Phonoland

I am wondered that if there is any fake records in the market. I can find many 1960-1970 33rpm records. They are band-new , there is not sight of being played or used. Most of the are RCA Victor, Decca , EMI, Deutsche Grammophon and etc. BUt they are extremely cheap, about HKD$30 (USD$ 4). Is it possible that they are fake record?
And do anyone have experience with fake records?

If you are finding still sealed LP's it just means that too many were produced for a market that really didnt want them.
At one time ,dealers could take records into stock and,if they never managed to sell them,they could return them to their wholesaler and get a credit.
These wholesalers then clipped the edge off an LP or drilled a hole in a single to show that they are reduced price stock, and tried to sell them elsewhere. Sometimes singles were packaged in a plastic bag and sold six or ten at a time.
Unfortunately, in the later years of vinyl,Record companies stopped taking unsold vinyl back for re cycling.At one time old discs would have their labels punched out and the rest of the record was melted down and new discs were made.
Albums that could not be sold cheap in the US sometimes ended up in Europe..I've found places selling thirty copies of a sealed album.
So..not false records..but records that no one had the slightest interest in when they were first produced.I buy them sometimes and understand why no one wanted them!!!!!

A couple fakes did actually make it to the commercial market. "Introducing The Beatles" is a classic example of that - I remember buying a reproduction in an otherwise legitimate chain record store in the early 1970's for $3.98 US. Being a kid, I didn't know any better - I just thought it was "The Beatles First Album" and got it for the music. Also, in the late 1970's, there was a flood of "Let It Be" albums on the market - some were legit, some were poorly-reproduced fakes, and almost all wound up in the cut-out bins. Again, I found mine in a chain record store.

I think I also have a fake record. It is an album of Classic Movie Songs, published by CAL. It includes quite a number of old movies ' song but I never find the publisher's information. I am pretty sure that it is a fake or illegal record.
At the same time, I also have some fake cassettes. I did not know they are fakes until I read a chief police officer interviewed by a newspaper. The chief officer said that even the seller did not know the differences.

We had a few "labels" here in Australia, that pretty much every release was a pirate copy of other labels. One was called"Hammard". I think more of their early stuff was Paul Hammard Ltd, and later became Hammard TV Productions. The early ones were just pirate pressings of existing albums mainly, and were sold in supermarkets and news agencies etc, and then later released more "Greatest hits" type albums, which were advertised on TV, and sold in record shops.

Those "classic songs" records are not illegal. They just take advantage of the fact that sound recordings themselves were not copyrightable until February 15, 1972. Anything before that is fair game - all they had to do was pay cheap mechanical royalties to the composers and lyricists.

I have a REAL fake record. It is in a promo package for the CBS SQ quadraphonic system. The record is just cardboard, with no real grooves.

Record-changer wrote:Those "classic songs" records are not illegal. They just take advantage of the fact that sound recordings themselves were not copyrightable until February 15, 1972. Anything before that is fair game - all they had to do was pay cheap mechanical royalties to the composers and lyricists.

I have a REAL fake record. It is in a promo package for the CBS SQ quadraphonic system. The record is just cardboard, with no real grooves.

It probably sounds a lot better than most quad records from that era.......

Only the CD-4 quadraphonic records sounded bad.

The SQ records don't sound any different than normal stereo records when played in stereo.

And the Stereo-4, Dynaquad, and QS records will play correctly in Dolby Surround.

My experience with quad has been that, although the separation may sound a little "flatter" sometimes when played on a standard stereo, you get to hear little subtleties in the mix that you otherwise wouldn't hear. Columbia was good for bringing up music tracks otherwise buried in the mix. All I have in the collection are samplers from various labels - after this, I'll have to go back and listen to the system differences again. Thanks for the info.

Most, if not all quad records use a different mix than that of its stereo counterpart. When some songs were re-mixed... they added (quite by mistake, I'm sure) things that were left out of the original stereo mix. Examples: "Say Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?" by Tony Orlando and Dawn. You can clearly hear Tony singing along with the trombone part at the end in the quad mix, however you don't hear it in the stereo mix. Also, "Sly and The Family Stone's Greatest Hits" in quad, is supposed to have some radically different mixes on it, but I've never heard a copy of it.
As a side note... I love my WB quads from the early 70's! I have a copy of "The Capitan and Me" by The Doobie Brothers that sounds fan-freakin'-tastic!

