Here’s a case study on a BBC Sound Effects record that’s on Discogs with an interesting* note. This is EC 19F, Motor Car: Ford Cortina 1600.
https://www.discogs.com/release/7598199-No-Artist-Motor-Car-Ford-Cortina-1600
My interest is aroused by this note about a note.
“Notes on paper sleeve from pressing plant which state “PU58, JOB 27422, 150 pressings, 4-3-75”
Field recordings made in 1969 from label.”
How about that?!
Welllll, let’s start with the record. It’s the sounds of a Ford Cortina motor car recorded from the interior. We get the doors opening and closing, wipers, the starter motor and running the engine. If you can’t remember what a late sixties car sounded like, or never knew, you can hear it all here on the BBC Rewind SFX website. If you keep scrolling you’ll get to the exterior recorded sounds and these are on EC 19G and EC 19H. Oh, and there’s stereo recordings of the Ford Cortina 1500 on there too. Those come from ECS EM4,5,6,7 and 8! And! The Cortina 1.6 too! on ECS EM25-29.
I don’t have the space or any inclination to go into the details of the various models of the Cortina, but they sold a lot of them and it’s no surprise that they are well represented in the BBC SFX library.
In typical Discogs style though, whilst the labels are there to see, there is no photo of this paper sleeve. The BBC FX 7”s famously come in plastic sleeves, so this paper one from the pressing plant might have been test pressing! Ooh!
In any case, I’m going to take the information at face value and see what I make of it.
The Discogs entry has the EC 193F ‘Released’ date set to 4th March 1975. Can that be right? It is the date on the note from the pressing plant, so maybe. On the other hand the photographs of EC 19F tell a different tale.
The first image of the front side has two stamps: ‘BRISTOL SOUND TRANSFER SUITE’ and ‘BRISTOL EFFECTS’. I can only imagine these are from BBC Bristol. The Back side has another stamp ’15 MAR 1973′. Well that puts the mockers on this being released in 1975, doesn’t it? Unless some joker working in the Bristol Effects Suite had their stamp set-up for 1973 in 1975 it would appear that this copy is not the one with the note on the paper sleeve. It would be nicer if the Discogs note matched the images, but we must be grateful for what we have.
Alright, so the pressing in 1975 may have been a repress. Let’s have a closer look. The note ends with the comment that the recordings are from 1969, which they are indeed, according to the label. Four years before the 1973 stamp and six before the 1975 pressing note. Alright, no messing about now, were the Cortina 1600 effects released before 1973?
Yes. They are in the 1971 catalogue so the stamp from 1973 and the note from 1975 are from long after the actual release date. Of course I can do better than that though. Were they released in 1969?
To be sure when this was first released let’s have a look at the matrix number. The discogs photo has 7FRD 125243 on the front side. The nearest matrix number I have for another BBC Record is 125672 and I have dated that to… 1969. So, that copy pictured on Discogs is possibly from an original pressing from 1969. Or maybe a later one in 1973? No idea, really, but lets say probably one of the original 150 copies pressed in 1969.
Now I thought I should check some other copies. And because I’m not in my garage as I type this bit I reached my fingers across the keyboard and checked Mike’s Collection website instead. Yes, he has that one and oh! Look! It’s the exact same copy from Discogs. Not the same photos, but the copy, no question. And, well the sleeve is only visible in one image, but could just be a paper sleeve. There’s a crease in one corner which is all but impossible to get in the plastic sleeves. Well, Mike says the sleeve is plastic, so maybe not. And the reverse looks like, errm, not sure what to be honest.
Apart from it seems Mike bought his off Discogs. I haven’t learned anything new there.
As the two I found on the web are actually the same one I’ll have to go out to the garage and see if my two copies have anything new to add.
Absolutely identical the Discogs/Mike copy, apart from they are clear of any stamps.
But wasn’t I supposed to be finding something interesting? Let’s go back to that pressing plant note. And try really hard.
First up it’s “PU58”. I have no idea. P for pressing is somewhat possible, but is that Press Up? Again. No idea. Oh dear.
Let’s try “JOB 27422”. That’s quite a big number. It could be the number of jobs done to that date. What jobs exactly? I suppose jobs for the BBC. I can get an approximate idea of the number of jobs the BBC had ordered by 1975 by looking at my matrix numbers from that year. They come out around 136,000. Divide that by two, because each one has two sides, at least, and you get nowhere near 27,422. It’s more than twice that at 68,000. But the job number would be only for that pressing plant. In this case it’s Decca, as in the 7FRD matrix code prefix. If you take into account that other plants were producing a similar number of BBC pressings as Decca and factor in the (err) fact that a large number of jobs would have had four or more sides, and squint a bit… I’m saying that this could just be the number of jobs Decca had done for the BBC at that time.
The next one is easy. “150 pressings” is not just self explanatory though. As I mentioned in the post on matrix number dating and represses with different matrix numbers, the number of pressings was worked out in 1965. There’s a memo in the BBC Written Archive which lays out the numbers of new records to be released per week and per year to get to a target of 1000 (2000 sides) in five years. What’s pertinent here is that the memo says they will press 150 of each. This is said to be a “high number” which will means “the need to reorder will be reduced to the minimum”. Since 1969 had they needed to repress EC 193F before 1975? I really don’t know. Sorry! But, they may have only got away with only needing 150 from 1969 to 1975 in this case.
Or till “4-3-75” to be precise.
That’s all I can say for now, but I’m slowly seeing more of the bigger picture.
*as with a Cortina, your mileage may vary,