THE HUNT FOR PRE-OWNED OG VINYL RECORDS

When I started collecting vinyl records again back in 2004, there were not too many local suppliers. I was fortunate then to find someone who managed to get us what we wanted. Today there are many vinyl sellers in South Africa, providing both new and pre-owned records. The pre-owned market in particular, is huge. I have had some reservations about buying pre-owned titles and after one expensive mishap I was really starting to have my doubts. However, this dud turned out to be an exception and the seller and I sorted it out. In the past year I have purchased some 15 pre-owned albums that I owned back years ago. Most were no more than about R300.00; many were way less.

A while ago my wife asked me why I always buy “old music”, meaning titles I owned more than 40 years ago. My answer was that back in the day, and probably the early eighties specifically, we were in what I would call the pinnacle of vinyl record production. The thing is that we did not always appreciate it back then. When many of us disposed of our record collections to pursue the digital route, few of us thought that years later we would return to the format and long for those records, specifically OG pressings of those albums we parted with. Most of them you are probably never going to get hold of again.

Keep in mind that I am just Ordinary Joe when it comes to collecting records and there are others out there who have more experience and titles than I will ever have. For the purpose of this article, let us forget for a moment about new vinyl records and focus on hunting down older records produced by specific individuals. Many enthusiasts will care less about specific pressings and titles. They just want music in the house. That’s great. But then there are some who take things a bit further, like me, and are tracking down specific pressings, and even individual mastering engineers’ products. These pressings are often referred to as OG – Original Gangster – or maybe it is just an abbreviation for “original”.

If you inspect a vinyl record in good light, you will notice that at the end of each side we have the open area between the last track and the label. This is called the deadwax and it contains the runout groove as well as a wealth of information, if you know what to look for. You may notice information stamped or etched into the deadwax and see something like MASTERDISK or Sterling. If you are out hunting for records and see this, hold on to the record. This tells you which company did the mastering. Now look for other descriptors. If you see an etched RL next to especially the MASTERDISK stamp, hold on even tighter. This would be an album mastered by Robert Ludwig, famous for the exceptional work he did years ago, and still did for his own company until his retirement in 2024. You may see weird triangles, squares, arrows, and other shapes. These are all indicators of where the particular record was pressed, especially in the USA where demand often required record companies to outsource pressing huge numbers to other pressing plants. The little insignia would then identify the specific pressing plant used.

Let me share a story of what happened at a vinyl fair in late-2023. I found a copy of Donald Fagen’s ‘The Nightfly’. This is a brilliantly produced album was Fagen’s first solo effort after Steely Dan’s two members split up following the release of ‘Gaucho’ in 1980. I checked the deadwax, and clear as daylight there was the following: MASTERDISK RL SLM △ 2607. Okay, so what does all of this mean? Simply that it was mastered at Masterdisk; by mastering engineer Robert Ludwig; and plated at Sheffield Lab Matrix which is indicated by SLM △ and the number 2607. I asked the seller if he was sure that this LP was only going to cost me the indicated price. He probably misunderstood me and said he would give me a discount if I couldn’t afford it. Nope, I was prepared to pay a lot more for it because I had stumbled on a genuine jewel here. R200.00 later, it was mine, for the advertised price. It is probably my most prized LP and it sounds great. Sure, time and use have left their mark and there is some surface noise no amount of cleaning will get rid of, but the dynamic presentation of the music more than makes up for this.

So what? you may ask. The thing is that these old pressings are the ones that were produced when the original analogue master tapes were still fresh. Granted, ‘The Nightfly’ is a digital recording but what collectors are after in this case is the way the original mastering was done, whether from an analogue or digital source. Most other albums recorded at the time were all-analogue. Because of the process required to produce reissues later, each time the master tape is run, there is a risk of it being damaged. No wonder then that today reissues and remasters are more often than not produced from high-quality digital copies of the old master tapes, or copies of the master tapes rather than the original. I have no problem with this.

We are never going to see reissues or remasters from the original master tapes from the likes of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and other older groups. Forget about ever getting a new copy of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ from the original analogue master tape. The last one was done in 2003. Consider also that if a specific company wants to reissue an album, they have to obtain the original master tapes and have them transported from where they are stored to where the reissue will be prepared. This is a huge risk. Think back of the disaster in 2008 when the Universal Music Group’s vault in California burnt down and irreplaceable master tapes of many artists spanning decades were lost forever.

Am I getting carried away here? Not really, but for me buying pre-owned vinyl records at record fairs or online stores is fun. I will go to a record fair because I am looking for a specific pressing of a title, or I try to find it online. Here is another example. I mentioned ‘Gaucho’ earlier. In November 2025 I found a copy online, again with the holy grail of deadwax identifiers according to Discogs: MCA-2469 MD-1 MASTERDISK RL EDP. As with ‘The Nightfly’, this was mastered at Masterdisk by Robert Ludwig, but here we see EDP (Europa Disk Plating) stamped in an oval. This was the company responsible for the plating process. The MD-1 indicates that it was in one of the first batches to be pressed. I bought it on the spot.

Does the OG sound as good as my 2023 Geffen remaster done by Bernie Grundman? My newer copy is dead silent with very little surface noise. The old one has a few pops and needs to be cleaned, but on playing the first track, the older copy has more bass and appears less clinical than the new one. I must have played it about five times already and it is improving with every play. ‘Gaucho’ and ‘The Nightfly’ are perfect partners in my small collection.

If this topic is of interest to you, let’s talk. It is a hobby that many of us enjoy, and we could probably have plenty to share with one another. I just mentioned one mastering engineer as an example. There are many more that we can discuss in future, including Kevin Grey, Bernie Grundman, and Miles Showell.

In closing, I ask anyone to try and locate in South Africa either a 1985 Warner Brothers (USA distribution) or Vertigo (UK and worldwide outside of the USA) with both MASTERDISK and RL in the deadwax for Dire Straits’ 1985 album ‘Brothers in Arms’. Then contact me to make you a deal. I’d love to have a copy to add to the meagre three RL-mastered albums in my collection; ‘Gaucho’, ‘The Nightfly’, and ‘Katrina and the Waves’.

Andries Oberholzer