[hayerjoe]

I read a very interesting article recently about record mastering.

As CDs started to take off in the late 80s early 90s, no companies were investing in new mastering machines or pressing machines. The mastering specifically was a great skill, they had to assess frequencies like strong bass notes and alter what got mastered so records did not jump on a massive range of equipment. if one person complained about their single jumping in the 70s/80s it was not a big deal but if everyone with Dansette had a problem it was a huge problem, so it was real skill.


By the 90s the engineers were retiring and thought there was absolutely no point in passing on their skills. So records pressed after say 2000 were badly mastered (as the engineers had retired) and were produced on very very worn out equipment that had not been replaced since at best the 80s! Not a good combination if you wanted a wide range of player compatibility.

Now we're in the 2020s and surprisingly vinyl does look like it's genuinely bounced back, the article was saying the first new mastering machines in decades were being produced BUT the big problem is all that mastering skill being lost still remains and in truth is unlikely to return. So the fact that your ceramic cartridge doesnt work with modern vinyl is very much to do with the quality of the pressings (which are apparently very shallow) rather than the compliance of the cartridges.

By way of confirming this I know someone who runs a record shop here in Hobart, and he says he has quite a lot of compliants about modern vinyl not playing too well and interestingly the biggest culprit is coloured vinyl which for some reason produces extremely jumpy pressings (something to do with the colour additives he thinks)

not withstanding all the above, I can imagine problems with the repro Ronettes but other than coloured modern vinyl I've not had any problems with the repro BSR copies around. Set the tracking weight to 4g and you should be fine