Does anyone know anything about the Plastylite Company ITSELF? Where was it located? Did they only press records or were they in the general plastic business?

I cannot find ANY information on them at all—ZERO.

My stereo copy with the original UA label is not a Plastylite pressing. I was not aware that the original stereo was pressed by Plastylite. If that is the case, then I suppose my pressing must not be from the first run.

I do have a mono pressing with a ‘P’ (which, incidentally, is not a particularly high-quality pressing either).

Regardless, the point I was making is that there is a significant quality difference between original Liberty pressings and Liberty pressings after UA acquired them and that most UA pressings, in my experience, tend to be of dubious quality.

What I mean by mono as sounding more representative of live jazz is that if one goes to a jazz club such as Birdland or the Village Vanguard, the musicians stand relatively close together on the stage. One does not hear the trumpet coming from one side of the room and the drums or piano from another. What I am essentially getting at is that listening to jazz at a club in the 1950s and 1960s was not the same experience as listening to a Haydn symphony in an expansive concert hall. YMMV, of course.

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“I was wondering if anyone knows how long the Plastylite factory continued to stamp “P” in the trail-off on other labels for which it pressed albums.”
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Some of the pre-UA Liberty pressings are just as good (or, IMHO, in some cases arguably better) quality pressings than Plastylite as I have certainly run across the occasional less-than-perfect Plastylite. A few of my NYC/Liberty pressings have the ‘I’ stamp indicating the RCA pressing plant in Richmond, Indiana which consistently put out high quality vinyl at least into the 70s.

United Artists on the other hand, consistently put out poor quality vinyl (I don’t know where they had their records pressed, however). You can see this same poor quality across the board on all UA labels such as post ’61 Verve and the MGM/UA and the United Artists label itself (on releases such as Bill Evans/Jim Hall – “Undercurrent”).

As for mono: Analog Productions, responding to criticism over their decision to release only stereo reissues of some titles, explains that all mono issues after October 30th, 1958 are, in fact, 50/50 fold downs of the stereo master tape.

http://goo.gl/uHgCV

Some of the supposed Liberty pressed albums in my collection which have the New York Inc. address appear to be of the same thickness and quality as the ones with the P on them. In addition, the vinyl itself appears thicker than albums pressed on Liberty during ’66-’67.

Also, with regard to stereo/mono, I believe that all Blue Note albums were recorded in stereo after 1959. The monos were all fold-downs, but to me they sound better. The mono pressings sound closer to what one would hear if they went to a jazz club. That is perhaps why collectors and jazz enthusiasts typically want to own them. The stereo pressings have greater separation of instruments, which is no doubt more pleasing to an audiophile.