Motown Pressing Plant History 1959-1972

[woodward]

Does anyone know how many different pressing plants that Motown used during the period 1959-1972 while in Detroit? Can you specifically name the companies and their locations. Thanks for any help you can give. I wonder if any are still in operation today.

[robb_k]

Motown used several local pressing plants early in their history. Once they got rolling, they used Columbia Midwest [[mastering in Chicago, pressing in Terre Haute, Indiana), RCA Midwest [[Mastering in Chicago, pressing in Indianapolis), RCA East Coast [[located in Pennsylvania [[I forget the city), and Monarch Pressing Plant in Los Angeles,

They even used a plant in Southern Ontario [[Canada) once in a while when they had rush jobs, and no Michigan plant was free to rush their job). I forget in what city that was located, But, I do remember the Canadian label style on those pressings.

I'm sure that they also used other plants around USA at times.

[cdave2]

Thank you for that interesting information. How do you tell the different pressings apart? [[Or, if this topic has been addressed before, do you have a link so that I could look it up myself? Google hasn't been much help.) Is there any consensus on whose pressings generally produced the best sound quality?

I've noticed that catalog prefixes can vary [[for example, I've seen label scans for both M-1111 and MOT-1111). Any significance to this?

Longtime lurker, first-time poster here. Thank you for indulging a newbie!

Regards,
Cathy

[robb_k]

duplicate post

[robb_k]

I think RCA's Midwestern and Eastern plants used the best quality vinyl and had the best groove cuts, and, thus, the best sound quality, Monarch almost always used styrene, wich gives off poor sound if tracking in the groove is even slightly off. Columbia's sound quality was pretty good, but I liked RCA's better.

The letter/number codes were different at each plant [[as also was the label layout on RCA pressings). So, MOT and M are different codes from different plants. For example, Columbia's ZTSC stands for their Chicago plant, ZTSP and ZSP for New York and ZTSB for Nashville.

There is a list of the different plants and codes tabulated by an expert on that subject, David Flynn, on his Anorak's Corner Soul Music website. Here's a link to the page:

http://www.anorakscorner.com/PressingPlantInfo.html

[soulster]

Thanks, Rob! Nice info on that site!

[762rob]

And a much more interesting read than the squabbles that certain threads generate.

[cdave2]

Thank you, Rob!

Wishing you all a merry Christmas/happy holidays!