RARE DIRE STRAITS COMMUNIQUE TEST PRESSING ALBUM LP NEW

$

53

OFFERED WITH NO RESERVE!!!!!!!!!!!

You are about to bid on a Very Rare piece of music history and a must-have for any record collector and/or Dire Straits fan. This is what is referred to as a "Test Pressing" of the album "Communique" from Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler. The printed "Label Copy", which is scotch taped to the outside of a plain white outer cover, indicates that this was produced in March-June of 1979.

This album has been in our family since it was originally distributed. My father used to work closely with the record industry and it was given to him almost 30 years ago, when he filed it away and never played it. When I discovered it I thought that perhaps the wrong record was in the wrong jacket. This is because the center label on the actual record says "Capitol Records" and the Label Copy on the outside jacket says "Warner Bros." on the line marked "Label". Just to verify this was the correct record I put it on a (high quality) turntable long enough to hear the beginning of one track and sure enough the song "Lady Writer" was playing. It is a match!

You can tell just by looking at the album that it has never been played: Maybe some light areas of dust, but no streaks or scratches. The vinyl looks great. The paper inner sleeve and the outer jacket and label copy have minor discoloration from age.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a lot about old records, test pressings, etc... I did some internet searching and found only one other Dire Straits Communique test pressing album and the match to this album was exact: Same Capitol disc label, same plain white outer cover, and the same label copy sheet taped to the outside. That helped to authenticate it for me.

Here is some information that I found regarding test pressings: 

Test Pressing / Advance Only Pressing
After manufacturing an acetate (see this) a small number of vinyl test pressings are produced to check sound quality. They usually bear only plain white labels, sometimes handwritten labels or prints like ‘advance only’. Usually they have no catalog numbers and can be identified only by the matrix no. Advance copies may have catalog nos. like xxxxA

Hopefully the photos that I took will allow you to read the labels. The camera flash washed-out some of the information on the "Label Copy" on the close-up shot. This is only an effect of the flash photo and the typed text is very dark/crisp. If you have any questions please contact me.

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