I have the 180 gram version. I picked it up during the initial pressing back in the Spring. It sounds great to me. It’s cut by CB pressed at Pallas. So that is what I would expect.
That being said I am not sure what the deal is with later pressings but this comment was left by the label on the Discogs page…
Hey all, this is Yale from Luaka Bop. I thought, as there is a lot of discussion here about the pressing quality situation on Promises, that I would try to explain why some things haven't worked out. We are very saddened and sorry to hear that some have received records that are not up to the standard they should be.
Up until now, we used two pressing plants in the world, Pallas in Germany and RTi in California. They are both top tier plants, and I think among the best at pressing vinyl records anywhere.
On some days they did their usual great job and in other days unfortunately they didn't, and often you can trace these bad ones. If you got a good pressing, it's because they did what they should have and I think usually do. If you didn't it's because the specter of Covid, (75% of RTi got Covid at the same time at one point), a shortage of vinyl, a crush of orders for pressing plants everywhere, (turning normal few months turnaround into six months) and the whole chaos of what 2020 and 2021 turned into.
It is now early October, 2021 that I am writing this and we have actually done 7 different pressings throughout this year, as we kept switching out other records we had in the pressing que to press more Promises. There were a few issues with some of the 180’s having flash that was trimmed off the lps falling into the sleeves and getting pressed into a few of the records. But it wasn’t until this last set of pressings that all hell seemed to loosened upon us in terms of warped pressings (mostly U.S. ones, plastic sleeve, from RTi - plus they forgot to put in the inserts!) And noisy pressings (plastic lined paper sleeve mostly from Pallas). I just want to say that I sincerely apologize if your pressing is anything short of what it should be. We are trying one more plant in Europe and hope they will be more consistent.
Let me just add, up till now all 180’s, no matter where you order from were done at Pallas. We will not make more 180’s at this point but we do have enough to satisfy demand till the end of the year.
About the noisy pressings Pallas had this to say:
Good morning everybody,
“I forwarded this claim to Pallas and they appologize for the inconviences. After investigation they found out by checking their product samples that a pressing tool contained a scratch at the end of side B. Depending from record player used this could be audible. They checked the record on three different players and with one of them the issue occured. According them about 50 records could be affected, reason for this estimation is, that the record pressed before this certain one does not show this issue and 50 records later the pressing tool was exchanged.
They offer to press 50 records for free with the next run of this record to cover this.”
That sounds messy. I applaud the label being forthright about the issues but you have to wonder if you pick up a newly pressed copy whether it’s gonna have issue or not.
