2. analog
  3. 125949-1363

LP: Left Channel Drops In and Out

I just experienced something I have never seen in almost 50 years of listening to LPs.  

I was playing a vinyl copy of Bob James Grand Piano Canyon and side one played perfectly.  However, when I put on side 2, music only came from the right speaker, even though I could hear surface noise in the left channel.  I immediately panicked and thought something was wrong with my stereo, so I played part of side 1 again and it was perfect.  So I played side 2 again and the first two tracks played only the right channel.  When I played track 3 it started out with only the right channel, then part way though the left channel began fading in and out, finally outputting both channels normally for the remainder of the LP.  I repeated this several times with the same results, so obviously it was the record.  

Has anyone experienced this?  Warner Brothers must have had some type of quality control problem--is it a probable pressing problem, or electronic problem in the mastering?  Maybe some of these defective records slipped through before they caught them.  

Anyway, I will pick up another copy and see if it has this same problem.  Weird.
rlawry

Showing 2 responses by rlawry

rlawry OP
476 posts
 
I saw on Audioasylum Vinyl Asylum that someone else noticed this problem.  Surprising that WB never found it.  Since the recording was in 1990 at the end of the vinyl heyday, I seriously doubt that more than one mastering or pressing was done of this album, so I would guess the entire outsourced LP run to be defective and it simply was not on the WB radar.  In any case, I am going to assume all pressings are defective and not waste any more time and money trying to find a correct one.  Too bad as it is a great record.

I had a MFSL 45 rpm copy of Patricia Barber Modern Cool where on the first track the sonics almost entirely disappeared, this on a $50 limited edition reissue, so I guess it happens.
rlawry OP
476 posts
 
As an update on this Bob James LP, I bought a sealed copy and it displays the exact same phenomenon of the missing left channel on the first two songs on side 2 and fading in and out on the third cut before correcting for the rest of the LP side.  I also have the CD and it does not suffer from such a problem, so the problem is obviously in the mastering of the LP, which to me sounds electronic in nature.  Not sure if this is merely a sampling problem where some of the pressings got out before Warner Brothers finally noticed the problem, of whether the entire LP population has this problem.  Definitely a quality control problem and wonder whether WB was ever aware of this issue, probably an outsourcing problem that WB either didn't catch or didn't care about.  Interesting.
More to discover