN THE WALLS’. The Clash was a well known punk group who believed in rebelling against the status quo.
As you collect more vinyl you will see that some groups left their signature in creative ways. Like video games, music also has Easter eggs if you're willing to look for them.
How to Catalogue Your Vinyl Albums
Now that you have learned how to read all of those numbers and letters your job is not done yet. This next thing you're going to do is the fun part.
(Insert suspenseful music) CATALOGING!!!
The first thing you will want to do is create your free account on the Discogs site mentioned at the top of this article.
After that the process is fairly simple. You will want to type into the search bar everything on the dead wax / run out label and it will narrow down options until your album's pressing is showing.
Now that you have found the copy of your album, you will want to click on it. It will then bring up a details page and you can click, ‘Add to Collection’ on the right hand side. You can repeat this step for all of your albums.
Congratulations! You have learned how to catalogue albums in your collection.
To help pass the time cataloguing (it took me 2 weekends of work to catalogue all 826 albums correctly), I would recommend your favorite comfortable chair, a good album, and a stiff drink.
The Manmosa - Served at The Yolk Grill in Pelham, NH
1 Can Budweiser
4 ounces OJ
Splash of Champange
Image credit - London Jazz Collector