Stones On Decca

05/01/2025

HI all. Beginning the new year with getting a new Laptop tomorrow! That will be nice with a bit more storage capacity and performance.
Now then cleaning the old one and going through several hundreds of messages form collectors that I have received during 10+ years. And what do I find!! Label versions that I have got back in the day but just saved and not actually updated on my page! Most of them I did get a few years back when the page was down, still published but on an old platform that did not allow any updates.

I have today added one Mono Aftermath that is rather interesting. Design 4 and version 9, both side 1 and 2.
The label has the Publishing year on the top left side. Decca moved the P Year to the bottom of the label in the spring of 1967.
It also has the K/T tax code that was used until March of 1968. Label then most probably printed in the beginning of 1967.
But the record is a non grooved version and they started to press these non grooved records in September - October 1968!

Typical Decca way of working. They printed labels and kept them in stock for two years before using them in record manufacturing. This always makes it a bit challenging to confirm when the record in question was pressed!

I got this label version from Leo Wubbolt back in 2019! Thank You Leo and sorry for a bit late addition of the label!

01/08/2024

New updates has been done on the page again. I have added lots of new records on the "Foreign pressings with UK made stampers".
Records made in South Africa, Nigeria and Venezuela. I may have still a few records that needs to be added on this chapter as well.

I have lately got lots of pictures of foreign pressing rom my collector friends out there, one being Tom Stravopoulos, thanx Tom !

Decca was exporting record stampers to many countries around the world. Here are a few examples of foreign pressing made with UK Decca made stampers.

09/02/2024

A Danish collector, Henrik Blöndal Bengtsson, sent me pictures of an interesting letter back in 2021. Unfortunately I forgot about them and they drowned in my picture archive until today when I found them during cleaning of my files!
We all know that UK Decca did send out a letter together with the Promotional Album in England.
But how many of us did know that London Records in USA also sent out a letter with the album to Radio DJ's in USA! Or actually two, one announcing the new tour with dates and the other one for the Promotional Album.

I have added two letters to the Promotional Album section on my Stones On Decca Page.
Link below. You need to scroll down a bit as the Promotional page is beginning to be rather long :)

20/01/2024

Dark, lots of snow, 20 minus Celsius degrees outside, perfect time to work on updates on my Stones On Decca page!

I have added records pressed in several countries around the world. The link to UK Decca is that all of these records have been locally pressed with stampers manufactured in England.

Many countries around the world did not have possibilities to manufacture stampers of their own for local record manufacturing. UK Decca stepped in and made lots of stampers that were exported to many countries.

You can identify a foreign record pressed in for example Israel by looking at the font, design and amount of letters and numbers in the matrix. This picture is from a Rolling Stones No1 LK4605 pressed in Israel. The numbers are identical to the ones found on UK pressed LK4605 records

I have now records pressed with UK made stampers in the following countries documented on my page:
Italy
Belgium
France
Israel
Rhodesia
Nigeria
Mexico
Venezuela
Argentina
Colombia
Barbados

There are many more countries that has used UK stampers. Some will perhaps still be added to my page. Link to the page below in the comments

01/10/2023

Hendrik Mulder has again supplied a new label for me. This time a YaYa's side one that has the P1970 above the catalogue / tape number on the right side of the label.
All labels we have seen so far has the Publishing date at the bottom of the labels. This is then the first "design 11" on the page.
Thanx Hendrik !

https://stonesondecca.com/the-60s-decca/get-yer-ya-ya-s-out

01/10/2023

I have today added an interesting production mistake to the Stones On Decca page.
I got these pictures from Julian Kingston:

A non-boxed mono Trough The Past Darkly that has the matrix number beginning with XARL on side one, which is a mono pressing and XZAL on side two which is a stereo pressing.

This record then plays in mono on one side and in stereo on the other side!
Wrong stamper put in the pressing machine at the production!

https://stonesondecca.com/the-60s-decca/through-the-past-darkly

15/09/2023

I have received pictures of yet another interesting Stones record pressed in Rhodesia ! with UK Decca made pressing plates.

The interesting thing with this new one is that it is a mono record but has the blue label !
This has to be a re-issue of the original which has the red label in Rhodesia. Matrix numbers and other markings in the off-groove looks to be the same on the red and blue label records!

Has anyone else seen any blue label monos from Africa?

Pictures sent to me by Eduard Gazendam, Thank You very much

Scroll down here on this page a bit and you will find the blue Rhodesian record

Decca was exporting pressing plates to many countries around the world. Here are a few examples of foreign pressing made with UK Decca made pressing plates.

04/09/2023

I recently updated the London chapter of the page with new good quality pictures of the sensational new find, the mono version of the Live record from 1966.

