The Idiot's Guide to Pressing Plants, Engineers, etc.

From what I found online... Quiex II was a pure vinyl formulation that was colored with dye rather than the more commonly used carbon black (which has coarse granules and creates noise). The discs are usually "black," but if you hold them up to light, you should see some light coming through the vinyl -- it's not precisely translucent, but it looks sort of glowy/purpleish or brown rather than blocking out all the light.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
From what I found online... Quiex II was a pure vinyl formulation that was colored with dye rather than the more commonly used carbon black (which has coarse granules and creates noise). The discs are usually "black," but if you hold them up to light, you should see some light coming through the vinyl -- it's not precisely translucent, but it looks sort of glowy/purpleish or brown rather than blocking out all the light.
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Is Quiex the JVC virgin PVC stuff?
The cogs has KC 569 Vinyl. Maybe it was the original Quiex.
I just know it's translucent under sunlight.
 
Jbraswell said:
Is Quiex the JVC virgin PVC stuff?
The cogs has KC 569 Vinyl. Maybe it was the original Quiex.
I just know it's translucent under sunlight.
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I think Quiex is like Kleenex, maybe it was the most popular of the audiophile virgin vinyl mixes, there were different ones. I am not sure but that was the descriptor I first heard it referenced as.
 
Levi Seitz? I think we talked about how he mostly cuts from digital. Wouldn't know where to class him, but he feels better than tier 2 but I'm not sure I've heard enough to put him in tier 1. But just about everything I have from him I quite like.
 
And for me PRP and MRP, which are now subsidiaries of GZ, are pretty much just like GZ. I'm not passionate about this enough to argue to take PRP out of the "avoid" category. I do have several fine pressings from them (we have a lot done by them up here in Canada), but also many others with issues. They're probably better than Third Man in my experience, if I use that as a reference point. So "proceed with caution" would be more accurate in my opinion. But, like I said, I don't care enough to argue the point either.

That said, when we have more time, we might want to add explanations as to why we are classing them whichever way (like say who uses them, what they do well, what are the common issues, etc). No rush and definitely something for down the road, but it would be more informative, I think.
 
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TenderLovingKiller® said:
I agree. As an inquiring mind, when I see something labeled a certain way I usually want to know why.
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There are lots of minor things about how the labels fair, that would be interesting to share I think. I added an edit to my original post to say what I intended by explanations.

Do they get used by audiophile series and how are those regarded? Do they have recurring issues like non-fill, ground noise, dirty records, scratches, warping, and how common?

Plus little things like do the plants use rice paper inners, which sounds like it wouldn't make much of a difference to most, but in the end can have a big impact on sound quality - one of the big issues I encounter with new records is the presence of little scribble scratches right out of the cellophane. And those are invariably linked to the presence of paper inners and likely due to debris getting caught in the sleeve and jostling around during transport.
 
Turbo said:
And for me PRP and MRP, which are now subsidiaries of GZ, are pretty much just like GZ. I'm not passionate about this enough to argue to take PRP out of the "avoid" category. I do have several fine pressings from them (we have a lot done by them up here in Canada), but also many others with issues. They're probably better than Third Man in my experience, if I use that as a reference point. So "proceed with caution" would be more accurate in my opinion. But, like I said, I don't care enough to argue the point either.

That said, when we have more time, we might want to add explanations as to why we are classing them whichever way (like say who uses them, what they do well, what are the common issues, etc). No rush and definitely something for down the road, but it would be more informative, I think.
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Plants are harder to qualify because sure, I’ve had a handful of PRP stuff that has sounded okay but they are wildly inconsistent. If a plant has a track record of huge misses and then some pressings that sound good, it’s not a good plant to me…

So there’s really just the higher quality plants that I auto buy from or look for previous pressings from, then some that have a mixed record and ones that plain old suck.
 
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