Why are Japanese vinyl pressings so sought after?
The island nation of Japan does a lot of things right, such as food, public transport, and the technological advancement of toilets. Eclipsing even that is the country’s incredible electronics sector. Over the years, Japan has produced some of the highest-quality audio equipment known to man, from turntables to tape decks, so it should stand to reason that their music formats are of a similar high quality, right?
Anybody who has ever been to a record fair will be too aware of the allure surrounding Japanese vinyl pressings. The sight of standard copies of Western rock albums, but with an obi strip and Japanese writing, for an extra 30 quid, is a fairly common occurrence. While this might be written off by pessimists as a cheap trick to cash in on rising levels of Japanophilia in the West, there are genuine reasons why Japanese pressings are so sought after overseas, too.
First of all, let’s get the elephant out of the room: Japanese pressings just look cooler. There is something so inexplicably appealing about seeing a recognisable album cover or artists overlaid with Japanese script. With the addition of obi strips – a strip of paper wrapped around the album cover, giving extra information about the title – the spectacle and scarcity of Japanese vinyl seem to endear itself quite well to the magpie-like tendencies of hardcore vinyl collectors. On top of that, there is the simple fact that Japanese vinyl is more collectable, especially in Western countries where they are more of a spectacle.
The scarcity of Japanese vinyl is a huge part of why these records are so sought-after. For one, it means they will likely increase in value over time, especially for high-profile titles. However, a much more important reason is that the scarcity of the records breeds better sound quality. For most titles, especially Western albums pressed in Japan, records are produced in much smaller quantities than pressings in the UK or US. After all, vinyl records are manufactured by pressing PVC pucks between metal master discs, which contain the grooves.
In mass production, these metal masters deteriorate in quality with every record pressed, meaning the first record off the press might sound pristine, but the 10,000th might feature multiple defects and errors. Given that Japan produces vinyl in much smaller quantities, Japanese pressings are less likely to feature these little defects.
Even taking mass production out of the equation, Japanese records are still likely to have a richer sound quality on the whole. This results largely from the materials used in the pressing process. Pressing plants in the West, particularly in the US during the 1970s and 1980s, companies typically used cheap recycled vinyl to press records. This marked a steep decline in the quality of records in the US, as anybody who has ever bought a second-hand album from the 1980s can attest to – many of the records are thin, flimsy and awash with surface noise.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Japanese pressing plants generally used ‘virgin vinyl’, a material created specifically for record manufacturing. Virgin vinyl pressings feature very little surface noise, especially in comparison to cheaply produced Western pressings. Of course, this is not the case for every single record ever pressed in Japan; pressing defects occur in the process just as they do globally, but, in a general sense, Japanese pressings are often noted for their superior sound quality and lack of surface noise.
So, is it worth splashing out for a Japanese pressing of your favourite album? Well, maybe. Ultimately, the sound quality of your records is largely dependent on the hi-fi set-up you are playing them on. If you are playing records on a cheap, plastic turntable with built-in speakers, you probably won’t hear the difference in sound. However, if you have a decent set-up and revere excellent sound from your records, then Japanese vinyl might be the way to go.
