DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN US LP variations: Pitman pressing — Early edition

NOTE: One of the two vinyl discs reported here, with the hand-etched matrix code "PPP," was found not to have been pressed at the Pitman factory. Please check the updated information in the blog entry from 8/20/2022.

Two label variants for the early Pitman pressings mainly differ in the spacing between the album title and tracklist, with slightly different production credits [left, P-stamp version; right, triple-P (PPP) hand-etching version; see the main text for details]. However, both print Springsteen's name and album title into two separate lines, which is basically a unique feature of the early Pitman discs (although I once saw a copy of the Terre Haute pressing with the narrow "18 mm-spacing" label). Note that only the album title is split with the late pressings (see the label image on 03/04/2018).
CORRECTION: The label on the right is of vinyl copies pressed at another plant in New Jersey (see 8/20/2022).

As reported in a series of blog posts under the above subject, a unique aspect of the U.S. vinyl release of DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (Columbia JC 35318) is that several pressing plants of non-Columbia Records participated in producing the early pressings*, the situation otherwise scarcely seen in pressing other Springsteen's original albums, except for the CBS Special Products edition of THE RIVER (see 09/10/2014 and 12/23/2017). This particular case resulted from the temporal closure of the Pitman factory in New Jersey, one of the three major pressing plants that supplied the company's products to the East Coast markets, due to the labor disputes and strikes in Spring of 1978. The fact is reflected by unusual dead-wax symbols, markings, and hand-etchings, such as PN, PMI, PMN, or PK, each of which encodes a pressing plant where a given vinyl disc is manufactured. The details of these plant-specific codes have been summarized in the blog posts on 11/17/2018 and 11/19/2018.
*In brief, the early pressings are characterized as follows: (1) The rear sleeve features the large track listing and black font credits on the upper and lower of the left corners, respectively; (2) the inner sleeve is made of thick paper with higher resolution images; (3) the main matrix numbers are hand-etched PAL-35318 and PBL-35318 on Sides One and Two, respectively; and (4) each side of a vinyl disc has a machine stamp TML-M or TLM-S (The Mastering Lab - Master or Slave lathe).

Typical examples of three dead-wax markings for the Pitman-
pressed DARKNESS U.S. LP. From left to right: P stamp, and
triple and single P hand-etchings. See the main text for details.

Soon after the settlement of the labor issues (i.e., the strike ended May 17), the Pitman plant was back to operation and joined in pressing the DARKNESS LP from the end of May or early June that year. In a previous post (11/19/2018), I came to a conclusion that such vinyl copies pressed at this Garden-State plant are identifiable by PPP, a dead-wax triple-P hand-etching. However, this was drawn only from circumstantial evidence. Moreover, there are no known examples of the triple-letter code used for other albums by Springsteen and probably also by other artists under the Columbia label (not available online as far as I searched through Google). So, I tried to obtain definitive proof for the presumed Pitman's code on his fourth official album.

Having re-examined the dead-wax inscriptions, I took note of the crossed-out letter 1AD, followed by an additionally inscribed code 1AF or 1AG, which is the matrix number suffix found on Side One of the presumed Pitman pressings I own (For an example image, see 11/19/2018).

Three different suffixes, -1AD, -1AF, and -1AG, are
found on Side One matrix numbers of the early
Pitman pressings. Note that -1AD was once inscribed
but crossed out on -1AF and -1AG discs.

Side One:   PAL-35318-1AD 1AF       TML-S     PPP
Side Two:   PBL-35318-2AB   　       PPP      TML-M

Side One:   PAL-35318-1AD 1AF       TML-S     PPP
Side Two:   PBL-35318-2AC   　       PPP      TML-S

Side One:   PAL-35318-1AD 1AG                  TML-M
Side Two:   PBL-35318-2AB  　        PPP      TML-M

        (oblique, hand-etched; straight, stamped)

My idea was simple, expecting the existence of unmodified 1AD pressings that might support my presumption or provide a clue to solving the identity of these PPP-inscribed vinyl discs. So, I tried to find out  such copies.

From my experience, it was (and still is) the Santa Maria pressing that I came across more often than any other pressings when hunting early U.S. exports of the DARKNESS LP here in the Far East (So, this Californian pressing represents the most abundant in my DARKNESS U.S. LP collection). The highest hit probability was probably because this pressing plant played the predominant role in the early phase (Spring 1978) of the album production while the Pitman was inoperative transiently. The relatively close geography of the West Coast to Japan would also explain this, considering the export distance and cost. Anyway, I managed to get a copy with the non-crossed-out 1AD-suffix code and looked into the dead-wax markings and inscriptions. At first glance, I could not recognize any special or unique characters there, including PPP. However, close examination led me to find out a "P" machine-stamp on both sides, just like the test pressing and white-label promotional release of BORN TO RUN U.S. LP (see 05/21/2017), confirming the vinyl copy of the Pitman origin.

Side One:   P 　PAL-35318-1AD     TML-M
Side Two:   P 　PBL-35318-2AA     TML-S

Both Sides One (right) and Two (left) dead-wax areas of the -1AD/-2AA pressing (with the "narrow" spacing labels; see the top image) are stamped with P denoting the Pitman pressing. I usually use naked eyes for visual inspection of the dead-wax markings. In this case, however, the pressing-plant-specific stamp was pressed so faint that I needed the help of modern technology (i.e., USB microscope) to confirm its existence.

Based on the above observations, I conclude that all the vinyl pressings with 1AD, 1AF, or 1AG on Side One, and 1AA, 1AB, or 1AC on Side Two, came from the Pitman plant. However, I cannot figure out why two different symbols, machine-stamped "P" and hand-etched "PPP," were alternatively used to indicate the same pressing plant. Maybe, the Pitman temporarily changed the pressing-plant-specific symbol for this particular album, from the standard single-letter stamp to the triple-letter hand-etching, to conform to the style (PN, PMI, PMN, and PK) of the other plants that made up for the album shortage?  Indeed, as mentioned above, I have not seen the triple-letter code used for any other albums by Springsteen or other Columbia label's artists. I also notice that the two variants show a few but notable differences in both Sides One and Two record labels, especially the spacing between the album title and tracklist (see the image on the top for Side One). So, these "early" Pitman editions can be further divided into two kinds regarding label design and dead-wax plant-specific marking. And as a final note, a "P" hand-etching found on some vinyl copies of DARKNESS denotes the late Pitman pressing (An example is shown on 03/04/2018). 
 

→ See here for the updated information.