Privateering Box vinyl

[Love Expresso]

So after getting a new record player last week I am spinning vinyl this morning and was in the mood to finally play the Privateering Deluxe Box set vinyls for the first (!) time and guess what - they turned out to be utter crap. Crackling, skipping, running over the complete song.. I really was in fear to damage the needle and put it back into the box immediatly. So disappointing. What is the sense in making "180gr" high quality if the pressing is so bad?

I have a bunch of old records from the first release years,  Making Movies, Love Over Gold, Brothers In Arms (the shortened one from 1985), Communiqué above all - they really sound so fresh, so amazing, so GREAT and are - if in good condition which all of them are - a real pleasure to listen to. Even the On Every Street album from 1991 sounds not too bad although there are 60 minutes of music on one LP. Dire Straits first album is an absolute bliss, what a sound and how great to have some more than 40 year old vinyl in such good condition.

I can only imagine and hope that I had bad luck with my pressing. The whole fuss about "Deluxe" should not concentrate only on the packaging and useless crap they put inside but the vinyl quality.

Both Studio album boxes are on the way to me, I really hope that at least the second one will be much better. (Read all about the issues with the first one.)

Listening now to "On the Beach" from Chris Rea, orignally from 1986 bought by myself as a present for my sister back then, and boy, what a good sound! Lovely!

Rant over, have a lovely Sunday all!

LE

[dustyvalentino]

I think you were unlucky. I don’t have the box but I do have the original vinyl and it sounds and plays great.

I can’t imagine they did a different pressing just for the box.

[Love Expresso]

Gave it a second try, first disc is alright, the second one seems damaged.

They were pretty dirty and had to be cleaned twice before playing. Those paper inner sleeves are crap, too tight.

LE

[Klaus74]

Hello LoveExpresso, ok, it is sad to hear about your faulty copy of the BOX-Vinyl-Set. Ok, i also have all BOX-sets and i can say, that all pressed vinyl-discs, which had been made by GZ-Media pressing-plant in the Czech Republic have such mistakes. Some of them are warped, have seam-splits in the covers, dirt inside the innersleeves, or other technical mistakes. GZ-Media was "well known" for the production of faulty vinyl-discs.
But don´t worry about the Dire Straits LIVE BOX-Set, because that is really "bad as" in the case of manufacturing and edition. The records are 180 gramm discs, not warped and not faulty, because the were pressed through OPTIMAL-Media pressing plant in Germany. Yes, the 200+ Euro are a real investment for such a BOX-set but, be sure, you will receive a great vinyl-set. 

[Love Expresso]

Hey Klaus, thanks for your reply.  It is not too bad, as in the meantime the two Studio Album Box Sets arrived, so I have another and proper Privateering vinyl now, which sounds ok. But funny enough, i am much happier with the first Box than with Box No. 2. .STP and TRD sound so good, they are playing almost every day.  The newer albums are much praised because Guy and Mark spend so much time with redording it, but to me, the last album sound ok at the most. I would rank Get Lucky far above. Golden Heart, STP, TRD and KTGC are really a joy to listen to on vinyl, whereas the latest album ist nothing more than ok.

About the 180 gr. I am sceptical about the real value of it. It seems like a clever marketing trick to me to sell all the re-issues with "180gr-vinyl" and maybe it sounds better on a far more superior and more expensive equipment than I have. But let me tell you, I listen to Neck and Neck right now and I know how "un-studio-like" the recording process of that album was, but it sounds great, and I have all Dire Straits albums including On Every Street from first pressings in their release years, and they all sound sooo great and much better than Privateering and Down the Road Whatever. Tracker is an exception, but all those old vinyls sound much better even they are pretty thin and no 180 gram vinyl.  I guess you get what I try to say. 

However, it is a great adventure and I love to spin some vinyl lately much more than during the last couple of years, and the Dire Straits Live Box will be ordered -- next month!   

The idea of listening to recordings from a physical medium that maybe is older than I am myself and which still sounds so good is very nice. I came to the conclusion that I WILL buy the next MK album, maybe with less fandom and more distance, but I will buy it and my prefered version will be the vinyl edition for sure.

Greetings, and frohe Weihnachtstage, denn ich denke doch, Du bist auch ein Deutscher, oder?

all the best,

LE

[dustyvalentino]

I'm with you on the 180gm thing. I have plenty of thin 1980s records and they sound great.

The only "benefit" of a thicker record might be that it's harder to break? But I've never broken a record.

[Love Expresso]

I follow you on instagram and i saw a lot of records from decades far earlier. Is all that country stuff originally ftom the 1950's and 60's?

I find the idea of MK releasing an EP quite charming and "fulfilling" and I wonder if the music style will have something to do with it. I imagine stuff like Donegan's Gone (love that track and the style how it was recorded).

LE

[dustyvalentino]

I follow you on instagram and i saw a lot of records from decades far earlier. Is all that country stuff originally ftom the 1950's and 60's?