I have "I Want To Take You Higher" on a quad sampler but I can't say if it's radically different from the original (it sure is funky, though...ow!). I can boast owning a QUADRPHONIC 45 of Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" b/w "Free Ride" - both are indeed different mixes (and obviously it was a special release - for jukeboxes only) - the guitar part is different on "Free Ride" and the synth comes in sooner on "Frankenstein"...but my only complaint (minimal as it is) is that it seems "flatter" than true stereo.

I didn't know they made quad 45's... but it's like you said, "You learn something new every day!" I bet it would really sound good on a quad system! My quad records always have a deeper stereo separation to my ears.... Everybody hears something different, however!

They didn't make many quad 45's - the Edgar Winter was made for jukeboxes (a quad jukebox...imagine) and I believe there was also a special release of "All I Know" by Art Garfunkel as a quad 45. I thought I once saw a promo of "Annabella" by Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds with one side quad but I don't know if that counts. The only "commercial" quad 45's I know of were made by Ovation Records but I don't know how many releases they had in this format. And I don't know which system they used - I have a sampler LP and their system sounds pretty good.

UNLABELED QUAD

Interesting. I have a lot of quad 45s. But most of them are not labeled quad. Many quad LPs are also not so labeled.

- I have several quad LPs, and also have 45s of the hit singles from the same albums, where the LP is labeled quad, but the 45 is not, but they are the same recording and mix.

- All of my Vangelis records are in SQ, but there is nothing to indicate this on the label or the cover.

- Almost all of my Meco 45s, albums, and 12" singles play in QS, though none of them are so marked. The CDs I have of two of the same albums also play in QS.

- The soundtrack album from the Who's movie Tommy is in QS, though it is not labeled as such (the movie is in QS too, and is so labeled). This is interesting, because Polydor had chosen a different quad format.

- The Story of Star Wars series is in Dolby Surround, though it is not marked as such. But since the tracks come directly from the first three movies, they should be in Dolby Surround.

- The Emerson, Lake, and Palmer track "Tank" pans a sound completely around the room in QS. It is not marked as quad.

- I have both the stereo and SQ quad versions of the Sly and the Family Stone album Greatest Hits, plus the single Everyday People (also on the albums). I can't tell the three recordings of that song apart.

- Although there is nothing marked on any of the albums, all of my Abba singles and albums work in Matrix H (including a CD).

- Eugen Jochum recorded the Beethoven symphonies in SQ in the mid 1970s on Angel. Those albums were later released on CD. Although they are not marked SQ, they are the same recordings, and play in SQ.

- Most soundtrack records I bought after 1977 are in Dolby Surround if they were taken directly from their movies.

But sometimes you can be deceived. I have some albums that work perfectly in UMX. The problem is, they were recorded years before matrix quad. It took a while for me to find out that all A&M records made in the mid 1960s were recorded with a 90 degree phase shift between the channels, to eliminate the oversized soloist problem in mono play. Thus, the Tijuana Brass and Baja Marimba Band albums made in the mid 1960s appear to be made in a matrix that did not exist until 1972.

wand143 wrote:The only "commercial" quad 45's I know of were made by Ovation Records but I don't know how many releases they had in this format. And I don't know which system they used - I have a sampler LP and their system sounds pretty good.

Ovation used both the EV and QS systems. The sampler is in EV. I have it too.

Project-3 recorded in EV, QS, SQ, and CD-4. Except for CD-4, i have some of each.

The following systems are almost identically recorded. The main differences are in the decoders used for playback. I consider the recordings to be interchangeable:

- EV (Stereo-4 - made by Electro-Voice)
- QS (Made by Sansui)
- Dynaco 1 (Dynaco)
- Dynaquad (Dynaco)
- The original Scheiber system (never released on a record)
- Dolby Surround