| Main Pressing plants Pennyroyal Tea Test pressings Collection |
| Oh, The Guilt IV-23 test pressing | |||||||
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Black vinyl, white label test pressing. Limited to ten copies, all handnumbered. Comes in a white inner sleeve only. Eight copies, numbers 3-10, have been on eBay, all from the same seller (though number 6 is not entirely confirmed). The seller sold them for the Insipid Vinyl owner. It may seem odd that the test pressing for a picture disc is done on regular black vinyl, but that is actually common. The process of pressing picture discs is slightly different to pressing regular vinyl, but it is too expensive to set up the machine that sandwiches the images between three pieces of clear vinyl for a test pressing only. Doing it as a regular vinyl pressing tests the audio quality of stampers just as well. Further, no pressing plant in Australia were capable of pressing picture discs, so they were pressed in Los Angeles, USA, and obviously the test pressings were, too. The plates were made by Lee Plating as seen from the L-code, and most likely pressed by Erika Records. The test pressings sold by the Insipid Vinyl owner from 2002 and on came with a signed COA, on a company letterhead (the COA which came with numbers 7 and 9 was on a regular blank paper). According to the COA, the test pressings were done as regular black vinyl pressings because the first set of film was not set to the appropriate DPI yet, and had to be redone. However, even if the film and printed papers were ready, the pressing plant wouldn't have done the test pressing as a picture disc. There is no reason to have proper pictures on a test pressing as they are testing the audio, and the plant would only have done it as a picture disc if the record label absorbed the extra cost, which I am fairly certain they wouldn't. The COA also mentiones that several test pressings were sent to band/ management for approval. However, the first two auctions claimed that eight went to Nirvana, their management, and The Jesus Lizard, and only the two copies the seller had listed up until then were unaccounted for. Over the following years the seller sold, or tried to sell, six more copies. It is entirely possible that numbers 1 and 2 were sent to the bands/ management, but time will tell.
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 1. Numbers 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10  2. Number 7, side A  3. Number 7, side B Thanks to Enrico Vincenzi (image 1), Zabbadabba (image 1), and Vaughan Bowden (image 1). | |||||||
| Main Pressing plants Pennyroyal Tea Test pressings Collection |