I've got a real mix. The only new vinyl I buy is to support my favourite artists with their new releases - MK, Paul Simon, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson and that's about it.

The rest I buy cheap from charity and junk shops. I do have a lot of original country records from the 50s and 60s but a few years ago I noticed that I was finding great records from a label called Stetson who did re-releases of classic country LPs in the 1980s. Since then I've been try to collect everything they did (about 140 releases). So not all of them are from back in the day, but even 1980s reissues are now 40 years old!

[Klaus74]

Hi Love Expresso. Yes, you are right. I´m from Germany and a Dire Straits fan since 1985. In the USA there were some RCA-Victor records by Elvis Presley as so called Dynaflex-issues. That were very thin records, but most of the fans doesn´t like them, because of higher background noises and warps. The very old discs from the 1950s are very thick pressings, like the "new" 180 gram issues. I also love my vintage records by Dire Straits and some other preferred artists, like Springsteen, Beatles, and so on and the vintage UK, USA, Germany issues are really well produced and manufactured discs. Vintage Japan discs made by Phonogram-Nippon are also bad ass in case of sound-quality. Most of my records in my collection are also vintage copies, exept the ones i have bought as new editions. I found them, like Dustyvalentino, on fleamarkets, second-hand and thrift-stores (in Germany Flohmärkte und Trödelläden genannt), from house-clearances, or in vintage record-stores. Yard sales are not so common in Germany like in the UK or in the USA. Close to my hometown, there is a cool second hand record-store and he has a lot of LPs, Maxi-Singles and Singles. Each record costs 4,99Euro and every Maxi / Single 2,99Euro. I have found many great records, incl. Dire Straits, Knopfler, Springsteen, cool Jazz, Clapton, Beatles and other great stuff. Most records are in pristine condition. He buys collections every week, and i´m there also every week, to explore some more cool vinyls for small money. So there are various sources to get some cool records, incl. ebay or discogs. 

[Love Expresso]

I follow you on instagram and i saw a lot of records from decades far earlier. Is all that country stuff originally ftom the 1950's and 60's?

I've got a real mix. The only new vinyl I buy is to support my favourite artists with their new releases - MK, Paul Simon, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson and that's about it.

The rest I buy cheap from charity and junk shops. I do have a lot of original country records from the 50s and 60s but a few years ago I noticed that I was finding great records from a label called Stetson who did re-releases of classic country LPs in the 1980s. Since then I've been try to collect everything they did (about 140 releases). So not all of them are from back in the day, but even 1980s reissues are now 40 years old!

That Stetson label thing sounds cool and 140 seems feasible. I am into some Blue Note classics since a couple of months and like them. Maybe Jazz gets more interesting with getting older...

LE

[dustyvalentino]

I follow you on instagram and i saw a lot of records from decades far earlier. Is all that country stuff originally ftom the 1950's and 60's?

I've got a real mix. The only new vinyl I buy is to support my favourite artists with their new releases - MK, Paul Simon, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson and that's about it.

The rest I buy cheap from charity and junk shops. I do have a lot of original country records from the 50s and 60s but a few years ago I noticed that I was finding great records from a label called Stetson who did re-releases of classic country LPs in the 1980s. Since then I've been try to collect everything they did (about 140 releases). So not all of them are from back in the day, but even 1980s reissues are now 40 years old!

That Stetson label thing sounds cool and 140 seems feasible. I am into some Blue Note classics since a couple of months and like them. Maybe Jazz gets more interesting with getting older...

LE

Yes!

I've picked up a few jazz records on my travel and I'm much more into it than I would have been 20 years ago. They are more desirable and therefore more expensive than most country though. All that said, I have one record called Out To Lunch by Eric Dolphy that is just far too crazy and out there for me, but some people love it!

[Love Expresso]

Hello LoveExpresso, ok, it is sad to hear about your faulty copy of the BOX-Vinyl-Set. Ok, i also have all BOX-sets and i can say, that all pressed vinyl-discs, which had been made by GZ-Media pressing-plant in the Czech Republic have such mistakes. Some of them are warped, have seam-splits in the covers, dirt inside the innersleeves, or other technical mistakes. GZ-Media was "well known" for the production of faulty vinyl-discs.
But don´t worry about the Dire Straits LIVE BOX-Set, because that is really "bad as" in the case of manufacturing and edition. The records are 180 gramm discs, not warped and not faulty, because the were pressed through OPTIMAL-Media pressing plant in Germany. Yes, the 200+ Euro are a real investment for such a BOX-set but, be sure, you will receive a great vinyl-set. 

It turned out that on "Seattle" the volume level is fluctuating in the first two minutes, first I thought my player had a malfunction or it was because of the storm outside  but it is indeed that this mistake is coming from the track. Quite annoying as it is one of my favourite tracks from the album. So, yes, the second Box leaves a lot to be desired. It is very interesting that it seems there are a lot of different small or not so small kind of mistakes, your judgement of GZ-Media seems valid.

LE