One of my friends pointed out that his Mercury 90060, theoretically an early Mercury release, was a RFR-1 pressing. (for those not in the loop, Mercury's up to around 262 or so, at the point where Phillips took over operations were FR-x pressings (Fine Recordings), manufactured for them by RCA at their Indianapolis plant). After that, the Mercury pressing were made at their Richmond plant and had a RFR-1, etc. matrix number. Of course after that, the quality of the sound went down with the M, CTFR, etc. pressings. As it turned out, everyone in the group (five of us) all had RFR pressings despite this supposedly being an early Mercury release.
So just thought it might be interesting to post Tom Fine's response to the question:
"Hey, I checked SR90060 and you guys are right! It must be a case of a stray catalog number filled it
later for some reason. I checked the label-copy books, which tells the release dates. Sure enough,
released 3/62, deleted from the catalog 8/64. So probably only one pressing. I thought the pressing
moved to Richmond later than 3/62, but apparently not. Philips moved to consolidate operations
quickly, apparently. Given the cover notes welcoming the new MSO conductor, this was probably
Skrowaczewski's first release on Mercury.
As for the recording, it's OK. Northrop was cavernous and thus the recording results are
dry-sounding (the space was so large, not much audio content came to the back sides of the
microphones, just dissipated out into the cavernous space). There's a bit more tape hiss than usual.
It's made late enough to use three Schoeps M201 mics."
So just thought it might be interesting to post Tom Fine's response to the question:
"Hey, I checked SR90060 and you guys are right! It must be a case of a stray catalog number filled it
later for some reason. I checked the label-copy books, which tells the release dates. Sure enough,
released 3/62, deleted from the catalog 8/64. So probably only one pressing. I thought the pressing
moved to Richmond later than 3/62, but apparently not. Philips moved to consolidate operations
quickly, apparently. Given the cover notes welcoming the new MSO conductor, this was probably
Skrowaczewski's first release on Mercury.
As for the recording, it's OK. Northrop was cavernous and thus the recording results are
dry-sounding (the space was so large, not much audio content came to the back sides of the
microphones, just dissipated out into the cavernous space). There's a bit more tape hiss than usual.
It's made late enough to use three Schoeps M201 mics."
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