RCA LIVING STEREO – SHADED DOG

“RCA-Victor LSC 2436 Living Stereo Shaded Dog LP Stampers 1/S-1/S. For collectors, American RCA Living Stereo “Shaded Dog” SRC labels, are the best of all, of course. To identifique it, look at a Dog inside a shadow on the center label, and a deep groove in the label border. If you know anything about RCA “dead wax” codes, you can check the pressing year, the annual sequence number of the processing master tape used for that side, and the sequence number of the record matrix for that side. In addition, it is also important to know in which factory it was pressed, you find this information at 9 o’clock at the dead wax by the letters I, R, and H. RCA had 3 pressing plants in America: Indianapolis (I), Rockwell (R), and Hollywood (H) (the best was Indianapolis).”

The German RCAs are poor compared to the Americans, they are not “Shaded Dog” nor Deep Grooved LPs, most of them were pressed by Telefunken. Compare the same program of the master RCA LSC 2228 pressed on both LPs. English RCA Living Stereo “SB”, are not “Shaded Dog” also, but are much better than the Germans. This is because they were pressed in London by the Decca factory, using the same presses of the Deccas SXL Wide Band Deep Grooved used for that English Deccas first editions stampers (ED1). – Saulo Zuccello