"Baby Love" Acetate Questions.....

[DWSheffer]

Hello All,
I recently acquired this acetate off Ebay, at what I thought was an extremely cheap price. To be honest, while the listing did say it was an acetate, enough key details were missing from the listing for me to be certain it was. I thought I was more than likely purchasing a test pressing of some sort due to the DJ label affixed to the disc. I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived and it was in fact an acetate. At any rate, it's the first acetate of any sort I've acquired for my collection.

I contacted the seller who said it was purchased at a record show in Detroit many years ago. Here are some questions I am hoping the forum can help me with. Is this pressing basically just a VERY advance DJ copy cut to get the record out to a few big stations quickly? Is the song more than likely the standard release version, or is there a possibility it could be an alternate take? To be honest I'm scared to play it for fear of damaging it......the Ebay seller told me he hadn't ever played it either.

I had done some research a few days ago, and I'll be darned if I can locate where I found a lot of 5 similar Elvis Presley acetates that were numbered the same way as this one, that stated they were more than likely from a large radio station in Miami, FL that numbered their records this way. It was evidently a power-house station that the record companies sent releases to right away, and they were frequently acetates cut to get them there immediately, instead of waiting for vinyl pressed DJ copies to arrive.

Thanks for any information anyone can provide!
Darin

12803

12804

12805

[RanRan79]

I don't know anything about this Darin, but I'm bumping this up in case it got lost in the shuffle of other threads and the more knowledgeable folks here overlooked it.

[DWSheffer]

Thank you RanRan79........I've been surprised that with all the views I have not had any replies to the thread thus far.
Darin

[greg jones]

Ok, I can explain some of this. An acetate is primarily used to test the quality of the tape to disc transfer. Acetates are also more fragile than full vinyl and start degrading much quicker than vinyl. They have much more limited plays. I've heard that acetates begin to start degrading after only about 12-25 plays. Besides testing the quality of the transfer, Motown used acetates to play at the weekly quality control meetings that were used to determine what songs would get released as singles. On rare occasions, if promo copies weren't yet available and they wanted a song on the air on top stations asap, they would sometimes manufacture a few acetates and give them to the top US stations. Stations knew how fragile the acetates are and would usually record the song to a tape cartridge for playing on the air and not play them too often to wear them out before promo copies came.

Now for this particular release... The song master number 62159 puts that mix of Baby Love in about 1974/1975. If memory serves me correctly, a bunch of Motown songs were used in the film "Cooley High" and I believe that they made a special mix of this song "Baby Love" for that film. So I have a feeling that's what this acetate was for. To test the mix that they were making of this 1964 classic song that would be used in the film and soundtrack, which Motown had the rights to issue.

[DWSheffer]

Wow Greg, thank you for the good information. I'm sure it's because of my limited knowledge of acetates, but I was surprised to learn it was that modern. I guess I figured it was from the time of release, not thinking they were still cutting them into the mid-70's. But as you say for a movie soundtrack project it was a test to hear what it sounded like. Is the 62159 number a Motown assigned number then?
Thanks again,
Darin