A bit of a background. The Live record was originally pressed in England by Decca for export only. The name for the record was "Have You Seen Your Mother LIVE!" and it was distributed to possibly The Netherlands and the Nordic countries originally.
The record was available in England only in the early 70's.

The same record was then sold under the title "got LIVE if you want It!" in all other parts of the world.

Some of the early US records were initially pressed by Decca in England. They can easily be identified having a London Records logo on the label and with the text above the logo as: "Made in England by the Decca Record Company"

The LIVE record has not been found pressed by Decca having the London label, confirming that this record was not pressed in UK for export to USA. But these two test pressing, one mono and one stereo, now presented on the SOD page, confirms that they did plan to press them with London catalogue numbers and logo for export to USA!

LL3493 - mono
PS493 - stereo

Enjoy

Mono LL3493 / Stereo PS493

31/07/2023

Flowers
I have recently added one new label for Flowers.
Stereo non boxed side 1 and version 5.

https://stonesondecca.com/the-60s-decca/flowers

Thank you Hendrik Mulder for the good quality picture and addition to the page!

Released on July 15th 1967 in Europe but not in the UK Flowers is again one of the odd birds in the UK catalogue. The LP was actually not sold in UK until mid 70’s and then with a boxed label. It was initially made in UK for export to Europe. The LP had a rather strange set of songs on it, some al...

31/07/2023

Their Satanic Majesties Request

This record has the two known mono mixes that can be identified by the matrix numbers. P1 in the off groove stands for an original mono mix and the T2 stands for a stereo mix that has been folded down to one mono channel

I have now received confirmation of a record that has T2 on side one and P1 on side two! Interesting, but not surprising that such a combination is existing. I was kind of thinking that this combination can exist, I had just not seen any until now.

08/12/2022

Interesting update just done on my SOD page. A collector in Sweden supplied me with a picture of a No2 "paste over" cover that has a date on the backside! The text says "Köpt i augusti 1965" -> "Purchased in august 1965"
Usually it is sad when people put a lot of handwritten text on record covers, but in this case it is worth gold :)
Then we can confirm that these "paste over" covers were in the shops already in the summer of 1965 !

06/11/2022

Another interesting addition to SOD. Or actually two!
Foreign pressings using UK made plates.

First one is a 12 x 5 pressed in Venezuela! I think that this is the first time I have come across a record from the London catalogue made in South America using plates made by Decca!

The other one is a Rolling Stones No1 made in Israel with UK made plates!

30/10/2022

I have updated the cover data section on Aftermath. I was until recently of the opinion that all covers made for UK pressed records had the large "MONO" text on the back side.
I had seen UK made covers with small Mono text before but all of them had Dutch made records in them. Now a few UK pressed records have been found in that cover version as well and confirming that two styles of Mono text has been used in UK as well.
The Clarifoil as well as the "Printed in England" text is also missing on these "small Mono" covers.

Thanks to Erwin Bekker who sent me pictures and data on this cover version.

30/10/2022

I notice that I have not informed about the last major change that was done to the platform of the Stones On Decca page. The page was re-built and is now resting on a "Strapi" platform.
The reliability of the page has increased a lot and no major downtime has been reported since we changed the platform. This was done in April - May 2022.
Some small design changes were done on the same time.

01/05/2022

I have added a new "foreign pressing" to the page. This time a really nice looking Their Satanic Majesties Request that is pressed in Mexico using original UK made pressing plates.

Decca was exporting pressing plates to many countries around the world. Here are a few examples of foreign pressing made with UK Decca made pressing plates.

05/01/2022

I did a major update of the 12x5 album in December 2021 as well. I added a bit of text and pictures on the 12x5 test cover.

Very much looking for opinions on the test cover. Unfortunately all we have are opinions and no facts.

Stones on DECCA 12 x 5 LL3402 Mono / PS 402 Stereo The second US LP, 12×5 was also pressed in UK by Decca for export to US. The records were put into inner bags and shipped to US. They were then put into original US made sleeves on arrival.This album was not released in England until the 1980’s. ...

05/01/2022

I have been working on my page again during the end of the year. One new page added under the 60's London chapter.

Test pressings for the 1966 Live record exists in both mono and stereo versions. This indicates that the Live record was in the pipeline for export production at Decca.

Please read more on the stones on decca page

Stones on DECCA Got Live If You Want It! Mono LL3493 / Stereo PS493 Test pressing The export live album released in Europe by Decca was called “Have You Seen Your Mother LIVE!. The same album was released as “got LIVE if you want it!” in many countries, for example, all regions where Rolling S...

28/10/2021

I have just added two new records to the Foreign Pressings chapter!
One Belgian and one French "got LIVE if you want".
Both of them are pressed pressed locally but with pressing plates supplied by Decca UK !
Thank you Emilio Giovanetti for the contribution!