Quality of disco records

[discohunter]

I'm not sure if I'm putting this in the right section or not...

Anyway, in your time of collecting disco records, no doubt a number of you out there would have come across pressings from different parts of the world.

My question is this: What country/countries do you think have the best quality pressings? On the other side of the coin, what countries do you think have the worst?

discohunter

[QUINNY]

DiscoHunter: This has been discussed at some length in the past 4 months or so since I joined. Sorry I can't help you with the name of the previous thread, but it is there to be found. I think the conclusion we reached was that there are good and bad from each country, but certain labels were generally good and some others not so good.
I've always thought that UK product was generally better than US although there are exceptions. The general view is that UK CDs are mastered better than US, but I personally find that hard to believe as US mastering has always been ahead of the UK so far as the industry is concerned. It wasn't so long ago that UK releases would have very little if any mastering work done prior to release, and this at a time when US releases would have thousands and thousands of dollars spent on them.
Hope this is useful.

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by QUINNY

It wasn't so long ago that UK releases would have very little if any mastering work done prior to release, and this at a time when US releases would have thousands and thousands of dollars spent on them.
Hope this is useful.

With mastering, I tend to subscribe to the philosophy that "less is more".

I would much rather have a flat transfer of the original tape than some compressed, NoNoised, and heavily EQ'd recording. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common for labels to completely squash older (and new) releases because this is what the general public has become accustomed to. Joe Public's perception is that a CD that is brighter, bassier, and LOUDER is better.

Anyway, enough of my rant. Personally, I've come to the conclusion that German pressings are the best overall, but I haven't been able to obtain very many of them.

[K-Bee]

German & dutch pressings are all we ever had over here.

Japan are famous for making high quality pressings with half speed mastering and heavy virgin vinyl. I do own a few japanese pressings of namely jazz funk artists.

Never see a japanese pressing f a disco 12", though.

[Nano]

If you're talking about vinyl, from my limited experience USA and Japan pressings were the best. But Argentina is at the end of South America, so those were not that common. We grew accostumed to look for imports.
Now looking at old material at the fair I confirm that in the mid-70s, all labels in my country started to go for thinner discs (the oil crisis?) which, of course, sounded poorer than before (which was poor enough). Worse, covers went from decently hard cardboard to a thin paper-like jacket which instantly showed the marks of the disc contained inside.
So, for decent releases we looked for Brazilian pressings -near and not so expensive- or the original USA edition.

The best aural experience I remember was at a friend's house, this guy was a crazy collector and he had the Japan edition of Santana's "Lotus" (three disc live set, done with the "original master recording" technology, if I remember well). My friend put the record on and went to the kitchen. It was a very percussive song, and I could hear my friend keeping the rhythm from the kitchen with something. Then, he came out -he was making no sound at all! It was from the speakers! I nearly jumped off my chair. :o