Original Source?

Why the country of manufacture matters when it comes to record replay EQ.

By Roy Gregory

On a recent trip to one of my favourite second-hand record haunts, I picked up a copy of the Schubert String Quintet, played by the stellar combination of the Melos Quartet and Mstislav Rostropovich, a 1978 DGG recording, 2530 980. In excellent condition, it’s a lovely performance, with a natural perspective and separation that really helps the sense of instrumental interplay, the creative chemistry between the musicians. Tonality and harmonics are good and there’s plenty of vigour and energy in the playing – when the score demands it: If anything, the real high point is the beautifully poised and sensitively played adagio. Taped on analogue equipment and pressed before the fuel crisis really started to bite (dropping record weights below the 100g mark), it’s a disc I’m pleased to have added to my collection.

As usual with Deutsche Grammophon records, getting it to sound that way (indeed, getting it to sound listenable) means using the Teldec EQ curve for replay. No problem if you have a suitably equipped phono-stage, pretty much a pre-requisite for serious classical record collectors.

So far, none of this is news: a serviceable record made to sound as good as it can is pretty much the meat and drink of building a second-hand record collection and by now, you’ll probably have decided whether you buy into the replay EQ argument or sit on the same side of the fence as the climate change deny-ers. But what makes this particular purchase potentially more interesting and unusual, is that it involved not one but two, nominally identical records: both Schubert String Quintets, both numbered DGG 2530 980, but one pressed in Germany, the other in the UK. It’s that second record that makes this an opportunity to look a little deeper into the issue of not just replay EQ, but discerning the correct EQ for a given disc.

The first and most important thing to establish is that these two records are indeed different. The cuts are visibly different, and the matrix numbers and hand etchings in the groove lands are also different in style/form. These records were definitely cut at different times by different people. Of course, despite the clear statements that one record was manufactured in the UK and the other in Germany, that isn’t conclusive when it comes to the question of the cutting EQ employed, especially as the two pressing differ in age. The UK disc is a first stamper (S1=A1 and S2=B1) while the German pressing is much later, (10=/S1 and 5=/S2). It’s entirely possible that either the discs were both cut in Germany and stampers were sent to the UK pressing plant, or that DGG specified the Teldec curve for the UK cut. However, listening to both records side by side, it’s clear that neither is the case. The German pressing was clearly cut using the Teldec curve. The UK pressing equally clearly wasn’t.

So what curve was used to cut the UK pressing. With the CH Precision P10, it’s easy to cycle through the various popular curves (just so long as you equalise levels as you go) and, in this case, with the German pressing and the Teldec curve available, there’s no guess-work involved.