Okay heres the skinny on the MoFi Lps and how they were done.
Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs,as the first record-pressing house to offer commercially available half-speed-mastered LPs of popular music, MoFi set the stage for what was to come. And at $10 a pop, nearly twice the price of a regular record in the late 70s, MoFi had some chutzpah, too. They built the integrity of their now-famous label by acquiring ONLY original master tapes. By this I mean they used only the first generation of tapes from the recording session -- not second- or third- (or often even worse) generation copies -- for their work, ensuring the best possible source material from which to perform their sonic alchemy.
So just what does half-speed mastering mean? In overly simplified form, the master tape is played back at precisely half its recorded speed while the cutting lathe is similarly turned at precisely half the desired playback speed. Why? This time-shifting process gives the cutting head twice the time to cut its musically complex and physically demanding analog groove into the lacquer. This luxury affords considerably more accuracy with matters such as frequency extremes and microdynamic contrasts.
The final product was pressed to a special, thick (180-gram) blend of virgin vinyl that JVC trademarked as SuperVinyl. The result, especially when taken in union with MoFis meticulous re-mastering of the original tapes, yielded a truly wonderful sonic presentation. Audiophiles of my era sought the records out at every opportunity. They were very often the first records we played when showing off our systems to envious audio buddies. More often than I care to recall, I fired up my humble system with the pressing of Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon, only to rattle window and door frames with the famous opening chicken heart.
In the early days, MoFi executed their tape transfers to lacquer with a Neuman VMS 70 cutting lathe, driven by a JVC quartz-locked direct-drive motor and cut with a Neuman SX 74 cutting head. A specially modified Neuman SAL 74 amp (with no input transformers) fed the cutting head from a Scully SP-14 tape transport fitted with Saki glass ferrite heads. Once this superior master had been cut and the mother stamper made, they then used some of the quietest, most pure vinyl that could be manufactured, guaranteeing that the disc you got was as quiet as any that could be pressed -- as well as being of impeccable sonic quality.
They even listed their playback equipment. To sample their own wares for final production quality, they were using Denon and Revox turntables mounted with a Fidelity Research 64S (with the B60 elevator/stabilizer) arm and fitted with a Fidelity Research FR 1 Mk 3F cartridge. Preamps were the Mark Levinson ML-1 (with the D-6 card), the Audio Research SP-6 or the DB Systems 1a. One of these esteemed preamps would then feed an Audio Research D-110, a DB Systems 6m or the near-legendary Threshold CAS-1 amplifier. Does anyone out there remember the celebrated Beveridge Model 2? Or even the B&W D-7? They also dug deep with the use of a pair of RH Labs subs.
In 1982 came the first of the simply stunning UHQR series. They were pressed on thicker (200-gram) and supposedly even better vinyl than the regular 180-gram Super Vinyl series. Each press run was limited to maximum of 5000, further assuring high quality by not overworking any of the stampers. The packaging was scary -- a sleeve and its literature packaged with foam inside a separate box. Now this was unique! This series was to be 20 titles strong, but it was limited to just eight recordings, all duplicated from the original MFSL catalog. To this day, these are among the quietest, most dynamic records Ive ever played.
