Reissuing Dub with Week–End Records

A quick insight into creating a new master for a historical recording, audio restoration, and why not all reissues can be made from the master tapes.

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A reissue is ideally made from the master tape, provided that it A/ still exists and B/ is in viable condition. Researching the master source—communication with artists, collaborators, archives, estates, and licensors—can take years, and in some cases it becomes clear that the reels, or even backup copies, have been lost—gone forever.

For the dub LPs on Week–End Records, including both Keith Hudson albums and Bim Sherman’s Ghetto Dub, this was the case. For these reissues, we sourced several copies of the first pressings, cleaned them, and transferred them to 96 kHz PCM using a fully serviced EMT 938 turntable, the very best converters and interconnects, and conditioned power. The cleanest takes from the vinyl copies at hand served as our source material.

While I handled the restoration of Keith Hudson’s Playing It Cool, Playing It Right myself—spending a full week manually de-clicking and de-crackling the transfer second by second, removing tiny glitches and occasional distortion from the audio spectrum using CEDAR Audio software tools—we decided to entrust this part of the process to Audio Gecko in Paris for Nuh Skin Up Dub, Ghetto Dub, and Upsetters 14 Dub Black Board Jungle.

Audio Gecko specializes in audio transfer and restoration, and they work with CEDAR Cambridge hardware, which makes the restoration process a little easier on the cervical spine and trackpad wrist. Our friends in Paris did an amazing job on all four projects and provided us with faithful copies of what is actually on those original records—in their grooves—minus the unwanted artifacts.

For Upsetters 14 Dub Black Board Jungle, we sourced a copy of the holy grail 1973 first pressing of which only 300 copies were made at the time, in excellent condition, from a dub music collector and archivist, who kindly hand-delivered this treasure to my studio for the high-resolution transfer. One week later, we received the restored version from Frédéric Ménétrier at Audio Gecko, ready for mastering.

To create a new master of historical material, it is crucial to study the previously released editions. People who have heard the original Jamaican pressing or Coxsone Dodd’s 1991 repress from the 1973 stampers will be familiar with the unique left/right channel separation that is prominent throughout the album. Some tracks have only the drop-ins on one channel, while the band is panned almost entirely to the other. Other tracks lean heavily to one side of the stereo field, while the other channel contains only a faint bleed of the performance. On a good stereo system, those tracks seem to play mainly through one speaker, which is an odd experience.

For the 2004 Auralux reissue, the label decided to rearrange the stereo image to achieve a more modern, louder sound. With the license for the Upsetters album, BMG sent us the CD masters from Trojan’s Dub-Triptych compilation, which you will find on streaming platforms. While this 2004 master preserves the original channel separation, one can clearly hear artifacts from the restoration affecting the transients, as well as the typical underwater gurgling sound produced by excessive automated de-clicking.

For the new Week–End Records edition, we chose to present the original split-stereo mix with only a slight adjustment to the mid/side field to create a little more phantom center. Compared with the original mixes, this results in a more detailed image while preserving their unique character. The instruments have better contour and punch, and the dirt and grit shine gloriously.

As with all of my mastering work, the processing was done fully in the analog domain, using a console hand-built by Jonte Knif and Marshall Terry.

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