Question about Frusciante vinyl pressings and which ones are fully analogue (AAA)
Just started wondering about this because I was reading an interview with John from the time of the 2004 releases where he was quite adamant about a fully analogue process being the best for sound quality.
So I was looking at the JF records I have and wondering which, if any would be AAA. I'm not a total purist about this, plenty of records with a digital step sound fantastic, but I'm curious.
I feel like the original 2004 albums that were pressed in the US are quite possibly AAA, and some of the US pressed reissues too. My 2019 Curtains reissue has a sticker stating "cut from the original analog tapes" which is usually in the vinyl world taken to mean no digital step in between the tape and the cutting (although post Mofi-gate, who really knows). This pressing has 'BG' (Bernie Grundman) in the runout, and he has cut countless records AAA, so it's believable.
My 2023 reissues of TWTD and IOE however were cut by Daniel Krieger at SST in Frankfurt, Germany, and I think pressed at MPO, probably in France. In this day and age, as far as I know, it’s extremely unusual to ship a tape or even a tape copy over continents to cut from it, usually AAA records are cut by someone not that far away from the original tape. So these ones I’m thinking are probably cut from a hi-res digital file. They do sound very good.
The Superior Viaduct reissue of Niandra is probably cut from a digital file. It sounds really good, I’ve just never known Superior Viaduct to go that extra step to produce completely analog records. The two other Superior Viaduct records I have sound great BTW (Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Sei Note In Logica and Cluster’s Zuckerzeit).
I don’t have the Empyrean, but there’s some talk on Discogs that the Bernie Grundman cut is AAA?
Anyway, this discussion is probably too nerdy for most people, but would love to hear people’s thoughts on this, or if anyone has some insider knowledge they could share.